For Lauren "Lulu" Taylor, watching her New Zealand baking mixes arrive on the shelves of a Los Angeles Gelson's this fall is not simply a business milestone. It is a homecoming.
Taylor, founder and CEO of Secret Kiwi Kitchen, is a former Pacific Palisades resident whose children attended Canyon Charter Elementary. She once shopped at the Gelson's on Sunset Boulevard that was destroyed in the Palisades Fire. Now her company, started in an Auckland kitchen, will launch in Gelson's stores across Los Angeles in early November, anchoring its U.S. debut on the Westside.
The choice, she said, was "both personal and strategic."
"Gelson's was actually the first U.S. retailer I approached, so seeing Secret Kiwi Kitchen on their shelves feels incredibly special," Taylor said. "I have so many happy memories of shopping for my family at the old Gelson's in the Palisades. It has been a dream of mine to see my products there one day."
"New Zealand is a small market of just five million people, while the U.S. is enormous," she said. "Rather than trying to be everywhere at once, I wanted to come full circle and start in a community I know and understand."
Returning to a neighborhood still rebuilding carries particular weight. "Watching the fires from the other side of the world was incredibly emotional," she said. "The Palisades is a place I have a deep personal connection to, so seeing a community that I remembered so fondly go through something so devastating was heartbreaking."
She hopes the business can be part of the recovery. "Businesses are such a part of the fabric of a neighborhood. They give people places to gather, familiar faces, and a sense that life is moving forward again," she said. "To bring Secret Kiwi Kitchen back to a place that has meant so much to me, at a time when the community is rebuilding, feels bigger than simply launching a business. It feels like being part of that next chapter."
Taylor opened a Los Angeles-area warehouse in July and now ships U.S. online orders. Gelson's will carry the brand's signature mixes — blondie, scone, chocolate cake, gingerbread cake and cookie — while the broader lineup includes triple fudge brownie, buttermilk pancake and a Kiwi favorite called ginger crunch.
She has positioned the mixes as an alternative to multinational products with long ingredient lists, using New Zealand grass-fed dairy, GMO-free-milled flour and Marlborough sea salt. Every ingredient, she said, "should be something a Kiwi mum would recognise in her pantry."
Some recipes will feel familiar to Americans, such as brownies and blondies. Others, like the Ginger Crunch Slice and Buttermilk Scone mixes, are distinctly Kiwi. "It's not about making American food with a Kiwi label," Taylor said. "It's about sharing a little piece of New Zealand through food."
An American-born Kiwi with Japanese-European roots, Taylor has lived in New Zealand for about a decade and previously spent time in France, Italy, London and Latin America. "California taught me an appreciation for really good ingredients," she said. "I still think California has some of the best farmers markets anywhere." Still, "New Zealand is really the foundation of Secret Kiwi Kitchen," she said.
The company grew out of hardship. After her digital marketing career was upended by COVID-19 in 2020, Taylor began making mixes during Auckland's second lockdown, printing labels herself and gluing them onto coffee bags. She started with $1,000, kept the company self-funded and once worked four extra jobs to keep it going, all while navigating tariffs and supply chain issues.
That period shaped her view of food. "We all go through difficult chapters, whether it's a pandemic, losing a job, a fire, or being displaced from your home," she said. "Food can't fix those things, but sharing something you've made and sitting around a table together can give people a moment of comfort and connection."
Today, Secret Kiwi Kitchen is stocked in roughly 700 stores across New Zealand, the Pacific, the United States and Canada. Most New Zealand brands look first to Australia when they expand. Taylor did not.
"I've chosen to do something different. I wanted to come home to the U.S.," she said. "Seeing Secret Kiwi Kitchen on an American shelf, particularly at Gelson's, feels like a real full-circle moment."
Even as the company grows, she wants it to keep its personal touch. "I still personally respond to customer emails," she said, describing conversations about baking hacks and mixes sent to children for science projects. "I want Secret Kiwi Kitchen to become a significant international brand, but I still want people to feel that there is a real person behind it who cares about what they're making in their kitchen."
The mixes are available at secretkiwikitchen.com.