About Karapiro Catering Club
Karapiro Catering Club grew from a simple idea: that good food and genuine hospitality have a way of bringing people together. The name was deliberately created to be broader than catering alone.
The Club is about belonging, gathering around a table, sharing something delicious, celebrating well and making people feel genuinely welcome. Karapiro gives Karapiro Catering Club its sense of place. Catering Club describes what sits at the heart of the business: food, hospitality and people.
Today, that brings together catering, gatherings, handcrafted Christmas cakes and seasonal food, with room for Karapiro Catering Club to continue evolving over time. The style is considered but never stuffy, premium without being precious, and grounded in the belief that some of life's best moments happen when people gather around a table.
Welcome to the Table.
About Kellie
My roots in Cambridge and Karapiro run much deeper than simply choosing a local name for a business. I grew up on a farm in the Waikato, in a family where food was about much more than what was on the plate. It was how we brought people together, celebrated, looked after one another and showed our love. Cambridge itself has been woven through my family for generations.
My Nana and Grandad both served as Mayor of Cambridge at different times. On the other side of the family, my grandparents were antique jewellers in the main street, and even now I still meet people who remember the shop and the wave of my grandfather’s cigar smoke as they walked past. My father has also run a business in Cambridge for around 50 years. So coming back to the Waikato has felt much more like coming home than arriving somewhere new.
Life took me through motherhood, a long corporate career and plenty of different chapters, but one of the most important was my time as General Manager of Eat My Lunch. I had the privilege of leading a social enterprise with a significant catering operation and a mission to help feed children in need across New Zealand. It was there that my passion for food, menus and the customer experience really took hold.
That experience reinforced something I still believe strongly today: good catering starts with understanding the people you are feeding. Different people, occasions and circumstances need different things, and the food has to work for them. Listen first, understand what matters, then create something that genuinely fits.
Karapiro Catering Club is where all of those parts of my life come together — my connection to this place, my experience in food and hospitality, and my love of creating generous, beautiful food for people to share. It gives me the chance to create the kind of hospitality I believe in: personal, thoughtful and shaped around the people around the table.
And it feels especially right to be doing it here in Karapiro, surrounded by the place, people and history that have been part of my family’s story for generations.
Jakama Lodge
Karapiro Catering Club has a special connection with Jakama Lodge, our family's working farm and beautiful lakeside property at Lake Karapiro. Set directly on the lake, with accommodation, expansive outdoor spaces and a wonderfully private Waikato setting, Jakama Lodge provides a memorable backdrop for intimate weddings and elopements, private celebrations, staff Christmas parties, corporate gatherings, strategy days, farm tours and other special occasions.
Karapiro Catering Club is the preferred catering partner at Jakama Lodge, allowing the setting, food and hospitality to work naturally together. That might mean a relaxed lakeside celebration, a long table filled with shared food, an intimate wedding, a corporate day away from the office or simply bringing a group of people together somewhere a little different.
Whatever the occasion, the aim is the same, to make it feel personal, generous and memorable.
A beautiful setting. Generous food. One very good reason to gather.
Customer feedback
We wanted our wedding food to feel relaxed, generous and really suited to an outdoor setting. From the first conversation, she completely understood what we were trying to create and made the planning feel very straightforward. The grazing and buffet tables looked beautiful, the food was delicious and there was plenty for everyone. It felt personal to us rather than like a standard wedding menu.
