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BY LORRIE BAUMANN Crimson Cup Coffee & Tea's Kossa Kebena is a finalist for a 2020 Good Food Award. Kossa Kebena comes from the Kebena Kossa farm in the Limmu Kossa district of western Ethiopia, and Crimson Cup sources the coffee through its Friend2Farmer direct trade initiative. The coffee is one of 403 products representing 42 states that were named as final- ists this year from among 1,835 entries to the 10th annual Good Food Awards. Winners will be announced in January. Kossa Kebena comes from a farmer who grew up in the coffee world and, as an adult, was able BY LORRIE BAUMANN Three products from Bluebird Grain Farms are among the final- ists this year for a Good Food Award in the grain category. The Good Food Awards recognize food products that combine good Ancient Grain Products Among Good Food Awards Finalists Continued on PAGE 10 Continued on PAGE 6 Continued on PAGE 16 taste with social and environmen- tal responsibility. This year, in the 10th annual Good Food Awards, 1,835 products were vetted for category-specific sustainability standards and judged in a blind tasting. From those, 403 products were selected as finalists. The finalists represent producers from 42 states, with award winners to be named in San Francisco on January 17. Bluebird Grain Farms' Or- ganic Einka & Lentil Blend, Organic Whole Grain Einkorn and Organic Pot- latch Pilaf all represent the business' emphasis on her- itage grains, especially emmer and einkorn, grown in Washing- ton and processed in a way that keeps the grains' integrity and nu- tritional content intact. "Our goal is a company is to provide the most nutritious grain," said Bluebird Grain Farms' co-Owner Brooke Lucy. "All of our grains, both emmer and einkorn, are whole grains – they're a living seed. They're sproutable.... The product is fresh. The product is a true, liv- ing seed with all of its nutrition intact. That's what really defines our business." Lucy and her husband, Sam Lucy, started Blue- bird Grain Farms more than 15 years ago after they real- ized that though they were living in one of the largest w h e a t - p r o d u c i n g states in the U.S. – Washington – they couldn't find local grains to buy. Sam, who grew up on a family farm in New Hampshire, had been experimenting with grains B Corp Certification Provides Purpose for Ozery Family Ethiopian Coffee from Crimson Cup Named Good Food Award Finalist to obtain a piece of land and start growing his own with financing from Technoserve, a nonprofit or- ganization that operates in 29 countries and works with men and women in the developing world to build competitive busi- nesses. "His farm is in a preserved forest, called the Kebena forest. There's no one there to exploit the minerals in the ground," said Brandon Bir, Crimson Cup Cof- fee's Director of Education and Sustainability. "There's no com- mercial production in the forest other than coffee production, which is indigenous." Kossa Kebena is one of a long line of Ethiopian coffees recog- nized by the Good Food Awards. Bir explains the primacy of that coffee region in the competition by noting that arabica coffee is na- tive to Africa. While coffee has been grown in Central and South America only since about 1800, African coffee farmers have been breeding and selecting seeds for their coffee trees for far longer. "The majority of heirloom coffee in Ethiopia has genetically worked itself out to be amazing," he said. "Ethiopia is there because it's just fantastic coffee that has worked itself out." The result, in the case of Kossa BY LORRIE BAUMANN The half dozen or so varieties of Laura's Gourmet granolas all have two things in common, in addition to their clean ingredient labels: they all contain oats as their foundation, and they all as- sert themselves with flavors that reflect the culinary aesthetic of their creator, Laura Briscoe. Briscoe is the Founder and still the Executive Chef for Laura's Gourmet, which she started in 2004 after attending Scottsdale Continued on PAGE 17 Laura's Gourmet Granola Crushes Breakfast with Flavor Culinary Institute. She'd been training for a new career after fleeing from her former career in high-tech sales with the thought that she'd eventually use that trainining as a private events caterer. She was well on her way in her new career, using her culinary training as well as her own cre- ativity to dazzle clients and serv- ing her friends with samples of her dishes. Her friends raved about her granola and started urging her to think about selling it outside her catering gigs. She packaged up some of her Vanilla Almond Crunch Granola in paper bags with labels she'd printed on her home computer and took it off to AJ's Fine BY LORRIE BAUMANN For 2020, Ozery Family Bakery will be dressing up packages of its Morning Rounds, Snacking Rounds, Lavash and ONEBUN sandwich buns with the com- pany's new B Corp certification from B Lab. The company joins just a handful of bakeries on the B Corp roster of businesses com- mitted to progress on social and environmental issues as well as profit. "The world can only get so far by Ozery being part of B Corp, but we hope that larger compa- nies will be inspired to partici- pate," said Guy Ozery, who serves as the company's co-President along with his brother Alon. "We didn't start our social and envi- ronmental issues when we started B Corp – they were before that. This provides a systematic way to build targets and organize initia- tives and to communicate strat- egy with the team." B Corp certification requires a company to complete an exten- sive self-assessment of the com- pany's commitments to a triple bottom line that encompasses so- cial and environmental perform- ance as well as profitability and to trace adherence to those goals through the company's supply VOLUME 85, NUMBER 1 JANUARY 2020 n $7.00 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES n B Corp Certification Provides Purpose for Ozery Family PAGE 6 RETAILER NEWS n Southport Grocery & Cafe's Good Food Awards Draw a Community PAGE 8 SUPPLIER NEWS n Silver Fern Farms Launches into American Meat Market PAGE 11 NATURALLY HEALTHY n FLOCK Rotisserie Chicken Chips PAGE 16 SUPPLEMENT n Winter Fancy Food Show Preview PAGE 20 & 21 News ..............................................6 Ad Index .......................................22 Calendar.......................................22 G OURMET N EWS T H E B U S I N E S S N E W S P A P E R F O R T H E G O U R M E T I N D U S T R Y ® WFF SHOW PREVIEW: Stonewall Kitchen SEE PAGE 20 WFF SHOW PREVIEW: SUNFLOWER CHIPS SEE PAGE 21 NATURALLY HEALTHY: Once Again SEE PAGE 16

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