It’s our birthday, and that is a reminder to stop and reflect.
When you're down in the weeds in life or a business, you don't always see, day to day, how far you've come. You're focused on what needs to be fixed, what needs to get done, and what hasn't happened yet. It can be very frustrating and completely exhausting. Or at least that is how it is for me.
But small steps can lead to big changes.
When I was a kid, the woman who raised me, Khen (my mother in my heart) had a saying: “Penny by Penny.”
That's how she saved and moved forward, in steady, incremental steps. She achieved incredible things, buying a house on Martha's Vineyard and starting a very successful food business, Khen Tran's Eggrolls on Martha's Vineyard, which is still going today, even though she passed away nine years ago.
Looking back on this year, Secret Kiwi Kitchen has been taking lots of little steps. And with your help, we've accomplished some milestones that make us smile.
Secret Kiwi Kitchen is now in America. 🇺🇸
Last year, I wrote that we had officially incorporated in the USA.
Today, I can say something that still feels a little surreal:
We are now shipping Secret Kiwi Kitchen products from America.
Just last week, we opened our first warehouse in California. We've been selling our edible flowers in the USA for a while, mostly shipping them from New Zealand. But now, for the first time, our full product range is sitting together in a warehouse in California, ready to ship to customers across the country.
For a little New Zealand company that started at my kitchen table during lockdown, this feels pretty huge.
Edible flowers, shipped from our California warehouse last week, arrived at their American home.
We won a KeHE TrendFinder Golden Ticket
If you don't know KeHE, they are one of North America's major natural, specialty, and fresh-food distributors, supplying thousands of retail locations across the USA. TrendFinder is their program for discovering emerging food brands with promise, and the Golden Ticket is an invitation to move forward in the process of getting your products in front of their retail network.
For us, this was a very big little win. It was also one of those moments where I thought, Wait. Are we really doing this? USA, here we come!
Six new products since our last birthday
We’ve launched six new products since our last birthday: our Gingerbread Crunch Slice Mix, Buttermilk Scone Mix, and four new spice blends: Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and Sedona.
The Gingerbread Crunch Slice has completely caught us off guard. It has become one of our top sellers and has done so well that Woolworths is rolling it out across almost all of its stores, alongside our Brownie and Blondie mixes. The rollout has taken a little longer than expected, but we're hoping to see it on shelves by the end of this month.
Our Scone Mix has also been doing beautifully and has quickly become a customer favourite.
The spice range is particularly personal to me. The Vietnamese blend is inspired by Khen, the woman who raised me, so that one carries a particularly big piece of my heart.
The Thai blend comes from my years of studying, cooking and traveling through Thailand. I co-authored Real Thai Food with Chawadee Nualkhair and have just completed Thai Food Stories, due to be released internationally by Tuttle press in June 2027.
The Korean blend reflects my love of Korean food and my desire to bring more Asian flavours into our range. And Sedona, our Mexican-Southwest blend, was created by my husband Noah, drawing on the influence of his Mexican Uncle Rodolfo.
In a funny way, these four spice blends are a little map of the people, places and flavours that have influenced us.
A number that surprised us
One of our major stockists told us our growth was up 44% this year.
That number genuinely shocked me. Because when you're in the weeds every day, you see the problems. You don't always see the progress.
But apparently, while we were busy getting on with it, the business was moving forward.
We’ve been rebuilding the website
Behind the scenes, we’ve been working hard on a completely updated website for our USA launch.
It’s already getting lovely feedback, particularly around the recipes, cooking tips, and easier access to ingredients, nutrition, and directions.
And we're not finished yet. We have lots more recipes and tips coming.
We’re continuing to giving back
One thing that matters to me, whatever happens with this business, is giving back along the way.
Our customers have supported us through so much: the pandemic, supply-chain chaos, rising ingredient and freight costs, inflation, and all the challenges that come with growing a small food business.
So when we can, we give something back.
This year we've supported organisations including the Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, Good Bitches Baking, The Cake Detective, SPCA New Zealand, and Trees That Count, as well as local kids' sports teams and numerous fundraisers.
We've donated products for fundraisers, helped with raffles and events, brought celebration cakes to children who might otherwise have missed out, and planted trees along the way.
Just this week, to celebrate the launch of Secret Kiwi Kitchen in the USA, we made two small donations there to causes that matter to people we love: Brain Injury Recovery Foundation and Swim Across the Sound, which raises money to help cancer patients and their families.
THANK YOU
To everyone who has bought our products, recommended us to a friend, shared a recipe, liked a social post, sent us a photo, stocked our products, or simply said, “I love what you're doing.”
You have made the wins possible.
Here's to the next little win. Yours and ours.
And to seeing where all those little wins take us.
Lulu 💛
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About Secret Kiwi Kitchen
Secret Kiwi Kitchen is an award-winning New Zealand food company founded by Lauren Lulu Taylor, an American-born entrepreneur who discovered a passion for New Zealand's exceptional ingredients after making New Zealand her home. Inspired by the country's world-class dairy, non-GMO wheat, and clean pantry staples, Lulu created Secret Kiwi Kitchen to showcase the very best of New Zealand through beautifully crafted baking mixes, edible flowers, spice blends, and pantry favourites.
Today, Secret Kiwi Kitchen products are sold throughout New Zealand and are now available across the United States through the company's California warehouse. Known for premium ingredients, award-winning recipes, and botanical packaging inspired by the work of New Zealand women botanical artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Secret Kiwi Kitchen is on a mission to bring a little piece of New Zealand to kitchens around the world.