17/09/2026
❤️A little note to our Hokitika community ❤️
There’s been a lot of noise and confusion lately around grocery prices and the future of New Zealand’s grocery sector, so we wanted to share a little bit from us, your local Four Square owners.
Every day, our team works hard to look after this community. We know our customers by name, we know how important it is to have a well-stocked local store, and we’re proud to be part of the Hokitika community.
We focus on what we can control: keeping our shelves full, our store clean and welcoming, looking after our team, keeping our prices as competitive as we possibly can, and supporting the community that supports us.
Foodstuffs has been a New Zealand co-operative for more than 100 years. The idea behind a co-op is pretty simple: locally owned stores work together, sharing buying power, supply chains, systems and support - and importantly, sharing those costs.
From where we sit as local grocery owners, we struggle to see how breaking that scale apart would make groceries cheaper. Our concern is that it could instead create more costs throughout the system.
If the costs we currently share across New World, Pak’n Save and Four Square have to be duplicated, somebody has to pay for them. And ultimately, increased costs put more pressure on grocery prices and on small, family-owned stores like ours.
We absolutely support the goal of making groceries more affordable for New Zealand families.
We just think it’s important that everyone asks one simple question:
How does adding more cost to the system make groceries cheaper?
In the meantime, we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done.
We’ll turn up
We’ll work hard
We’ll keep the shelves full
We’ll look after our team
We’ll support local
And we’ll keep doing everything within our control to give the very best store we can.
Thank you for supporting our family, our team and your locally owned Four Square. ❤️
From all of us at Four Square Stafford Street
Thank you for shopping local and supporting our community. ❤️
