Takeout Kids Documentary

Directed by filmmaker Julie Zhu, Takeout Kids is a documentary series about the children of immigrant parents and their experiences growing up in family-owned restaurants and businesses across Aotearoa. Initially focused on takeaway shops, the series later expanded in season two to feature families who run a dairy, a night market stall and a nail salon. Nine episodes have been filmed to date, in cities including Pōneke Wellington, Ōtautahi Christchurch and Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, as well as around the country in regions such as Whakatāne, Akaroa, Thames and Taupō.

Takeout Kids is an observational documentary. Each episode is filmed and edited without narration or interviews, with Zhu’s “fly-on-the-wall” approach aligning closely with her non-fiction film and photography practice of capturing everyday human moments. Zhu’s ongoing interest in the domestic lives of immigrants — best represented by her podcast Conversations With My Immigrant Parents — is also influential in the series’ intimate access to the private, unseen lives of its subjects, whose stories “are often relegated to the sidelines.”

Zhu moved to Aotearoa from China when she was four years old. Although her parents did not own a takeaway shop, she related to the children she was documenting as someone who “grew up with parents who were always working.” With the series establishing itself as being “more about the families and their relationships rather than necessarily about the food,” Zhu was able to explore “the intergenerational relationships between these family members and what it might be like for the kids who are growing up in this environment, how they view their parents and their sacrifices, or if they’re aware of that all.”

Many of the shops featured are run by Asian owners, while others include Samoa’s Finest in Porirua; Petra Shawarma in Kingsland, Tāmaki Makaurau, which sells Jordanian food; and also in Tāmaki Makaurau, Tanz KTCHN, which sells Cook Islands food at night markets. Each episode centres on an individual child and depicts their daily life — attending school and studying at home, socialising with friends, helping out (or just hanging out) at their family’s restaurant or shop — in unscripted vignettes.

Through Zhu’s “quiet and unobtrusive direction,” Rose Lu for The Pantograph Punch praised the series for offering “a window into the small, mundane interactions that speak volumes about the highs and lows of being a takeout kid. We are shown the richness of the lives of people who provide such an essential service: affordable cooked food.” Writing for Metro, Jean Teng highlighted Zhu’s resistance to tropes by “prioritis[ing] the kids” and “not driving a specific narrative about immigrant lives that...a lot of projects which fall into this genre tend to do, as if they already know what every story beat will be.”

Takeout Kids was produced by Hex Work Productions and Uhz for The Spinoff, with funding from NZ On Air. Former Pan-Asian Screen Collective board member and current General Manager at The Spinoff, Sophie Dowson — who was Head of Video at the media organisation when the series was commissioned — produced the first season. Senior Producer at The Spinoff, Jin Fellet, produced the second season. Episodes were released on YouTube and The Spinoff in February 2022 and August–September 2024 respectively.