'The Bowling Club Dunedin' visits the College

The Bowling Club Dunedin is a fantastic local business, and took some time out of their week to stop in at McGlashan to speak with the students taking Commerce in Year 11. Their business runs an affordable 'restaurant-esque' food service in Caversham, The appeal of the business lies in the price of the product and the community focus. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and (soon) Fridays, you can head along to The Bowling Club and grab a healthy, restaurant-quality meal for $5. On top of this, The Bowling Club want everyone to eat, offering free food for anyone who is struggling and needs a meal. Customers can donate to the cause, covering the cost of someone else's meal or more. Supplying between 900-1300 meals a night, The Bowling club is quickly becoming a Dunedin staple, and a business the students can learn from.

Year 11 student Maxwell Reid gave the following details on the visit:

Recently we learned about Jackie and Liam, who run a restaurant in Caversham, focused on making food accessible to the people who need it. Jackie talked about how their inspirations were places where you could find healthy, high-quality food easily and cheaply.

The visit from Jackie was really insightful for us. We learned all of the intricacies of running a business, with a special focus on how the decisions you make as a business owner pivot around your business values. In The Bowling Club’s case, these are a sense of community, hospitality and accessibility.

These values are The Bowling Club's pūtake (the origin of something, or it's purpose) we’re learning in Commerce. They also showed some of the values we have been learning about like manaakitanga (the action of providing hospitality or care), an example being customer or worker satisfaction, kaitiakitanga (the action of stewardship and protection of natural resources,) in this case the business’ responsibility to sustainably use resources, kotahitanga (the idea of collaboration and unity) in the sense that a business should try to collaborate with workers, customers and others to achieve a goal, including suppliers of food for a restaurant for example. The final value is whanaungatanga which is the idea that a business owner should build strong relationships with everyone involved in a business, even going as far as the surrounding community and the contractors.

Overall, we found the visit from Jackie truly helpful in our studies, as we now have a role model example of a business with clear values, and choices they make based on their values. Jackie gave us a look at how they started as a food truck, expanded to need a permanent location, and have kept growing from there. We learned about how they made all of their food in large batches, so then food could be cheaper, and how when they set their business up in Caversham, they connected with the community there and grew their business by communicating with the people there, including paying all their staff the Living Wage and offering free meals to those in need. I personally found learning about this business an amazing opportunity to learn more about starting a business.

Brief: Dominic Schumacher

Main Article: Maxwell Reid