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BY LORRIE BAUMANN The Specialty Food Association announced on April 19 that 154 products earned sofi Awards this year. An additional sofi Award for Product of the Year, awarded to the single product that received the highest score in the judging, will be announced at the Summer Fancy Food Show in June. The April announcement, made without a public ceremony by Specialty Food Association President Phil Kafarakis and celebrity Chef Sara Moulton, honors products in 39 categories with gold, silver and bronze awards for each category. Sofi awards have been presented by the Specialty Food Association since 1972. This year, sofi Awards BY LORRIE BAUMANN Montchevre is donating $100,000 to The Southwest Wis- consin Technical College Foun- dation in a bid to assure that the nation continues to have enough high-quality goat milk to supply Americans' growing taste for goat milk cheeses. Montchevre's dona- tion is helping to kick off a Dairy Goat Herd Management Certifi- cate program at the college that will train both novices and expe- rienced farmers in the skills that they need to support a full-time commercial dairy goat operation. Students need not be Wisconsin residents to participate in the Montchevre Donation Will Advance the Dairy Goat Industry Continued on PAGE 16 Continued on PAGE 11 Continued on PAGE 13 program, which is taught through a combination of online courses, a mentorship program that can be arranged at a farm near the stu- dent's home and an annual two- day Dairy Goat Academy conference that provides hands- on experience. "This is beyond Wisconsin. We have realized that there's a need to develop this curriculum to help individuals who are either inter- ested in starting a dairy goat farm or those currently in the industry, looking to fine-tune their man- agement skills," said Deb Ihm, Agriculture Coordinator for Southwest Wisconsin Technical College. The impetus for this program was the state agriculture depart- ment's realization that Wiscon- sin's dairy goat industry was having a turnover problem, with many aspiring dairy goat farmers exiting in their first three to five years in the business. Some of the reasons for this early exit were due to the industry's compara- tively low barriers to entry, ac- cording to Ihm. Goat dairies require less capital at start-up than cow dairies simply because goats are smaller than cows, which means the animals require less pasture and barn space. "The goat itself is a smaller animal which makes them more appeal- ing to manage," Ihm said. "You can put a lot of goats on a small acreage." Within a few years after starting their operations, new dairy farm- ers find out that goats may be smaller than cows, but the chal- lenges involved in running a suc- cessful dairy operation aren't. Once the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture had identified that pattern of exiting in the first few years of a new goat dairy opera- tion, the department approached The Grocery Store as a Force for Good in the World Specialty Food Association Names sofi Winners were also given to the best new product in 37 of the categories. The winners were chosen from among almost 3,000 entries sub- mitted by 875 Specialty Food As- sociation member companies, noted Kafarakis. "Winning the sofi is really a big deal," he said. "It's the best of the best. It's pro- moted in the industry like crazy," added Moulton, who recalled that in covering the Fancy Food Show for 12 years for "Good Morning America," she always liked to head first to the display case for sofi winners because she knew that those products had already been filtered by knowledgeable judges. To this day, when she's at the Fancy Food Show, the sight of a sofi statuette in a vendor's booth will often make her turn aside and take a look at that booth, even if she hadn't intended to do so, because the statuette indicates to her that the booth represents a company that produces good products, she said. "It attracts a lot of traffic," she said. Judging for this year's awards competition was done at the Spe- cialty Food Association offices in New York over a two-week period by 62 judges who included chefs, culinary instructors, bloggers, food writers and specialty food buyers, Moulton said. "We all get together to talk about what's hap- pening in the specialty food world," she said. "You learn while The International Dairy Deli Bak- ery Association has a stellar group of speakers lined up for this year's IDDBA 17 conference and trade show, which will be held June 4-6 in Anaheim, Cali- fornia. The General Session speaker line-up includes former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Belushi and the Board of Comedy, IDDBA President and CEO Mike Eardley, former Trader Joe's CEO Doug Rauch, Celebrity Chef Giada De Continued on PAGE 22 IDDBA to Offer Outstanding Educational Opportunities in Anaheim this June Laurentiis, former Starbucks CEO Jim Donald and Earvin "Magic" Johnson, the CEO of Magic Johnson Enterprises. And that's not all. Eddie Yoon, the author of "Superconsumers;" Eric Chester, the author of "On Fire at Work" and Molly Fletcher, the author of "Fearless at Work," will also be speaking. Jewel Hunt, IDDBA's Chairman and the Group Vice President of Bakery for Al- bertsons Companies, is also on the schedule. IDDBA's Show and Sell Work- shop line-up offers Steve Dragoo of Solutions Consulting, Yoon, De Laurentiis, Harold Lloyd of Harold Lloyd Presents and Rauch. The Show and Sell Workshops are 30-minute ses- sions that cover various indus- try-specific topics and frequently include live demon- strations in a smaller and less formal setting that allows for BY LORRIE BAUMANN Doug Rauch had a 31-year career at Trader Joe's, including his final four years there as President of the company. Today, he'd like to be known as the Founder and President of The Daily Table and co-CEO at Conscious Capitalism, Inc., an organization founded on the idea that business is good be- cause it creates value through vol- untary exchanges that can lift people out of poverty and create prosperity. That's a message that resonated with the attendees of Natural Products Expo West, where Rauch delivered a keynote speech this year. The Daily Table is a not-for- profit retail grocery store in Boston that made headlines when it opened in 2015 and started sell- ing food that was past its prime but still safe and nutritious at prices that were a steep discount from their usual retails. The store offers produce, bread, dairy and grocery items – no nutrient-defi- cient "junk food" – and has a big kitchen in which to prepare nutri- tious ready-to-eat options, be- cause, "It turns out that as you move down the economic rung, you don't have more time – you have less time," Rauch said. "Our VOLUME 82, NUMBER 6 JUNE 2017 n $7.00 NEWS & NOTES n Americans Weigh in on Food-Label Use of "Healthy" PAGE 6 RETAILER NEWS n Maple Run Emporium Celebrates Six Years in Potsdam PAGE 10 SUPPLIER NEWS n Cheesecyclopedia Offers Professional Cheese Education at No Cost PAGE 12 NATURALLY HEALTHY n United Fresh VP of Nutrition and Health Retires PAGE 14 EDITOR'S PICKS n Sweets & Snacks Show PAGE 20 News ..............................................6 Ad Index .......................................22 Calendar.......................................22 www.gourmetnews.com 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 ® SUPPLEMENT: SFF Preview SEE PAGE 15 NATURALLY HEALTHY: Simple Mills SEE PAGE 14 EDITOR'S PICKS: Sweets & Snacks Show SEE PAGE 20

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