Lesson 4: Enterprise Creation — Branding, Storytelling & Pricing
Co-designing a mānuka honey enterprise brand, jar label packaging, cultural provenance storytelling, and unit economics costing.
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga — Learning Intentions
Design an authentic mānuka product brand, articulate provenance storytelling, calculate cost price vs retail price, and pitch an enterprise idea.
Whakataukī | Traditional Wisdom
“Ko te kai a te rangatira, he kōrero.”
The food of chiefs is talk.
Te Whakatakotoranga | Run of show
Tirohanga Whānui | What this lesson is doing
This is the lesson students think the unit has been building to — they make a brand. It is also the lesson where the unit's argument gets tested, because branding is where a business can either tell the truth about where value came from or paper over it.
So the sequence matters. Students cost the jar before they design it. A brand invented before the numbers is decoration; a brand invented after them has to justify a price. And the storytelling act draws a hard line: there are things about mānuka a business may say, and things it may not say unless it is entitled to. That line is not a rule imposed on the activity. It is the most commercially important thing in this lesson.
You'll need
- Two or three real honey jars with labels — one premium mānuka, one supermarket honey. Empty and rinsed is fine. The labels are the whole resource.
- Blank paper or card cut to label size, and colouring materials. Digital is fine but slower.
- Calculators, or accept the arithmetic being done in pairs.
- The three-basket ledger from Lesson 3 still visible.
Do Now — Same honey, two labels 8 min
What it is: An opener that separates the product from the packaging, so students can see what they are about to be paid for.
Run it
- Show both jars (2 min): premium mānuka and ordinary honey, labels visible. "Both of these are honey made by bees. One costs several times the other."
- List the differences (3 min): in pairs, list everything different about the two labels — not the honey. Words, numbers, certification marks, colours, place names, how much empty space there is.
- Sort the list (2 min): put each difference into one of two columns — claims you could check (a UMF number, a region, a producer name) and claims you could not ("pure", "natural", "premium").
- The question for today (1 min): "Which column are you allowed to fill in freely, and which one do you have to earn?" Leave it up.
Act 1 — What does the jar actually cost? 15 min
What it is: Unit economics. Students build a cost per jar from the parts, then discover what is missing from it.
Run it
- Give the cost sheet (2 min): use the table below, or your own figures. Tell students plainly that these are teaching numbers, not market rates — real costs vary by site, season and scale, and pretending otherwise would be the exact mistake this unit keeps warning about.
- Work out cost per jar (5 min): in pairs. Add the per-jar costs; divide the fixed costs across the season's jars. Expect some groups to forget the fixed costs entirely — that is a useful mistake, not a failure.
- Set a price (3 min): each pair sets a retail price and states the margin. Put the range on the board. It is usually wide, and the reasons are more interesting than the numbers.
- Add the missing column (5 min): now open the Lesson 3 ledger. Which costs in Tangata and Taiao does this sheet not contain? Testing the site, replanting, training someone young, resting a block. Ask: "If you do not price for those, who pays for them?" Same answer as Lesson 3, arrived at through arithmetic.
| Item | Type | Figure to work with |
|---|---|---|
| Jar, lid and label | Per jar | $1.20 |
| Honey extraction and packing | Per jar | $2.50 |
| Laboratory testing and certification | Fixed, per season | $3,000 |
| Hive maintenance and site access | Fixed, per season | $9,000 |
| Freight to retailer | Per jar | $0.80 |
| Jars produced this season | — | 4,000 |
Where the good argument happens
Someone will notice that the testing cost is fixed regardless of how many jars you sell, so a small producer carries it on far fewer jars. That is a genuine feature of this industry and worth three minutes: certification protects the buyer and raises the barrier for the small operator. Both are true at once.
Act 2 — The story you are allowed to tell 15 min
What it is: The provenance and permission act. Students test claims against whether the business is entitled to make them.
Run it
- Sort real claims (5 min): give groups the claim cards below. Sort into can say, can only say if true and checkable, and cannot say unless entitled.
- Take the disagreements (4 min): the third pile is where the argument is. Push on it — "who would you have to ask?" The answer is never "nobody".
- Name the principle (3 min): a business can tell its own story. It cannot tell someone else's story as if it were its own. Using a hapū's name, a maunga, a pūrākau or a whakataukī on a label is claiming a relationship — and the people you are claiming it with get to say whether it exists.
- Connect it to money (3 min): ask why a business would want that story on the jar at all. Because provenance raises the price. Which is exactly why taking it without permission is not a matter of politeness — it is taking something valuable.
| Claim on the label | What it would take to earn it |
|---|---|
| "UMF 15+" | Laboratory testing and certification by the body that owns the mark |
| "From the Hokianga" | The hives are actually there — checkable, and a claim a competitor could challenge |
| "Pure and natural" | Almost nothing. Ask students what it rules out. Usually nothing. |
| "Harvested with kaitiakitanga" | A practice you could describe, and someone who would vouch for it |
| A hapū name, or a named maunga or awa | A relationship with those people, and their agreement — not available by choosing it |
| A whakataukī or pūrākau on the jar | The same. Whose is it, and did they say yes? |
Act 3 — Design and price it 15 min
What it is: The build. Groups produce a label and a price they can defend.
Run it
- Set the brief (2 min): a label for a jar of mānuka honey from a real or invented site. It must carry a product name, one checkable claim, one honest description of practice, and a price.
- Design (8 min): keep it fast. The constraint is the point — a small label forces students to choose which claim is worth the space.
- Price it against Act 1 (3 min): the price must be justified from the cost sheet. Groups pricing high must say what the buyer is getting for it; groups pricing low must say which basket is paying.
- The permission check (2 min): before any group presents, each one answers: "Is there anything on this label we would need someone's agreement to use?" Groups that used a place name, an iwi name or a pūrākau have to say who they would ask.
If students use te reo on the label
Encourage it, and hold the same standard as everything else — spelled correctly, macrons included, and meaning what they think it means. A misspelled product name is a real commercial error, not just a cultural one. If nobody in the room can confirm it, that is the finding: check with someone who can, before it goes on a jar.
Synthesise — The pitch 8 min
Run it
- Thirty seconds each (5 min): every group pitches — product name, price, and one sentence on why it is worth that. Hold the time limit; it forces the strongest claim to the front.
- Vote with a reason (2 min): students pick the one they would buy and say which part of the pitch did it. Usually a checkable claim beats an adjective.
- Forward link (1 min): "Every one of these labels says mānuka. Next lesson: who is allowed to write that word on a jar, and who decides?"
Exit ticket 4 min
Two lines, handed in: one claim on your label that you could prove, and one claim you would need someone's permission to make.
If a group cannot name anything in the second category, that is a fine answer — a label that only makes claims it owns is a defensible label. Say so.
Ngā Huarahi Ako | Differentiation
Tautoko / Support
- Give Act 1 with the per-jar costs already totalled, so the task is only dividing the fixed costs across the season.
- Pre-cut label templates with boxes marked name, claim, practice, price. The design freedom is not what is being assessed.
- Accept the exit ticket as two labelled arrows on the group's own label.
Toitoi / Extension
- Recalculate Act 1 for a producer making 400 jars instead of 4,000. What happens to the cost per jar, and what does that tell you about who can afford to enter this industry?
- Find a real premium food product and list every claim on its packaging. How many are checkable? Bring the ratio back.
- Write the paragraph a business would have to send to a hapū to ask permission to use their name. What does it have to offer, not just ask for?
Te reo Māori
- Kupu: mānuka · miere (honey) · tohu (mark, sign) · taonga · mana · pūrākau · whakapapa.
- The whakataukī is the lesson's argument: ko te kai a te rangatira, he kōrero — what leaders trade in is words. A brand is exactly that, which is why words carry obligation.
Mātauranga Māori | Provenance is a relationship, not an aesthetic
The failure mode in this lesson is specific and common in real packaging: koru borders, a macron-free te reo product name, a maunga silhouette, and no relationship with anyone. It looks like provenance and is actually decoration. Students copy what the market shows them, so the market is what has to be examined.
The workable test is ownership, and students can apply it themselves. Whose story is this? If it is the business's own — its site, its practice, its people — it can be told freely. If it belongs to a hapū, an iwi or a whānau, then using it is claiming a relationship, and only they can confirm that. Asking is not a hurdle before the real work. In this industry it is a large part of what makes a premium claim defensible.
Hononga Marautanga | Curriculum
People use various strategies to make informed money decisions (e.g. gathering information and comparing prices to consider value for money, budgeting, recording expenses, setting savings goals, considering which product best meets their wants, considering the ethics of the product).
Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Social Sciences · Phase 3 · Economic Activity · statement id 21032
The statement is written from the buyer's side. This lesson puts students on the other side of the same transaction — they are the ones producing the information a consumer will compare, and setting the price that gets compared. The phrase considering the ethics of the product is where the two halves meet: Act 2 asks what a business must be entitled to before it can offer an ethical claim for a consumer to consider at all.
Sources and checking
- The cost sheet is illustrative and labelled as such on the page. It is built to produce a workable arithmetic task with a realistic shape — high fixed certification costs, low per-jar materials. Do not present it as market data. If you want real figures, industry bodies and producer annual reports publish some, and the difference between them and this sheet is itself worth discussing.
- UMF certification is administered by the body that owns the mark, not by government. Students who ask "who says so?" about a certification claim are asking the right question, and Lesson 5 takes it further.
- Real labels are the best resource in this lesson and cost nothing. Any supermarket shelf provides the full range of checkable and uncheckable claims.
- On using iwi or hapū names: this lesson teaches students to ask. If your class is working with a real local name, the asking should be real too — that conversation is worth more than the label.