We didn't know we were breaking a record. Honestly, we didn't know there was a record. We just knew there were more boxes to fill, and a finite number of hours to fill them in.

I'm Ryan Mathie and one morning this year a group of us from Ford New Zealand swapped our desks for a packing line at the New Zealand Food Network.

The morning came together through 'Ready, Set, You', our new team at Ford NZ that organises social events, staff get-togethers and volunteering. The idea is simple: give people reasons to spend time together that aren't meetings. This one gave us something to do with our hands.

First, we watched

Before anyone picked up a box, we were shown how the operation actually works.

That part mattered more than I expected. NZFN is a registered charity that takes surplus food from producers, manufacturers and retailers and gets it out to community partners and food hubs around the country. You can read that sentence a hundred times and still not picture it. Standing inside it is different. You see the scale of what arrives, the sorting, the sheer logistics of moving food that has a clock running on it.

By the time we started, we understood the job we'd been handed: we were one link in a chain that stretches from a producer's surplus to someone's kitchen table.

Then we got competitive (sort of)

What I'll remember most is how everyone got stuck in.

We split into a few teams, and each one built its own assembly line. Some were noticeably more efficient than others. I'll leave it there, out of respect for colleagues I still have to sit near.

Nobody was watching a counter. We were watching each other, passing boxes along, finding a rhythm, losing it, finding it again. The morning went quickly in the way mornings do when you stop checking the time.

The number came later

It wasn't until afterwards that we heard the totals. 783 boxes. 11,435 kilograms of food. Enough for more than 25,000 meals. And a new volunteer packing record.

There was real pride in the room. Not the chest-thumping kind, more the quiet, slightly stunned kind, when a group of people who'd mostly just been talking and lifting look at a number and realise they made it together.

But the number I keep coming back to isn't 783. It's 25,000. That one puts the whole morning into perspective. One morning of our time could help put more than 25,000 meals in front of people across Aotearoa.

What stayed with us

The thing I didn't expect to take away was a lesson about waste.

Watching NZFN connect surplus food with communities that need it, you realise two problems we usually think about separately are really one problem with one answer. Food that would otherwise be lost. Whānau who need it. Reducing waste and supporting people aren't competing goals here. They're the same work, done well.

NZFN sums up its mission in six words: "Getting food to where it's needed most."

We held one end of that sentence for a morning. Every box we packed was a small, practical contribution, and a reminder of what a team can get done when people simply turn up for each other.

We'll be back. And now, unfortunately for whoever volunteers next, there's a record to beat.

Ryan Mathie is the regional sales manager for aftersales at Ford New Zealand.