Dave Letele

Actually right by where the Butterbean place used to be.

But there used to be a fish and chip shop called Paekatei.

And I remember crossing the road and my nan walked down into the highway and stopped the car, almost as if the car shouldn't have been there and we had right of access to get across the road.

And so that's the kind of lady I knew.

And so seeing her now a victim of the system was heartbreaking for me.

And so No Mara for Me was born out of a promise.

And each of our founders have promises to make to people that we care about that will change the sector so that it performs better and doesn't forget people that we care about.

And so that's kind of where, and then we had molten then COVID hit and we, we started finding out more families like my grandmother experiencing what the industry called us energy hardship.

I'd never heard that term until I was in the sector.

And so what happened after COVID?

Yeah, we ask the family.

So we have a pay it forward consumer model.

The only thing we can control at the moment as we're growing and in this particular stage of our business is how we shift our profits.

It's the only thing we can control.

Can't control the other parts of the sector yet.

And so we designed a model which allows our customers to pay their bill with us and then direct a portion of the profit from their bill direct into a charity that the charity can use to basically supplement everything that they're doing within their organisation.

And so it really just becomes a cost on our end, or a percentage of the profit just gets put into charity.

the bank account of the charities that our families want to support.

And so we really will say we're going to support this charity or this kaupapa or this school.

Generally families, our whānau will come towards us and they'll say things like, it would be really cool to get behind Dave and BBM.