Work life before Angel Food

January 13

By Alice Shopland, founder of Angel Food

I’m marking Veganuary 2025 by publishing a blog post a day.

At the age of 12, I had a Saturday job cycling around the suburb of Māngere, collecting cash payments from subscribers to the NZ Herald newspaper. It seems a bit mind-boggling now, especially given how protective Dad was.

In my early teens, I had my first retail experience, working at the local dairy (that’s a convenience store for you non-Kiwis). I rolled ice creams, made milkshakes, drank hideous instant coffee and learned which customer smoked which brand of cigarettes. The dairy was owned by a couple in an unhappy relationship. The wife didn’t work at the dairy very often. I later learned the husband was renowned for his lechery towards their young female employees. I believe it, although the closest he came to lechery with me was showing me photos of naked men and asking if I thought they were exceptionally endowed. I thought they probably were, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of saying so. I’d like to say I reported him, but I didn’t tell anyone. I wonder if he ever got his comeuppance.

I had no idea what career I wanted. I had done well at school, especially in arts subjects, so it was expected that I would attend university. I wasn’t super-motivated but in the absence of an alternative plan, I did a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Auckland in French, Italian and art history. Tertiary education wasn’t as expensive back then as it is now, otherwise I might have made a different decision. But I have no regrets about university – I needed some growing-up time and I’m grateful for the progressive ideas and people that university brought into my life.

While at university I had numerous part-time and holiday jobs. I did secretarial work at two construction companies, worked on the production line at a chocolate factory and a factory making aircon units, waitressed in a steak house (not for long: I wasn’t sufficiently knowledgeable about the different types of steaks) and a pizzeria (where we were instructed to lie and say that the fresh fruit salad was in fresh fruit juice rather than the cheap concentrate we actually added).

I drove around in my rusty red Fiat Bambina collecting instalment payments in cash from people who had debts to some sort of credit card company at astronomical interest rates. I also baked cookies and slices and packaged them up in clingfilm for Dad to sell on my behalf to the guys working in the neighbouring factories and workshops. Looking back, and thinking how reserved he was, I now wonder if he just bought them all himself.

After graduating from a year-long course in journalism at the Auckland University of Technology I became a freelance writer. I wrote about panel beating, food, music, interior design, the arts and travel. I loved the variety of the work and the freedom to set my timetable around being a parent. With a pay rate of 25 or 30 cents per word, it was hard to earn enough to live on, but I stuck with it for more than 15 years.

For one writing job I participated in a cheese-tasting session organised by the Food Writers New Zealand group (this was long before I was vegan. In front of each of us was a large white dinner plate with more than 20 unnamed small samples of different cheeses. We were instructed to start at 12 o’clock – i.e. the sample furthest away from us – and proceed clockwise, discussing each sample with the group at our table. None of the esteemed attendees picked that one of the samples was processed cheese, and when that was announced there was an awkward silence followed by awkward laughter. That tasting was organised by Juliet Harbutt, a New Zealander who is recognised as a world expert on cheese. She told us a story about rushing from work at her London fromagerie to an important lunch date. She hurriedly applied her makeup in the taxi, only to realise once she’d arrived at the fancy restaurant that her fingers still smelled of the strong cheeses she had been arranging in the shop counter and she’d unwittingly daubed that aroma all over her face.

Some of the freelance writing work was tedious and repetitive but mostly it was interesting and fun. I did two regular columns for NZ House & Garden magazine: one on antiques and collectibles, and one on art exhibitions and events. I took my son Nico (then aged about 12) and a couple of friends on a kayaking trip down the Whanganui River for an NZ Life & Leisure story. I also took Nico on an East Cape adventure in a 4WD vehicle I was writing an advertorial about. The photographer wanted a particular shot of the vehicle splashing through a stream on a beach; we had to repeat it numerous times to get the right shot and I was surprised how much I enjoyed this petrol-head activity.

When Mackenzie was a baby I took him along on a trip for Reader’s Digest to the South Island; while we were in an ancient beech forest near Te Anau I needed to pee, so put him in his backpack down on the springy moss-covered forest floor. While I was squatting next to a tree with my pants around my ankles, he managed to stretch a foot down to the ground and tipped himself over on his side. At least it was a soft landing on the moss.

By 2004 when I became vegan, I was reassessing everything in my life, including work, and looking for a new challenge. Part of my strength as a freelance writer was my ability to write about almost any subject (except sports or politics). With my vegan worldview, I no longer wanted to write about the joys of feather duvets or the most effective ways for supermarkets to display chunks of meat. I kept writing but increasingly I was more interested in being an activist.

For a while I was very involved in very safe forms of vegan activism: collecting signatures on petitions and participating in polite protests. Meanwhile, more out-there activist friends were being arrested for minor property offences (such as spreading straw in the head office of a fast-food corporation to make a point about the living conditions of the animals), discovering tracking devices attached to their vehicles, and learning that the partner they’d met through activism was a police spy.

Seasoned activists were understandably suspicious of new people: at a meeting to establish a new animal rights group in Auckland two newbies turned up and upon questioning admitted they were police officers who’d been told to find out about this new group. There was a lot of idealism among activists, and it wasn’t always tempered with patience and compassion for each other. There was frustration about the ponderous pace of progress. Tempers frayed, activists fell out with each other, groups formed and imploded, and new groups formed. As an introvert, I couldn’t handle the complex personal politics, so I decided to focus my activism energy on food.