Supreme Woman In Food & Drink 2025
Judith Tabron

With her 40 years of shaping and shaking up Auckland’s restaurant scene, there’s not another woman chef like Judith Tabron, one of the leading lights of the hospitality world. After an apprenticeship in the male-dominated kitchens of Auckland’s Logan Park Hotel and early cooking experience locally and overseas – including working at the legendary L’Escargot in London’s Soho – she returned home to head the kitchen at Sails Restaurant. There Judith introduced diners to the pleasures of high-quality seasonal food including the freshest of fish. Sails quickly became Auckland’s top dining spot, attracting food lovers, gourmets and more to the busy restaurant.

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Her own first restaurant, the award-winning Ramses in Newmarket, broke new ground. This was where she expanded her diners’ world by introducing international guest chefs such as Australians Bill Marchetti and Greg Malouf, who brought new concepts and cuisines that wowed everyone. It was here that she also made dining out a fun-filled experience with her wildly popular events and occasions such as the Melbourne Cup Day and high-end fashion shows.

Following that, Judith created the popular and revered Soul Bar. There she brought new life and dining interest to the Viaduct Basin, creating an exciting restaurant and bar that became one of the city’s premier dining destinations. She travelled extensively seeking new ideas and concepts, often taking top staff along to share the experiences.

After a short respite from the scene, Judith is again attracting a huge following at her latest opening, First Mates, Last Laugh at Westhaven. Her terrific palate and skill in the kitchen continues to ensure her food will always be the freshest and the tastiest, and finely tuned to satisfy her diners.

Judith has always been a mentor to many who have worked for her – not just her chefs, but all restaurant and drinks staff. She’s a true visionary, a tireless supporter of young apprentices and an incredible industry leader. Women In Food & Drink is proud to name her Supreme Woman for 2025.

Global Ambassador 2025
Melanie Brown

Melanie (Mel) Brown has had an extraordinary journey since she left New Zealand years ago for her OE. From a kitchen experience at highly regarded Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxford as a pastry chef, she then worked with Peter Gordon where she fell in love with wine and ran Providores’ wine programme and list. She became a ‘wine slinger’, opening the New Zealand Wine Cellar in Pop Brixton, where she was influential in getting people to drink New Zealand wines at home. Now chef-restaurateur at The Laundry in Brixton, a destination with a unique Kiwi twist, Mel continues to break barriers, championing women in hospitality and celebrating the land, people and spirit of New Zealand that fuels her fire.

Evolving Woman In Food & Drink 2025
Kaitlin Dawson

A true food eco-warrior, Kaitlin Dawson has instigated and led collaborative action across Aotearoa New Zealand’s food system, dedicated to bringing businesses, communities and government together to drive impactful, sustainable change in food waste. She is the hardworking Executive Director of NZ Food Waste Champions 12.3, leading 12 influential leaders from organisations across New Zealand who are dedicated to reducing the amount of food we discard, with the help of a cohort of everyday Kiwis involved in grass-roots campaigns and projects. Kaitlin recently developed New Zealand’s first food-waste-reduction ecosystem map, linking over 120 organisations and providing a platform to foster a collaborative community around food-waste solutions.

Hall of Fame 2025

These women have exhibited exemplary influence in our food-and-drink scene, paving the way for others to continue their legacy. Both have earned a place within the hearts of our nation with their unique strengths and business acumen, always displaying passion and commitment to the outstanding flavours of Aotearoa.

Ruth Pretty, MNZM

Ruth Pretty’s influence and leadership on the Wellington food scene over the past 40 years has been both impressive and immeasurable. Through her businesses – Ruth Pretty Catering, Ruth Pretty Weddings and Ruth Pretty Cooking – she has served and entertained royalty, government heads and business leaders, and made thousands of clients very happy. Her name is synonymous with faultless food delivered and presented with incredible precision and professional aplomb.

Her initial foray into the food scene was Marbles, a restaurant in Kelburn. She and husband Paul made the move to Te Horo, north of Wellington, and their skill and reputation grew. Ruth recently retired but her legacy lives on in the high standard she set and through the cookbooks she has written.

Catherine Bell

Catherine has blazed an impressive path on New Zealand’s culinary trail with a list of achievements, often conceived well ahead of the time. From a deli in Mt Eden stacked with delicious food, she moved on to open The Epicurean Workshop, a much-loved cookware store and cooking school. She also founded Dish magazine, gaining an instant following from keen home cooks. Her business evolved into Epicure Trading, importing unique and stylish artisan cookware and homewares.

Garden to Table is her most inspired and inspiring achievement, a charitable trust founded in 2008 to empower children to grow, harvest, prepare and share great food as part of their school curriculum. She continues to grow this network of schools across the entire country with more than 10,500 Kiwi kids participating enthusiastically each week.

Massey University
WOMAN IN FOOD SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY AWARD 2025

Massey University has joined with Cuisine to present this new WIFD category. It highlights a woman who is a pioneer or leader in food research and development and who has had a marked effect or influence on the food-and-beverage industry. Most importantly, it honours a woman who raises the industry profile and is a mentor and innovator with a global mindset helping to communicate the New Zealand food science-and-technology story.

Dr Christina Coker,
Senior Research Scientist

Christina has worked as a scientist in the food industry for nearly 40 years with a career that has taken her from the lab bench to the factory floor. She earned a PhD in food technology at Massey University and raised four boys while working at Fonterra. There she led the Dairy Food Design platform and later initiated the Consumer Experience research platform.

While working at the cutting edge of food development and research, her team produced the first camembert-style cheese in New Zealand in the seventies. Few even knew what such cheese should taste like, so they engaged the personnel at the French Embassy in Wellington as tasters for their trial batches. She also worked on Swiss cheese and blue cheese, assisting with labelling and packaging.

Christina, who modestly claims all her achievements have been as part of a team, adopted a multidisciplinary approach to research, uniting scientists, engineers and technologists from the Fonterra Research Centre with colleagues from universities and research organisations in New Zealand and internationally under the Primary Growth Partnership Programme, a multi-million dollar, seven-year research initiative jointly funded by Fonterra and the New Zealand Ministry for Primary industries. This work provided knowledge in the development of ingredients and new products such as UHT creams, cream cheese, mozzarella, powders and beverages.

Always the mentor, Christina’s links to the food-research community enabled her programme to educate the next generation of food technologists, and at least 40 Masters, PhD and postdoctoral fellows have been trained there. Semi-retirement for Christina sees her still generously sharing her skills and experience, working to pull people and knowledge together. She is also focussing on training a new generation in mozzarella science, and is assembling and curating knowledge for large language models in AI.