ABOUT US
No matter the gig, be it corporate, casual or a wedding, we provide top quality food and service.
In the summer of 2020, Brad Bakker – former owner/operator of Hazel Hayes and Mr Milton’s Canteen – arrived as the Catering Manager at Waikato Diocean School. During the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, Brad visualised taking Dio catering to a new level while generating additional income to support the teaching and learning at the school. Bringing on extra talent and with the financial support of the Dio Parents Association, Brad’s catering vision came to life.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE...
A fiercely loyal group of followers are on board with Mr Goodfellow, and Brad and his team continue to find new fans while taking the Mr Goodfellow Food Truck to local breweries, weddings, parties, and corporate events.
Catering private events has become a crucial part of MGF’s success, and weekends are filled with road trips to serve weddings and corporate events in fantastic destinations all over the Waikato, and beyond.
Alongside the Food truck experience, Mr Goodfellow offers corporate catering, an online ordering, pickup & delivery system, our house made pantry condiments, AND heat & eat family style meals. These are available to purchase online for people who are time poor but who want good, fresh, seasonal food.
SO WHY MR GOODFELLOW?
Sir William Goodfellow was one of the original owners of the Waikato Diocesan School for Girls River Rd property and Bankwood House – a rare surviving example of a homestead built for a large pastoral farm in the Waikato.
The homestead, which currently houses our Principal and reception, is representative of a significant period of development in the rural economy in the Waikato in the late nineteenth century.
LOVE A BIT OF HISTORY?
Sir William Goodfellow was one of the original owners of the Waikato Diocesan School for Girls River Rd property and Bankwood House – a rare surviving example of a homestead built for a large pastoral farm in the Waikato. The homestead, which currently houses our Principal and reception, is representative of a significant period of development in the rural economy in the Waikato in the late nineteenth century.
On 28 March 1929, Bankwood House ownership was transferred to the Waikato Diocesan School for Girls’ Board and the school as we now know it officially opened on its River Rd site in 1930. A few years later, Mr Goodfellow generously gifted Dio some land opposite the school so students could access the Waikato River to swim (yes, we had our own swimming pool in the river!).
The Goodfellows are very much part of the Dio, Waikato, and New Zealand story. Sir William Goodfellow was born at Paterangi, Waikato, on 26 May 1880 and was educated at Auckland Grammar School. His first enterprise was an ironmongery business at Onehunga, but after he opened a branch at Hamilton in 1904 he became interested in the new trend towards cooperation in the dairy industry, and organised Waikato Cooperative Dairy Co. in 1908.
Ten years later he was able to amalgamate the leading Waikato dairy companies into the New Zealand Cooperative Dairy Co., of which he became managing director. An energetic and skilled businessman, he was a member of the first Dairy Control Board established under the Dairy Produce Export Control Act of 1923, which he was instrumental in sponsoring.
In 1925–26 he formed the Amalgamated Dairies and Challenge Phosphate Co. His public benefactions include £30,000 for a chapel at Auckland University and £20,000 in 1950 to endow a chaplaincy in memory of his son Richard Maclaurin Goodfellow The University of Waikato benefited from the establishment of the Lady Goodfellow Chapel to honour his first wife, Irene Clarabella Chamberlin. He gave 173 acres of Waitakere bush to Auckland municipal authorities as a reserve, and substantially funded the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
His greatest donation, however, was to the trust of St Kentigern College in Auckland, in which he continued to be keenly interested until his death. He was knighted in 1953. A very special thank you to the Goodfellow family for giving their blessing to use Sir William Goodfellow’s name.
