Barrett's Store

Guest article by Max Avery

Barrett’s Store Omokoroa, post-1954
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 06-063

The death of Mrs Freda Elsie Barrett on June 5, 2022  prompted a look back at her family’s link with one of the Tauranga districts best remembered groceries - Barrett’s Store at Whakamarama, once the only commercial enterprise on the highway between Bethlehem and Katikati. The store existed under the Barrett name from 1949 to 1966, and although it was first known as the Omokoroa Store, and carried the names of previous and subsequent owners, most older Tauranga residents remember it as Barrett’s Store. The enterprise had the distinction of two locations, and in its second form became ostensibly the first self-help checkout supermarket with trolleys in New Zealand. Grocery executives from several parts of New Zealand were said to have flown into local top dressing strips to see this American-style innovation in operation.

The original Omokoroa Store, cnr Old Highway/Te Puna Point Rd, western view
Private family collection

The store was first built on the corner of the old Tauranga-Katikati highway and Te Puna Point Road (later becoming Station Rd, Omokoroa Station Rd and finally Barrett Rd and, on the northern side of SH2, Plummer’s Point Rd.) The business was opposite the Tawhitinui Marae and was probably initiated by Ken and Nancy Gordon in 1926. The little motor transport that existed in those years turned off the highway onto Te Puna Point Road as the only way to reach Omokoroa Beach (also known as Crapp’s Point), passing in a cloud of dust in the summer, with mud clogged wheels in the winter. Otherwise only the clip-clop of horses' hooves and the grinding of waggon wheels on the metalled surface disturbed the bucolic peace of what was then known as the Omokoroa Store.

Installation of Plume benzine pumps at Barrett's Store, southern wall
Private family collection

Jack Borrows is said to have bought the store, which included a small living area for the grocer, about 1930. The building was rather oddly sited, close and corner-wise to the road, making it awkward to extend, which is what Mr Borrows was doing when he sold it to Jack and Edna Ewart late in 1939, for Mrs Ewart later described it as “a little and almost new junction store.” The population in the district was by then expanding, and with the store too small to meet the demands made upon it, more extensions began. Later in their tenure a van delivery service, each day to a different area in the Omokoroa-Whakamarama area, was introduced and Plume brand petrol pumps were installed.

Barrett's Store and accomodation, c1940s, northern aspect
Private family collection

When Matthew John (usually known as Jack) and Doris Barrett bought the store on 1 May 1949 it was more associated with Whakamarama than Omokoroa. They arrived from Buckland (between Pukekohe and Tuakau). With three sons, George, Graham and John, and daughter Joan. All helped make Barrett’s Store the service-centre and landmark it became during the next seventeen years. The need for fresh meat was seen early by Jack Barrett, a butcher by trade. Assisted by Graham (Freda Barrett’s husband) he built a butchery adjacent to the store, and Graham became store butcher. George ran the store, until he moved to Auckland in 1957, when John joined the business and took over. Joan distinguished herself by becoming office manager, mastering the cash register-cum-electronic scales at the checkout in the supermarket.

Two houses were built adjacent to the first store on the corner of Te Puna Point Road for George and Graham with help from David Borrell and his sons Billy and Cotty. Early in 1952 Jack (d. 1969) and Doris (d. 1963) moved to a house on the Omokoroa Beach front. At about the same time construction of a new section of State Highway Two from the Te Puna Stream Bridge to Pahoia began. Realising they would be bypassed by the new highway traffic, the Barretts purchased land on the corner of the Te Puna Point Road and the new highway and began the construction of the new supermarket, which incorporated a butchery, hardware, drapery and Mobilgas petrol pumps. Store and highway opened at about the same time,  c. 1953-54. The 470-metre section of the Te Puna Point Road which linked the two highways was renamed Barrett Rd. Enlarged and modernised, the original store building is today residential.

Interior of Barrett's store, Omokoroa, post-1954
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 06-064

For about a decade the name “Barrett” on the shopfront identified the new enterprise, with family continuing the same service to the district, selling a wide range of foodstuffs, household and farming supplies, and then delivering it throughout the area. In October 1966 they sold the retail business, and since then other names have proclaimed its operators. In the early 1990s the Barrett family sold the building, ending a commercial link of more than four decades with the Omokoroa-Whakamarama district.