Good Food Awards
The Good Food Awards (GFA) is an American annual competition for food and drink makers, run by the Good Food Foundation. Coffee is one of 19 categories (Good Food Foundation, accessed 2026-07-23).
What makes it unusual is that winning is a two-part test. A coffee has to taste good enough to survive blind judging, and the roaster has to document how the coffee was bought — the price paid, the farming practices behind it, the labour conditions at origin. Fail either half and you are out. Most coffee competitions in this wiki — Cup of Excellence, Best of Panama — rank coffees purely on the cup and let the market sort out the ethics afterwards. The GFA runs the two together.
The other structural difference: the GFA judges roasted coffee sold by an American company, not green coffee at origin. So its winners are roasters, not farms.
Who runs it
The Good Food Foundation was founded in 2010 by Sarah Weiner and Dominic Phillips, out of the “Slow Food Nation” event they produced in San Francisco in 2008, and formally took the Good Food Foundation name in 2016 (Good Food Foundation, accessed 2026-07-23). The first awards were handed out in 2011 — the winners archive on the foundation’s own site runs from 2011 to 2026, and trade press called the 2024 edition the 14th, which lines up exactly.
As of 2026 the foundation has been folded into the Specialty Food Association, keeping its programs and name (Good Food Foundation, accessed 2026-07-23). That is the specialty food trade body — not the Specialty Coffee Association, which is a separate organisation despite the similar name.
Who can enter the coffee category
The rules below are quoted from the foundation’s own coffee standards page (Good Food Foundation, accessed 2026-07-23).
- Roasted in the USA or US territories. Origin can be anywhere; the roasting has to be American.
- Traceable back to the producer at farm or cooperative level. You must be able to name who grew it. This alone rules out most commodity coffee, which is blended past the point of knowing.
- Price premiums must meet or exceed Fair Trade minimums relative to the world commodity price — either through direct trade or a publicly stated buying policy. The standard spells the floor out as a C market minimum of 0.20 Fair Trade premium and a $0.30 Organic premium. The “C market” is the New York commodity price that most of the world’s coffee is priced against; the GFA is saying you cannot win by paying it.
- Sustainable farming — water conservation, and minimising or eliminating synthetic inputs. Proven either by third-party certification (NOP Organic, SMBC Shade Grown, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance) or by detailed documentation.
- Documented fair and humane work standards for all labourers. Compare Ngäbe-Buglé coffee labour for what this requirement is aimed at.
- The roastery itself is judged too — waste management through water conservation, composting and recycling; regular roasting air-quality checks; and internal policies including wage transparency and staff development.
Roasters may submit up to two entries in each of two subcategories:
| Subcategory | What it means |
|---|---|
| Seasonal Offerings | Limited-run coffees sold while the lot lasts |
| Year-Round Offerings | Evergreen menu coffees with a consistent flavour profile |
How the judging works
Two rounds (Good Food Foundation, accessed 2026-07-23):
- Round 1 — home brewing, scored out of 30 points. Judges brew the coffee the way a customer would, not on a lab bench.
- Round 2 — Cupping under Specialty Coffee Association protocols, using the Roasters Guild Roast Evaluation form, to pick three regional winners.
So the GFA does lean on SCA machinery for the taste half, even though its standards page never presents itself as an SCA programme. What it does not do is publish numbers: no per-coffee score appears on the winners list, unlike the 87-and-up cutoffs discussed in Coffee scoring. Across all 19 categories, the 2026 edition drew more than 1,200 entries and produced 242 winning products, all selected blind (Good Food Foundation, accessed 2026-07-23).
2026 coffee winners
From the Good Food Foundation’s own winners list (Good Food Foundation, accessed 2026-07-23):
| Coffee | Roaster | Base |
|---|---|---|
| Ethiopia — Chelbesa Danche | Boxcar Coffee Roasters | Boulder, Colorado |
| Ethiopia Layo Teraga | Driftaway Coffee | Brooklyn, New York |
| Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Banko Chelchele SuperNatural | Drink Coffee Do Stuff | Reno, Nevada |
| Colombia Las Flores Thermal Shock Pink Bourbon | Equator Coffees | San Rafael, California |
| Ethiopia Guji Shakiso Gigesa Natural | Keia & Martyn’s Coffee | Portland, Oregon |
| Organic Ethiopia Gotiti Yirgacheffe Reserve | Linea Caffe | San Francisco, California |
| Rio Dulce Gesha, Cafe 1959, Colombia | Little Waves Coffee Roasters | Durham, North Carolina |
| Las Lajas Double Diamond Anaerobic Natural | Magnolia Coffee | Matthews, North Carolina |
| Ethiopia Gera Estate Anaerobic Natural | Magnolia Coffee | Matthews, North Carolina |
| Gesha Marsella | Mikava | McMinnville, Oregon |
| Ethiopia Guji Kayon Mountain Natural Organic | Noble Coyote Coffee Roasters | Dallas, Texas |
| Suke Quto | Partners Coffee | Brooklyn, New York |
Two things stand out. Ethiopia dominates — seven of the twelve coffees above are Ethiopian, against two Colombians. And the shortlist is a roll-call of processing fashion: anaerobic ferments, thermal shock, Geisha and Pink Bourbon all appear, which is what you would expect from a competition whose Seasonal Offerings class rewards one-off lots. Magnolia Coffee is the only roaster with two 2026 wins on this list.
To verify — how many 2026 coffee winners there were
The research report behind this note cites trade summaries claiming 15 coffees from 13 roasters in 2026, announced on 2 June, and names Crimson Coffee (Ohio) alongside Magnolia as a multiple winner (Tridge; Daily Coffee News via LinkedIn). The foundation’s own winners page returned 12 coffees from 11 roasters and no Crimson entry when checked on 2026-07-23. Both trade links returned HTTP 403 and could not be re-read, and the official page may paginate or filter in ways the fetch did not capture. Treat the 15/13 figure, the June announcement date and Crimson’s 2026 wins as unconfirmed. The twelve coffees in the table above are the ones that appear on the primary source.
2024 coffee winners
To verify — the 2024 roster
The 2024 list below rests on a single trade-press report (Daily Coffee News, 30 April 2024), which returned HTTP 403 when re-fetched on 2026-07-23 and could not be checked against the foundation’s own archive. It is recorded here as a claim, not as verified fact. The same report is the only source for 2024 being the 14th Good Food Awards and for 14 roasters winning 16 awards in coffee. Individual coffee names are not given for most winners, and no origins, altitudes, processing methods, scores or prices appear anywhere in it.
| Roaster | Base | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Speckled Ax Wood Roasted Coffee | Portland, Maine | Two awards |
| Olympia Coffee Roasting Co. | Olympia, Washington | Two awards; its “Little Buddy Blend” was the only blend among the winners |
| Coffee By Design | Portland, Maine | |
| Crimson | Columbus, Ohio | |
| Evans Brothers Coffee | not stated in the report | |
| Firelight Coffee | Atlanta, Georgia | |
| Goodboybob Coffee Roasters | Santa Monica, California | |
| Goshen Coffee Roasters | Edwardsville, Illinois | |
| Joe Bean Coffee Roasters | Rochester, New York | |
| Lightwave Coffee | Los Angeles, California | |
| Linea Caffe | San Francisco, California | |
| Montana Coffee Traders | Whitefish, Montana | |
| Noble Coyote Coffee Roasters | Dallas, Texas | |
| Peach Coffee Roasters | Alpharetta, Georgia |
If that roster holds, Linea Caffe and Noble Coyote are repeat winners across 2024 and 2026 — both appear on the verified 2026 list above.
Where it sits in this wiki
Three notes here already record Good Food Awards:
- Equator Coffees — 2016 (for Finca Sophia’s first harvest, a washed Geisha) and 2026 (Colombia Las Flores Thermal Shock Pink Bourbon). The 2026 win is confirmed on the foundation’s own winners list.
- Finca Sophia — the 2016 win, from the farm’s side.
- Helen Russell — where a conflict over whether Equator was a 2016 winner or merely a finalist is documented.
Note what the GFA never gives you, and what nearly every other note in this wiki turns on: a price and a score. There are no published cupping numbers, no lot IDs, no dollars-per-pound. Its “Fair Trade minimums” floor tells you a winner paid more than $1.40/lb — and nothing more. Set that against Best of Panama or Cup of Excellence, where the whole point is a public auction number. The GFA is a threshold award, not a ranking: you either clear the bar or you don’t, and there is no first place.
To verify — where the foundation is based
The research report describes the Good Food Foundation as San Francisco–based. The foundation’s own about page gives a New York address (99 Wall Street). The organisation grew out of a San Francisco event in 2008, so this may simply be a move rather than an error, but no source consulted states when or whether it relocated.
Related
- Equator Coffees · Helen Russell · Brooke McDonnell · Finca Sophia — the wiki’s existing Good Food Award winners
- Cup of Excellence · Best of Panama · Alliance for Coffee Excellence · Panama Cup — competitions that rank on the cup alone
- Specialty Coffee Association · Cupping · Coffee scoring · Q Grader — the tasting machinery the GFA’s second round borrows
- Rainforest Alliance · C.A.F.E. Practices · Ngäbe-Buglé coffee labour — the sourcing-ethics side
- Geisha · Bourbon · Anaerobic fermentation · Natural process — what the winners are made of
- Klatch Coffee · Angelino’s Coffee · Sey Coffee — other US roasters in this wiki
Official links
- Official site — Good Food Foundation
- Official results — Good Food Awards winners
- Official standards — Good Food Awards coffee category
Sources
- Good Food Foundation — coffee category standards — accessed 2026-07-23
- Good Food Foundation — awards winners — accessed 2026-07-23
- Good Food Foundation — about — accessed 2026-07-23
- Daily Coffee News — Here Are the 2024 Good Food Award Winners for Coffee — returned HTTP 403, 2026-07-23; 2024 roster cited via the research report and flagged unverified
- Tridge — 13 Coffee Roasters Win 2026 Good Food Awards — returned HTTP 403, 2026-07-23; counts flagged unverified
- Daily Coffee News via LinkedIn — 2026 Good Food Awards coffee winners — not fetched (authenticated platform); counts flagged unverified