Marama Moore and James Ionatona Su'a were at a work rugby game when they first locked eyes.
Now the Taranaki couple have built a young family and a Pacific-inspired food business Island Style Kitchen.
In the early days, to test out the quality of their food, Marama and James got feedback from their many Pacific colleagues at Tegal Foods.
"Sometimes cooking for our own people is the most difficult because they're the most critical, but what better advice to get than from your own people?" she tells Kathryn Ryan.
Owners of Island Style Kitchen James Ionatona Su'a and Marama Moore. Photo: Supplied
James, who says he's always been passionate about cooking, learnt a lot about it from his uncle while growing up in Samoa.
"We didn't have much, you know, and Mum can just whip something up for eight of us ... Seeing my uncle working as a chef, that's where I started looking at like 'If he can do that possibly can do it as well'. So I started following his footsteps and taking advice and stuff from him."
The first time he and Marama took a food truck to Waitara Night Markets - "just to test the waters" - they didn't know quite what to make or how much, Marama says.
"There were quite a lot of people there and we sold out within half an hour.
"The boys were giving Island portions of course, so the community was getting a pretty decent deal for the price they were paying because we had no idea about that stuff, either.
"To get the positive feedback from people, it was a good indication for us."
With both of them still working full-time at Tegal and young kids to raise, at first, the food truck idea took a backseat to the rest of life, Marama says.
"Trying to do both at that time was pretty hard, especially because our little ones were still very little."
In 2021, though, she and James started purchasing food preparation equipment and decided to give the business a real go.
"We were starting to get to that point of 'if we're not gonna do it, now, we will never do it.
"We also approached our iwi Ngāti Awa … and they helped us purchase the food truck."
James and Marama still use the food truck for catering events and selling their wares at the place where it all began - the Waitara Night Markets.
With young kids to feed, it was "very scary" to take the leap and leave their jobs at Tegal, she says, but last year the couple did that and opened a food shop in the town of Bell Block.
"The shop has been really good because it's in a prime spot on the main road so we do have a lot of workers come through during lunchtime. It's really good having that constant space where people know where we are. We have a lot of customers that travel from Hawera, Patia, and Stratford.
"We do have a couple of guys that are from Palmy so we must be doing something right if people want to drive that far just for a kai."
Dishes from the Taranaki food business Island Style Kitchen Photo: Supplied
Dishes from the Taranaki food business Island Style Kitchen Photo: Supplied
Dishes from the Taranaki food business Island Style Kitchen Photo: Supplied
