Supermarket superman Craig Grant
What does it take to create Christchurch’s most aesthetic (and award-winning) supermarket? Award-winning businessman Craig Grant of FreschChoice Merivale reveals the stories of success he’s always been too humble to tell with Metropol editor Nina Tucker.
FreshChoice Merivale is the first-class plane flight equivalent to grocery shopping. Each piece of fruit and vegetable is stacked individually, carefully and colour-coordinated inside wicker baskets. Product labels face forward on the shelf in perfect categories. Blocks of Himalayan salt dry-age steaks, setting a striking backdrop behind the butchery, and the delicatessen starts up at midnight to make everything from scratch for the day to come. Craig Grant’s supermarket in the heart of Merivale Mall makes one of life’s most mundane tasks feel like luxury. (It’s also one of the only places I can trust to find British Vogue, otherwise impossible to track down in Christchurch.)
In June, he won FreshChoice Large Store of the Year for the third consecutive year, along with Meat, Produce, and Deli Department of the Year titles, respectively. His premium butchery, Butterfly & Scotch, took home its third title in the 2026 NZ Bacon & Ham awards. So how did a young schoolboy pushing trolleys in Westport become one of New Zealand’s biggest names on the supermarket scene?
Resilience and a refit
In September 2010, Craig stood in the liquor aisle in gumboots surrounded by thousands of dollars worth of smashed wine bottles. “If you’ve ever cleaned up a supermarket after an earthquake, it’s not much fun,” he reflects. Craig stood there again that year after December’s Boxing Day quake, and in February, July and twice in December of 2011. “Every one of them took almost everything off our shelves,” he says.
Before long, Merivale Mall engineers ruled it wasn’t safe inside. Craig’s team was given 20 minutes to clear and close for a three-day pause. It ended up being two months. “We had 120 staff, and I’m proud to say we paid every one of them in some shape or form during that. We had no insurance, the insurance company didn’t pay out. It was a tough time,” Craig says. “As far as resilience, you learn it pretty quickly when you’re faced with something like that.”
Craig spent the next seven years with his head down – not with despair, but determination. He had his sights set on a store refit to align the space with the premium standard maintained everywhere else inside. “Seven years is a long time when things are broken and you’re trying to keep it tidy. I don’t know that anybody has a life hack for it, you just dig in,” Craig explains.
“When we got the opportunity [to refit] in 2018, I’d had a lot of time to think about it.” Craig had cleverly spent spare time travelling, bringing home inspiration that he would rescale to suit Christchurch’s market.
The result is what you see when you visit today: an innovative, anti-cookie-cutter and visually-pleasing grocery offering, quality food, and a smiling team proud to work in a supermarket humming almost 24 hours a day. “And that’s not just because you’re turning up,”
Craig assures me. “That’s what it looks like every day of the week.”
Craig’s supermarket fronts community initiatives and funds, supports local schools, and covers all catering for the Crusaders and Canterbury rugby teams (who eat a lot of bananas, he says). Though Craig’s not the frontman, he likes where he sits in the background.
“I champion all the store managers to be what they are within the community. Anybody that reads this article will say they only see me in the wine department,” he laughs. (The first half of Craig’s day is all about alcohol; he manages the wine procurement.) His 40 years in the industry taught him something invaluable: always put your team first.
Climbing the supermarket ladder
Four decades ago on the West Coast, Craig worked after school pushing trolleys at the local SuperValue. At 18-years-old, he moved to Christchurch and picked up a job at the Ilam branch (now Fendalton FreshChoice) and stayed there until he was the manager. When SuperValue opened a store in Avonhead, Craig was selected as store manager until taking a management role in Moorhouse Avenue’s PAK’nSAVE three years later.
In 1995, he returned to the Avonhead area to open its first FreshChoice, and in 1999 Craig came to Merivale’s FreshChoice with shareholdings in the business. By 2005, Craig was the sole owner. More than 20 years later with multiple awards and such low staff turnaround that even 10 years in the team still makes you a ‘newbie’ (his longest-serving member just hit 42 years,) Craig’s experience in the supermarket game qualifies him to make the following statement: “I’ve claimed New Zealand’s most awarded supermarket, I’ve decided.
“All of those things lead to me being able to put this store in this location and get the recognition. The biggest recognition is for the staff. You can see how proud they are when they win something. The awards solidify what we’ve been through.”
What’s the criteria for winning? “Not sure, they don’t tell us,” he laughs. Random inspections, store visits… “I don’t tell them if management is turning up. That’s the confidence I have in how we run this store. We run what I believe is one of the best supermarket teams in New Zealand,” he says.
