Good Food Awards celebrate first year in Portland

The Good Food Awards celebrate products that are “tasty, authentic and responsible.” Makers are recognized in eighteen different categories each year based on a blind tasting and the organization’s social and environmental responsibility standards. After more than a decade in San Francisco, the awards celebrated their first year in Portland this past weekend. Sarah Weiner, co-founder and executive director of the Good Food Foundation, joins us to talk about the move. We’re also joined by award winner Holly Ong, co-founder of Sibeiho, to talk about the impact the awards can have on small producers.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The annual Good Food Awards celebrate products that are “tasty, authentic, and responsible.” If entrants meet the organization’s social and environmental standards, they are judged for the deliciousness of their creations. These awards have taken place in San Francisco for more than a decade, but they were held in Portland for the first time last weekend. As usual, a number of Oregon producers came home with awards. Sarah Weiner is a co-founder and the executive director of the Good Food Foundation which runs these awards. She joins us to talk about the move, along with Holly Ong, the co-founder of the Singaporean Food startup, Sibeiho, which has now won Good Food Awards two years in a row. Welcome to both of you.

Sarah Weiner: Thank you.

Holly Ong: Thank you.

Miller: Sarah Weiner first, what is the Good Food Foundation?

Weiner: The Good Food Foundation is a nonprofit based in San Francisco, but with half our team up here in Portland. What we do is try to supper the underrecognized folks in the food system that are making it all work. There are a lot of organizations that work with chefs, and there are some truly great organizations that have been around decades that work with farmers. Our focus is really on the food crafters, those people who are taking the milk or the vegetables or the preserves, and transforming it into a value added product that really helps the farmer make more out of their crop, and helps all of us by making some of the most delicious things like cheese and jam and pickles.

[Birds chirping]

Miller: Are you outside right now? I’m hearing lovely birds somewhere.

Weiner: [Laughing] I am inside, but I have the doors open to my garden.

Miller: Just for added ambiance, I like it.

What does it take for a producer to be considered for an award, to be just an entrant to begin with?

Weiner: We have what we call the Good Food Awards standards, and those vary a little bit from category to category as we try to really be thoughtful and mindful of where each industry is.

But generally, they revolve around certain values. The value of sustainability, things like ingredients sourced within a couple hundred miles, ingredients grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, ingredients grown without genetically modified seeds. All those kinds of great things. And then also social responsibility. For example, with the chocolate category, there needs to be an awareness and clarity that there’s no slave labor, paying above fair trade prices, transparency in the supply chain. Those are the two main areas of focus for our standards.

Miller: Is it possible to verify these various practices, sustainability or sourcing or hiring? This is a lot that you’re asking people to tell you about how they run their businesses. But I don’t get the sense that you’re a gigantic nonprofit sending investigators out.

Weiner: Very much the case, there’s just seven of us.

Our approach to verification is to ask questions. And what we found is that some people provide a lot of details, and they’re very proud. People are proud to tell you about the farm they worked with in Rwanda where they’re sourcing their coffee, and the time they visited, and the relationship they forged. And when people aren’t providing a lot of information, that’s when a red flag is raised, and that’s where we start to ask a lot more questions, and might actually ask for a letter from that farm or something else. And I will say, it’s not 100% foolproof. I’m sure in our 13 year history there have been a couple of people who weren’t doing what they said they were doing or what we tried to verify they were doing. But by a large margin, you can really just get a sense of how proud someone is of what they’re doing, how thoughtful they are, by asking the right questions and seeing what comes back.

Miller: As I mentioned, Holly Ong is with us as well, a co-founder of Sibeiho, a Singaporean food startup based in Portland. How did Sibeiho get started?

Ong: Hi, thanks for having us on the show.

Sibeiho started before COVID. I moved here in late 2018, and we started to run supper clubs cooking Singaporean food, because we were very inspired by the produce that Oregon has on a seasonal level. And then we started to look at what we could make here that was a taste of home, but using as much local ingredients as we could. We found out about Good Food Foundation from one of the retailers, World Foods on NW Everett. Joyce, who is the lead buyer there, told us about this organization and what they stood for. We put in an application, and when we first started, we wanted to try to get everything we could source locally. And the reason we started to make sambals was because Oregon and Washington is the United States’ largest organic producers. And because we knew that they were here, we could look for organic onions and shallots. It took us a while to find the right peppers that we wanted, because I didn’t realize when we moved here how many different types of peppers there were. A lot of it was Mexican based. But through the organizations and the food group community here in Portland, we learned about an organization called Outgrowing Hunger, and they have Rohingya refugee farmers who are close to our part of the world and they planted very similar peppers.

When you go to supermarkets here, there are ketchup aisles. Back home, there’s sambal aisles. We are used to having that and then done in a very natural way, which is exactly what we grew up eating.

And that’s how we kind of started making our sauces, because during COVID we couldn’t run our supper clubs. So we started to make product to sell.

Miller: It was a classic COVID business pivot. The business model of having people get together for a supper club in a private home was not gonna work, so you started jarring your sambal?

Ong: Yeah. We did that partially because we love throwing dinner parties and sharing our food. Singapore is so small and so far away, so people don’t really get a chance. Japanese, Korean food is very common, it’s understood that people know. But Singapore is so small, and we’re not very well presented. We wanted to share that, so we decided to make a taste that you could bring into your home.

And I can tell you when we started making the retail, people didn’t know what sambal was. At that point in time, three years ago, people knew what chili oil was, but sambal was something new. And having an organization when we put our product through to the Good Food Foundation recognize our product was really helpful for us when we went to retailers to show them and let them taste what the product was, because they recognized the Good Food Foundation logo and what it stood for.

Some things that we make, like the one that we just won an award this year for, the pickles, my retailers want to buy it, but I’ve told them “you have to wait because the farmers are planting it now.” Every farmer I’m meeting, I’m asking “can you guys plant cauliflower for us?” You have to wait because it needs to grow, it’s not instantly available all the time.

Miller: I guess that gets to what Sarah was saying earlier, because theoretically you could call up any number of distributors and get thousands of pounds of cauliflower grown in Mexico or California and it could be shipped to you tomorrow. But you’re choosing to wait until Oregon grown cauliflower is ready?

Ong: Yeah. It’s always a balancing act about what is available. We were very inspired by how much passion the farmers have for the produce that they grow organically. And some of it is certified organic and some of it isn’t. We go out to the farms, like tomorrow I’m going up to visit Kasama Farms, they are two BIPOC Filipino female farmers out in Gresham and Hood River. They’re doing irrigation stuff, and my parents happen to be visiting, so I’m gonna go show them like who are the farmers we work with, and they’re putting in some of the peppers that we plant. It’s always a food community system that we try really hard to work with. But some, for a practicality reason- sugar is not grown here. So we still go buy it. But we try to buy from our local producers, the distributors and glassware.

Every other day, I get an email from somebody in the middle of I don’t know where in the US asking me to buy the labels. But I’m like “hey, I don’t want to buy your labels, because I’ve got label businesses here as well, and I prefer to buy from somebody I can go and have a chat with and see the product, and then I’m supporting the local economy as well.”

Miller: Does that also mean that at times, you’re going to spend more overall to create your products?

Ong: I can tell you, I’m almost certain of that. I know where the glassware is coming from. The glassware that we make is not like the ones that the alcohol industry uses. The glass is made here in the US. But because the glassware guys are situated here, I want to be able to spend within the economy here so that it supports the jobs within our economy here.

And then with the glassware, I chose the generic ones that everybody else uses. And I’m very excited that we were able to work with another local startup called Bold Reuse. And with New Season’s help, we’re trying to do a kind of recycling program where the consumer can buy it from New Seasons, return it to New Seasons, and then Bold Reuse will clean it and then send it back to us. Part of it was the reason I chose a generic one, was other people can use it as well, other makers can use it. So it’s all being kept within our economy here in Oregon.

Miller: The way beer bottles are often reused in plenty of countries that are not the US.

Sarah, I started by talking about the social or environmental requirements or sourcing practices that are the prerequisites for entering this competition. But after that, once you’re in, how does the judging work?

Weiner: Once you’ve met the standards, everyone’s on the same level playing field, and it’s all about taste. We have nearly 2,000 entries every year in 18 different categories. And entrants ship their self nominated product to a big blind tasting with over 200 judges. And the kinds of judges we’ve had before is everyone from Chef Alice Waters to writer Ruth Reichl, Michael Pollan, and all kinds of other people that are connected to food and have food expertise. And it’s a blind tasting, so everything is out of their packaging, anonymized. We have pods of three judges at a time tasting each of the products, process of elimination of what they think is best. And then they go for like a second round of tasting with a larger group of judges.

Miller: Why did you decide to move the awards to Portland from San Francisco this year?

Weiner: It’s the first time we’ve ever moved the awards ceremony out of where we got started in San Francisco. And what I’d say is like both cities are incredible in several ways around food and food culture. But Portland has a few very unique things that led us here. Both cities have incredible food crafter and retailer communities, some of the best markets in the country and many of the best crafters in the country. Both cities are known for innovation and known for creativity, and both are in very rich agricultural areas.

But Portland had two things going for it. One is just the density of great food. We have so many fewer people, but still just as much like amazing food and food things here and makers. And the second, which really was impactful for us, is that we did a smaller event here about a year ago, and we felt so incredibly embraced by the city and the public institutions. Everyone from the Department of Agriculture of Oregon to Oregon State University, the statewide commissions that support things like dairy or the Berry Commission of Oregon were getting involved and wanted to support us with their presence, with their makers, financially. And we felt so welcomed, and we felt so bolstered, and we just felt like we could do more for the makers that we serve, which are nationwide because we’ve always been a nationwide project. But we could do more with such amazing partners that we found here.

Miller: This is at a time when a number of businesses and some people are making an opposite choice, pulling out of the city of Portland. What does it mean to you to sort of double down on a Portland investment at this time?

Weiner: What I can say is that I feel just as everyone who lives here feels, that we’re going through a tough time. But I deeply believe this is a wonderful place to live and to be, and that we have the right values and are making the right investments for the future. I heard so many times from people that were coming from Vermont or California or Tennessee, who had never been to Portland, what an amazing place it is, how green it was, how it just feels like there are so many people tinkering here, and creative people, and crafters. And there just aren’t barriers to making it happen. They just sort of like get it going! And that was really gratifying to hear.

Miller: Holly Ong, my understanding is that you have a background in the corporate world. I imagine it wouldn’t be hard for you to go back to a fancy corporate job where you’d maybe make more money, have more stability, have health insurance. You’re not doing that right now. What’s driving you?

Ong: During COVID, everybody had a realization there are better things in life to be doing. I think I had that before COVID. I had an epiphany moment where I thought “hey, you know what really makes me happy.” Well, I like food. I like good food. And cooking food made me very happy. You are right, it is scary doing what I’m doing. But I figured if I don’t do it now, then when? And when I actually sat down to think about it, and what Sarah talked about the ecosystem and the support from the food community in Oregon, it’s been amazing. We’re not from here, so it took me forever to understand there was a state and federal, there was differences between the two, because there was so many different regulations. But the accelerator groups, like for women’s startups called Accelerate, and Hannah Cobo, who runs a food group on Google, is all informal.

What Sarah said about the trust factor, the community within food, and Good Food in itself, they’ve been so helpful. I will always ask what I considered the silly questions, but everybody’s gone through something, and they will either know the answer or point you somewhere. And a lot of it is on handshakes. A very good example is at the Good Food mercantile, which was an industry event on Saturday, I was next to a honey guy from Hawaii. And I have a little shop on NW 23rd in Portland. And I only remembered the next day, maybe I should just ask him if I can buy his honey and put it in the shop. And I just did it on Instagram. I didn’t really ask him how much it was, and he didn’t ask me for a guarantee or anything. We coordinated everything on text. I picked up his honey, we’re gonna put in a shop. He still hasn’t sent me an invoice, but it’s all based on the trust factor. We believe in goodness, in the people that we work with, and in the food industry here.

And people have been very nice. I think that’s one of the things I really, really enjoyed. In the corporate world, that sometimes doesn’t happen.

Miller: Holly Ong and Sarah Weiner, thanks very much. Congratulations Holly!

Ong: Thank you.

Weiner: Thank you.

Miller: Holly Ong is co-founder of Sibeiho, a two time winner of the Good Food Awards. Sarah Weiner is the co-founder and executive director of the Good Food Foundation.

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