With the cost of living increasing, the novelty of free food has become even harder to come by.
Food banks all around Christchurch have felt the impact of the crisis and are trying their best to continue working hard.
Kairos Food Rescue, a distribution hub for food banks, has seen the change in not only the food they give, but the food they get as well.
"Over the past year we have been rescuing around three tonnes of food a day, and that has recently gone up to closer to four tonnes of food," said Kairos community and volunteer lead Finn Henderson.
Christchurch City Mission has seen an increase in demand; however they cannot provide more than they currently are.
"We have a set maximum amount of food parcels we can provide each day and that is 88. We provide 55 through our self-serve operation and 33 through our pre-packed operation and we are maxed out." says Christchurch city missioner, Corinne Haines.
In the past month the price of diesel has gone up 85%, and the price of petrol has risen by 35% in New Zealand. This has created a series of problems for the whole country.
Food banks often use vehicles to transport food to and from their hubs to those in need. Due to the non-profit aspect of food banks, this has become increasingly harder to fund.
"It's been pretty difficult for us, a few of our trucks are diesel powered... it's having a big impact on our organization, of course we are non-profit, so we need to find funding and grants to be able to power our vehicles," says Finn.
"It's a major link in being able to provide food to people in need around the city, so if vehicles aren't able to get to Kairos to pick up from us, that cuts off that chain to those people in the city."
With the cost of living going up, people are buying less at supermarkets. This means Kairos is seeing an increase in the food they are taking on, as people cannot afford to buy it before it goes off.
Due to being a non-profit organization, Kairos is maxing out their supplies keeping up with this demand.
"It costs close to $900,000 a year for us to keep our operation running, that's a lot of money."
"We run a community hub every Friday afternoon which is where we provide food to individuals around the city. Over the past few weeks we have definitely noticed an uptake in need, last week we had over 90 people come along, and the Friday before that we had 115 people which is a major increase in the number of attendees... I think that is quite reflective of the current state of the crisis that we are facing."
Corrine says their food parcels feed everyone from families to elderly pensioners.
"We are seeing a big shift in the increasing number of working people needing help from us – especially families earning a little too much to get government support but not enough to cover their own costs."
