Homeland uses their empty cooking school to create a new retail range

With an empty kitchen and foodies locked inside their homes, a cooking programme is a little outside the realm of possibilities for now. However, that hasn’t stopped Peter Gordon’s Homeland from providing delicious food to hungry Aucklanders. The cooking school is getting creative with their new venture, bringing something different to the table. 

Homeland is making the most of the current situation by pivoting, transforming their empty cooking into a retail operation. The artisan retail range encompasses beautiful jars, packets and bottles packed with unique flavours, delivered direct to your doorstep. 

“It’s something we’ve always intended to do,” says Gordon, who launched the new Auckland-based Food Embassy with his partner Alastair Carruthers in November last year.  “This lockdown’s silver lining provides the time and space for our team to develop this range properly, over Zoom and now in person. We have had to suspend the cooking school temporarily. Under level three, the school is now our retail food production studio and it’s great fun working there together.”  

There are ten mouth-watering products in phase 1. Feast your eyes ahead on what you can expect to find...

• A smooth Banana Coconut Miso Caramel Sauce
• A zesty Lemon Yuzu Curd
• Kawakawa Pesto - pesto pasta anyone?
• Spiced Cheese Straws - think cheese-scone flavoured bread sticks! A must try!
• Head Chef Naga’s famous Gun Powder - the perfect addition to sprinkle on salads
• Peter’s Sweet Chilli Sambal - a signature dish from his first The Sugar Club cookbook with grilled scallops, personally brewed for your dining pleasure. 
• Spiced Nuts and Seeds - the perfect guilt-free snack 
• Southern Dukkah - the ultimate addition to the perfect cheese platter
• Our personal fav, the assorted and crunchy Granola
• Vanilla Lemon Rosemary Shortbread - need we say more?

Once there is a change in alert levels, this unmissable range will be stocked in fridges and on shelves of Homeland’s retail space and available to fill your baskets with. Until then, customers can purchase these tasty treats as part of a current click + collect service, along with baking packs and meals - perfect for those lockdown dinner dates, and picnics with friends.

And what’s better? There is more to come! “We are going to add more to the retail line and keep some of our ‘heat at home’ range available even after we reopen properly,” says Alastair. “We have also applied for an off license so we can sell matching wine. We’ve learned locals want to have the odd meal they didn’t cook regardless of the alert level settings.” 

With phase one looking more scrumptious than ever, phase two is sure to be an absolute hit. Try out some of these delicious delectables from Homeland now before we eat them all ourselves.

Order Homeland's delicious new retail range here