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2003 NASFT Products Awards Competition

The Selection Process

The specialty food industry is vast and diverse. It consists of thousands of companies that produce, import or distribute food products, ranging from truffle oil to cheddar popcorn, from Beluga caviar to Swedish fish. These products are sold at tens of thousands of retail outlets that vary from Parisian luxury store Fauchon to a farm market in rural Tennessee.

Finding a means to properly judge this expansive array of products has been a challenge actively addressed by the NASFT. The overall goal: To honor products that will find favor with consumers and build sales for the industry.

“In the 1980s, the NASFT just gave out a handful of Product Awards, for new products,” recalls NASFT President John Roberts. “The press would focus on these products, leaving thousands of great specialty foods undiscovered.”

The NASFT decided that the awards needed to honor the best within different categories. In 1990, the NASFT totally revamped the awards, expanding from three to 20 categories, reflecting the breadth within the specialty food industry.

To mirror the different types of retail outlets that sell specialty foods, the NASFT selects six judges for the initial judging round. The judges consist of three specialty food retailers, one supermarket buyer, one natural food retailer and one “other” retailer, often a cataloger, from different regions of the country. These judges are presented with the fun yet challenging task of selecting approximately 95 Finalists from the 1,700 products entered in the competition.

The Finalist products are then judged again, at the Summer Fancy Food Show. On Sunday, June 29, nearly 100 retailers, catalogers and other resellers of specialty foods tasted and analyzed the Finalist products to select a Winner within each category. Their votes were tallied by an auditor from Tate & Tryon, Washington, D.C. The Winners were then announced at the Meet the Tastemakers® Reception on Monday, June 30.

Turn to the following pages to read more about the 2003 Product Award Winners—the best of the best.—Ron Tanner