Now allied with Foodstuffs, the store is part of the nationwide Four Square birthday bash this month to mark the brand's 100th year of serving local communities.
Hawarden is one of four Four Squares in the North Canterbury area with Culverden, Hanmer Springs and Cheviot.
Its owners Dan and Wendy Hodgen are proud to continue providing grocery services to their small rural community.
The couple bought the business in 2007 as an investment, expecting to move on after five years.
‘‘But we’re still here today, 17 years later, which has gone by very quickly,’’ says Wendy.
They and their two young children moved back to Dan’s hometown of Hawarden after working in Christchurch.
Wendy, originally from Masterton, had been working for Rabobank, while Dan was in the insurance industry.
‘‘We saw the opportunity come up to buy the lease on the store so we took it.’’
Now Wendy runs the Four Square, while Dan works on the nearby family farm in partnership with his family.
‘‘The people here in the Hurunui are lovely, they keep us going,’’ says Wendy.
‘‘To us they are like our extended family, all are very loyal and we all work together in our small rural community looking out for each other.
‘‘We’ve been through a lot since we came here with three earthquakes, Covid and some tough years.
‘‘But I’m still amazed at the generosity of the locals here.
‘‘At times it’s been very humbling, like when Covid stopped everything, we had former staff members call us up offering to come down and help out if our staff were sick.’’
The couple bought the lease off John and Dorothy Andrell who had run the store for the 15 years prior.
Kevin and Annette Thom had leased it in 1989 and rebranded it as a Four Square store, four years before the Andrells took it on.
Before the Thoms, Eric Wood changed the shop from an original Farmers Cooperative store to an A1 grocery, whiteware and haberdashery in 1984.
Eric’s son Brian later bought the store from his father in the mid-1990s and still owns the land and building today.
Brian says his father Eric had migrated his family from Christchurch to Hawarden in 1974.
‘‘He was transferred from his role as the menswear manager at the Riccarton branch of Farmers, to become the manager of the Hawarden store.
‘‘He managed the store until he bought it outright in 1984.’’
Brian says his father loved motoring around the Hurunui district selling whiteware and all the bits and bobs families need.
The Hawarden Farmers Cooperative store was opened in 1902, and it quickly became the main supplier of goods in the area as well as a major employer for people in the township.
It had a grocery department, hardware, drapery, shoe repair and counter staff worked off lists provided by customers.
Staff would select all the produce and materials, then bring them back for the customers.
They even had a Santa Claus cave at Christmas with a resident Santa in attendance.
Four Square’s roots stretch back to July 4, 1924, when a square was drawn around the number ‘4’ in the calendar by local grocer and Four Square founder, J Heaton Barker, of Auckland, to remember a date for a co-op meeting.
He liked the design and selected it as the name he would give to the co-operative buying group of local grocers.
Barker’s co-operative made history by opening New Zealand’s first-ever self-service supermarket in 1948 in Onehunga, Auckland.
It soon became the norm, changing the way Kiwis shopped by allowing them to choose their own groceries, rather than relying on a clerk to collect them off the shelves.
