How I Started Nomad Wholefoods (And What I’d Do Differently)

Every business starts somewhere. Mine started with a crowdfunding campaign that failed. Not dramatically, not by a huge margin — it just didn’t reach its goal. Which meant I didn’t get a single cent of it. In the crowdfunding world, that’s the end of the story.

Except it wasn’t, because of what happened before it closed. A handful of people had backed it. Not enough to fund the dream, but enough to tell me something important: I was not alone in this. There were people out there who believed in the idea before there was anything to show for it, who put their hand up and said yes, this is something our community needs. That was enough. Not enough to launch with the runway I’d hoped for — but enough to keep going anyway.

Where it came from

We had settled on Banks Peninsula in a small, beautiful, end-of-the-road kind of place. The sort of place you move to on purpose, knowing full well what you’re trading. Space, community, slower pace, kids who can roam. What you trade, it turns out, is grocery options.

There was no organic food available locally. None. The nearest real alternative was a drive to Christchurch and doing that regularly, with two kids (now three!) while trying to eat well and live intentionally, felt both exhausting and absurd. I wanted to nourish my family properly, without spending half my week in the car to do it.

So I started. Not with a shop, not with a plan that made sense on paper — just with the conviction that this gap was real and worth filling. I showed up at the market with what I had, not much at the start. I kept showing up. Tried different locations. Growth was slow in a way that tested every bit of patience I had — someone might grab a bottle of dishwashing liquid one month, then come back the next for a bag of lentils, then the month after that notice I’d started stocking a new rice and pick that up too. That’s how it built. One person, one product, one return visit at a time. Nobody handed me momentum — I had to earn it, incrementally, over a long stretch of time.

The beginning was not what I imagined

I launched from Little River first, at the farmers market, then Birdling Flat one day a week. A cabin, a trailer, showing up and setting up and packing down. It was scrappy and physical and I loved it, even when it was hard. But it was also deeply inconsistent for customers, and building a reliable business on a travelling setup is harder than it sounds.

So I moved the cabin to Akaroa. Which sounds like a clean decision, but the reality was messier: I was still trying to serve Little River from home at the same time, still doing markets, still saying yes to everything and everyone because I was terrified of losing any thread of momentum I’d built. For a long stretch I was running in every direction at once, by myself, and calling it a business strategy. It wasn’t. It was survival mode dressed up as ambition.

It’s only in the past eighteen months that I’ve finally settled — properly settled — into Akaroa as the sole focus. A more permanent location, a steadier rhythm, customers who know where to find me. It took a long time to get here, and I won’t pretend the path was elegant.

What I’d do differently:

1. Start with some money

The crowdfunding taught me something useful and painful in equal measure. Useful: the idea had real support. Painful: without the capital, the first few years of growth were agonisingly slow.

I started Nomad with essentially nothing behind me financially. Every decision made under pressure. Every setback taking longer to absorb than it should have. There were seasons where I couldn’t stock something I knew would sell because I couldn’t afford the inventory. Opportunities that passed because I had no buffer to take a risk. If I were doing it again, I would find a way — any way — to start with more behind me. Even a modest amount of capital changes the game entirely.

2. Stay in my lane sooner

The other thing I’d tell my earlier self: pick your place and your people, and serve them properly, before you try to be everywhere at once.

The years of markets and mobile setups and trying to keep Little River going while building Akaroa — I understand why I did it, and I don’t regret all of it. But I spread myself across too many things for too long, and everything suffered a little as a result. The focus I have now, the steadiness of the past eighteen months — that’s what I wish I’d found two years earlier. Doing less, better, sooner. That’s the lesson.

Why it was worth it anyway

Here’s the thing: the hard way teaches you things the easy way doesn’t. The slow growth meant I understood every part of this business before I scaled anything. The failed crowdfunding meant the people who eventually became my customers chose Nomad on its own merits, not because of a launch campaign. The years of showing up in different places meant I really understood what our community needed — not just what I assumed it did.

Nomad exists because Akaroa needed it. It grew because our community wanted it. And a handful of people who backed a crowdfunding campaign that never paid out deserve a lot of credit for the fact that it exists at all.

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