William Werner serves as Outfit Generic’s Chief Creative Officer and is responsible for the creation of the group’s strategic vision and concepts. During his year as executive pastry chef/founder of Tell Tale Preserve Company, he garnered praise both locally and nationally for his pastries and preserves in publications including Food & Wine, New York Times and Wallpaper, which awarded him “Best High Tea, Confections.” William was executive pastry chef for the renowned Quince restaurant in San Francisco. He brings more than a decade of culinary experience to the group.

The California food community is abuzz about The California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616), a proposed new state law that would legalize selling foods that are produced in home kitchens. I think that allowing small scale food producers to start legitimate businesses out of their homes and eliminate, at least temporarily, the cost of renting a commercial kitchen could have a great impact on our burgeoning food community and the local economy. Commercial kitchen space isn’t the only cost of starting a food business, but it’s a pretty significant one. Not only that, from my personal experience as a jam-maker in the Bay Area, there simply aren’t enough commercial kitchens available – finding a kitchen that suits one’s needs can be an extraordinary challenge.

After a couple of difficult years working out of shared commercial kitchens that were not very well-suited for making jam, I decided to invest the time and resources to build a specialized jam kitchen. The new INNA jam kitchen in Emeryville is currently under construction and I expect it will be ready in time for the spring harvests (There’s a kickstarter campaign going on right now to raise funds for the much needed equipment: http://kck.st/xZ2oSS). I’m building a kitchen that’s specialized for preserving fruits and vegetables, outfitted with the appropriate equipment, plenty of storage space, and no chance of contamination (the kitchen with be gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free, and meat-free). What excited me the most about this new kitchen is that it will be a resource for other producers like me who work with fruits, vegetables, and herbs – making jams, pickles, hot sauce, syrup, teas, etc.   Aside from sharing the space with like-minded businesses, I look forward to more closely collaborating with the farmers that I work with. The new kitchen will not only allow me to increase production of INNA jam, resulting in increased support of local organic agriculture, but it will also give me the flexibility to schedule my jam-making around their harvests, and make jam specifically for them – to preserve the fleeting season into a jar and create a value-added product that they can continue selling long after the first frost has come.

Dafna Kory is the founder of INNA jam, producing single-varietal fruit jams and spicy pepper jams from organic fruit locally sourced within 100 miles of her kitchen. Dafna served as a committee member for the 2012 Preserves category and as a judge for the 2012 Pickle category. She recently launched Provender Social Club, a monthly gathering connecting food producers. See a video and learn more about her new jam kitchen here: http://kck.st/xZ2oSS.

Photo By: Marc Fiorito with Gamma Nine Photography

The Good Food Awards 2012 have come and gone and what an amazing celebration it was!  We ate and drank our hearts out celebrating all those 99 craft producers creating incredible food products that are tasty, authentic, and responsibly produced. From Alice Waters to keynote speaker, Ruth Reichl, the Good Food Awards was a full house overflowing with passion and congratulatory remarks for all of the winners.  The winning producers flew into San Francisco from the likes of Utah, New York, Texas, and Alaska!  50 members of the press from Sunset magazine, 7X7, the Chronicle and more, tasty dishes created by 9 reknowned SF chefs and restaurants and incredibly unique cocktails prepared by the famed Bon Vivants were just some of the perks as over 500 guests partied the night away, and thousands more showed up the next day to meet the winners at the Good Food Awards Marketplace.

New this year, the Beer and Spirits garden, a chance for  winners to sample their products upstairs in the Ferry Building while run concurrently with the Marketplace. Over 500 people joined us for this unique opportunity to not only taste, but discuss the making and mastermind craftsmanship behind each product.   Wakida Farms’ Pisco, Lagunitas’ Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’, Clear Creek’s Eau-de-Vie were just a few of the 14 products featured. One distiller called the Beer and Spirits Garden “the best tasting of their lifetime.” The crowd was energetic, pulsating an interest that amazed all the producers. When asked if they would do it again next year, the universal response was, “If we are lucky enough to win again, absolutely, without a doubt!”

Until next year…check out all of our winners at www.goodfoodawards.org and watch the Good Food Awards video here.

According to the company, this makes it one of the top ten coffees in the country, as measured against more than 100 other coffee roaster’s entries in the second annual ceremony that recognizes exceptional artisanal foods.

Read full article by Aaron Munzer of the Ithaca Journal

Check out the winners in each category below, and to sample some of the food, head over to Gilt Taste, which is selling products from some of the winners. Congratulations to all!

More than 1,000 products were entered, and were evaluated by culinary professionals.

California winners in the various categories include:

Beer: Lagunitas Brewing Co. for A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’, and Drake’s Brewing Co. for Drakonic Imperial Stout.

Charcuterie: Adesso for speck, and Fatted Calf for pork, rabbit and duck terrine.

Cheese: Bellwether Farms for its Carmody and whole-milk ricotta, Garden Variety Cheese for Black Eyed Susan and Hollyhock, and Saint Benoit Yogurt for organic yogurt cheese.

Chocolate: Dandelion Chocolate for its 75 percent Costa Rica.

Coffee: Equator Coffees & Teas for Ethiopia Watadera fair-trade organic, and Klatch Coffee Inc. for Ethiopian Worka.

Pickles: Farmhouse Culture for smoked jalapeno sauerkraut, Let’s Be Frank for Devil Sauce, and Emmy’s Pickles and Jams for turmeric cauliflower.

Preserves: Wine Forest Wild Foods for wild elderberry syrup, Artisan Preserves for orange honey marmalade, and Chez Pim for blueberry and golden raspberry jam.

Spirits: Marian Farms Ltd. for California Pisco, Square One Organic Spirits for Square One Organic Vodka, Wylie Howell Spirits for Wylie Howell Spirits Whiskey, and Ballast Point Brewing Co. for Ballast Point Aged Three Sheets Rum.

For more information, go to www.goodfoodawards.org.

Sour Puss Pickles, a two-time finalist and one-time winner, is a company with what is beginning to sound like a familiar story. Born out of a tenacious Brooklynite’s stint with unemployment, Sour Puss went from a home operation of Christmas gifts for Chris Forbes’ buddies to a company that puts out a mean pickle — cucumber, ghost pepper, or Thai chile in brine, with classic, spicy, and kirby spears; roasted beets; wax beans; plus relish and chutney. And to the small operation, business means face time with farmers, friends in Brooklyn, and a secret recipe of ramps available in nine-ounce, shelf-stabilized jars.

Read The Atlantic’s full Sour Puss Pickles interview by Daisy Atterbury here

“The companies behind this year’s 144 Good Food Awards finalists are incredibly diverse, from an 8 person goat cheese dairy in Harrisburg, Missouri to a 400 person brewery in Colorado,” said Sarah Weiner, Director of the Good Food Awards. “It is fascinating to see such different companies united in the values of sustainability and social responsibility, and producing incredibly delicious food.

For the full list check out the Good Food Awards website. Below, we’ve highlighted a few producers.

Beer: Goose Island’s Pepe Nero was nominated, a “mysteriously dark” beer that is brewed with black peppercorns.
Charcuterie: La Quercia is an Iowa-based company that puts Italian cured meat masters to shame. The country cured bacon is nominated.
Cheese: There are a lot of heavy hitters in the cheese category but we have yet to have a cheese that isn’t absolutely delicious from the Cellars at Jasper Hill.
Chocolate: Another group of all-stars. Lillie Belle Farm has many interesting and tasty creations.
Coffee: It’s nice to see several midwest companies on the list: Kaldi’s Coffee Roasting Co.,Kickapoo Coffee and Broadway Cafe and Roasting Company.
Pickles: Sour Puss Pickles are nominated for its pickled ramps. That’s like combining two delicious things in one!
Preserves: Bourbon Brown Sugar Peach Preserves from Confituras? Yes, please!
Spirits: Pisco is made stateside too, thanks to Marian Farms.

Winners will be announced January 13, 2012 at San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Check out all the finalists here.

What you won’t find labeled artisan, most likely, are the foods that have really earned the title: small-batch products, like cheeses, beers, chocolates, breads, cured meats, pickles, and jams, that are created by a craftsman.

Read more of Forbes Article featuring Seedling Projects Founder Sarah Weiner here

The  Seedling Projects‘ Good Food Awards celebrate a desire to taste delicious food products that are produced in socially and environmentally responsible ways. The idea brings to light the nation’s standouts in a variety of edible categories. Since last year’s successful breakout, which awarded 71 entries in seven categories, the stakes have grown. The 2011-2012 categories, expanded to eight total, are: Beer, Charcuterie, Cheese, Chocolate, Coffee, Pickles, Preserves, and Spirits. I was honored to be a part of the process as a pickle judge.

On October 9, a crowd of Good Food professionals from all over the country crowded into San Francisco’s the HUB SoMa to conduct a blind tasting of the 926 entries from 46 states.  Having already gone through a self-certifying process to ensure trace-ability, worker’s rights, and zero pesticide use, the judges set out to narrow the competition down to the top three in each category from each of the five regions (North, South, East, West, Central). The highest picks will go through one last review before being announced as finalists on November 10th.