Four independent Kent food and drink businesses will serve up to 450 delegates at the British Ports Association's biggest-ever conference this October, as award-winning caterer PIKKLE sets out to challenge the one-size-fits-all approach to conference catering.
Cardiff-based PIKKLE has been appointed as the sole catering provider for the conference, which takes place on 21 and 22 October 2026 and is expected to be the biggest edition of the event to date.
As part of the event's focus on sustainability and local impact, PIKKLE has been working with events and communications agency Freshwater, which is organising the conference, to build a catering offer around the independent food scene in Dover and across Kent.
PIKKLE worked with Jill Sargent at Produced in Kent to identify some of the best independent food and drink businesses in the county. The resulting line-up includes Gilda Bakery near Canterbury, providing pastries for the conference breakfast service; Whitstable-based Lost Sheep Coffee; Cow Shed on the Hoof, serving American-style barbecue for lunch; and Biddenden Vineyards, supplying Kent wine.
The conference and exhibition will be hosted at Cruise Terminal One at the Port of Dover, with a wider programme of networking and social events taking place across three days. The wider programme will include a ‘Dover Soul’ themed event at Maison Dieu, designed to showcase local food, drink and culture.
Founded by Hamish Watkins and Louis Phillips in early 2023, PIKKLE prides itself on its ‘unconventional catering’ model, challenging how large conferences think about catering, moving away from standardised food offers towards menus that reflect the location, audience and purpose of the event.
Every project starts with understanding the brief, location, audience and event objectives. PIKKLE then researches the surrounding food scene, identifies independent producers, develops a bespoke menu and manages the suppliers and catering delivery through one experienced event team.
The repeat appointment builds on PIKKLE's delivery of the association's 2024 conference in Portsmouth, which marked the company's first large-scale event outside Cardiff and demonstrated its ability to take its catering model beyond South Wales.
More than 300 delegates attended the two-day event at Portsmouth International Port Terminal, with PIKKLE serving nearly 800 dishes, pastries and desserts and around 1,500 coffees. The menu brought together independent Portsmouth food businesses to create an experience rooted in the host city.
The following year, PIKKLE was named Catering Supplier of the Year at the International Confex Event Supplier Awards 2025, with its work at BPA 2024 forming the centrepiece of its winning submission.
Judges praised PIKKLE’s “very colourful and refreshing DNA…[which] helps [them] stand out from the crowd” and “impressive 90% client retention rate, flexibility and choice [and] solid local presence”.
Hamish Watkins, co-founder of PIKKLE, said: “We're really proud to be returning to the BPA conference after what we achieved together in Portsmouth.
“Conference catering can too often become something to tick off the list, but we think that's a missed opportunity. Large, multi-day conferences are exactly where our model comes into its own. They require serious planning, consistency and the capability to deliver at scale, but that doesn't mean the food should feel generic or disconnected from where the event is taking place.
“Freshwater and the BPA put a lot of trust in us in 2024 and the fact they've asked us back for Dover means a great deal. We work closely with event teams from the early planning stages, giving them one catering partner taking responsibility for the detail while we bring in some of the best independent food businesses from the host area.
“BPA 2024 showed that our model can travel, and our ambition now is to work with more event teams and agencies to bring that approach to major conferences and events across the UK.”
PIKKLE also caters major corporate events and brand activations across the UK, including the VIP launch of Sephora's first Welsh store in Cardiff last year.
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