In celebration of 50 years of business – J Lum & Co

Chester Grey would like to extend our congratulations to Jack and Carrie Lum and their family for achieving a huge milestone in their business. Jack Lum & Co is an institution in Remuera with Jack and Carrie epitomising an exceptional work ethic as well as passion for their business and customers.

They are not only well respected but are genuinely wonderful people and we are grateful to have them as clients.

Below is the exert from the article published on RNZ in February this year. We feel that, in the unprecedented times we are living in (and with the Lum’s shopfront currently closed), they truly deserve the accolades that come with operating a business for such a long time.

From humble beginnings, grower-turned-green grocer Jack Lum has spent half a century cultivating a thriving business through hard work and quality produce.

Jack Lum turns 77 this year and his business - Jack Lum Fruit and Vegetables in Remuera, Auckland - turns 50. Yet his work ethic, just like his passion for produce, hasn’t waned, even as other small businesses close up shop as they come under pressure from the corporate big boys.

Jack and his wife Carrie opened their Remuera business in May 1970 and their current shop - in a converted bank - in 1988. But just across the road is a New World and Jack says supermarkets are killing off businesses like his. He remembers when there were four green grocer shops in the Remuera village; today, his is the last one standing and one of only a handful left in Auckland.

“It’s all sort of hairdressers, beauty stores and banks and real estate agents. Because the fish shop’s gone and the butcher’s gone,” Carrie says.

“I think I’m one of the two or three really genuine ones left, because when the supermarket opens they’ve got to get their business somewhere, so it’s mainly smaller shops,” Jack adds.

“If it wasn’t for the Asian supermarkets I reckon the supermarket’s pricing would be a lot dearer. The Asian markets are keeping them honest, because you know around the country there’s no small fruit shops left. They’ve killed off the whole lot, and they’d love to kill us as well".

Jack’s father Lum Young Hoy came to New Zealand from China in 1927.

“They’re from, in those days it was called Canton but it’s got so many different villages. Ours was called Zhongshan which is just across the border from Macau,” says Jack.

“We were growers, that’s all they seem to know when they come over from China”.

During the Japanese invasion of China, which began in 1937, around 200 Chinese wives and their children took refuge in New Zealand.

Jack’s mother Lee Way Hing came here by boat as part of the War Refugee Scheme in 1939, escaping the political upheaval just before the Communist Revolution. Jack was her second son of four boys who were all born in Auckland.

Jack Lum (left) with his migrant parents, father Lum Young Hoy and mother Lee Way Hing Photo: Supplied

“There wasn’t much recreation there. It was all work, work, work. We only had a small acreage, so we grew some of the smaller product, not big crops like cabbages and caullies. We haven’t got the acreage for that, beetroots, spring onions and beans, tomatoes,” he says.

Jack’s parents were market gardeners for brokers Turners and Growers.

Rather than stick to traditional produce, Young Hoy and his wife showed their flair for business and innovation.

“At that time we moved to Mangere. We were into hot house tomatoes then, which at that time only very, very few people had grown hot house tomatoes”.

“I really wanted to be a mechanic or woodworking. I quite liked making things," Jack says but when his father got ill with lung cancer "that chance was gone when I had to come and help in the garden".

“I ended up working for wholesaler, Provedore Fruit shop in the city and I was there for about ten years”.

After Jack’s father’s death, his mother was a trailblazer, running the Lum family’s market garden on her own, which was unusual for a woman at that time.

She gave up growing, selling her garden and made a profit, one she would live on until her passing in 1965, when she was just 47 years old.

“She was the best. She grew everything and it comes out perfect, meticulous, everything is good. Everybody tastes her stuff when it goes to the market, even to this day there’s some people who still remembers that she grows the best,” Jack muses.

“Jack’s mother was very astute, very, very good. She had a head on her like a bloke really, really sharp. She died very young, she died at 47. She had cancer of the bones and she didn’t know, she thought she hurt herself in the garden,” says Jack’s wife, Carrie Lum.

Jack was 19 when he met Carrie Sim… going from one strong female figure to another… and used his mother’s inheritance to open their first shop.

Carrie was less about growing veges, and more about growing profits.