There’s a new player in the budget culinary scene in Dunedin: South D Warehouse. The store is the second Warehouse location in Aotearoa to start selling frozen meals after they successfully popped off in Manukau.
The meals are “family-sized” (or a single serve for a drunk feed after town), coming in at a generous 1.2-1.5kg. The Warehouse’s trial has three core meals to choose from: bacon macaroni and cheese, beef lasagne, or beef cottage pie. Sorry vegans and vegos, the Ware-Whare hasn’t chosen to save you from the cost of living crisis.
The goods will retail at $20, which is probably more expensive than cooking it yourself but still a lot cheaper than a fatty lane mish. This new initiative comes after the Warehouse expressed a desire to move into the grocery scene, a move that some commentators have suggested may nullify some of the power wielded by the supermarket duopoly.
Armed with only this largely vague information, Critic Te Ārohi decided the only way to see if they were worth it was to review it (please help me my editor won’t stop making me review things). Arriving on a quiet Tuesday morning in a munchie-mish, every single meal was sold out. Well, fuck.
To get to the bottom of who the hell is eating these Warehouse meals, Critic Te Ārohi took to the streets of North D. Nobody interviewed had tried the meals, let alone heard about them. Hannah, a second-year law student, said very poetically, “It was marginal when they started selling fruit, which I am a little dubious about […] Maybe there’s an untapped market that The Warehouse is trying to break into, but you can’t be a ‘jack of all trades’, as it makes you a master of none.”
She added that “there would be nothing more embarrassing than getting food poisoning, or worse, half a rat (RIP Ratdown) in a frozen Salisbury Steak dinner knockoff from the red bargain shack. I'll save my dignity and my stomach lining and stick to cooking my own food to avoid salmonella and shameful looks from my flatmates.” Damn girl, say what you really think.
The jury is obviously out on whether the students of North D have put their trust in The Warehouse’s bargain feeds. Considering the diet and lifestyle of us students, there may be more PR work needed before they are seen as the fine-dining hub they are dreaming of. Maybe if they commissioned us for a review?