Judges say: Blue Bus Cultured Foods is Good Food

Good Food awards recognize “truly good food,” meaning food that brings people together to build strong healthy communities. The awards are broken into categories: beer, charcuterie, cheese, chocolate, cider, coffee, confections, honey, oils, pantry, pickles, preserves, and spirits. Blue Bus was competing in the pickle category.

“What we make is fermented, lacto-fermented [products]. Traditionally when people think of pickles they think of just adding vinegar to preserve it. But we’re creating acidity through fermentation as opposed to just adding vinegar, which is acid, that preserves the food,” Franger explained.

Franger and his wife drove down to San Francisco, Calif., at the beginning of January, after being listed as finalist in November, for the awards ceremony, where they were presented with a medal for their submitted pickled products.

“It’s not like a first, second, third, winner. They just take the top scores of that blind taste test and then they rank them based upon the findings of that blind taste test,” noted Franger.

A total of 1,927 entries, competing across 13 categories, were measured against the Good Food awards standards and judged in blind taste tests performed by Good Food judges.

“All three of our submissions won, which is super awesome. I think there was only one other organization in our category that won all three as well,” said Franger.

In order to enter for an award, foods must be made with real ingredients, be local wherever possible, and respect the people of the greater community.

Submissions had to meet a certain criteria to qualify for an award; both taste and sustainability were taken into account when judges analyzed the foods. “They wanted to know where each one of our ingredients comes from, down to like where the farm is that it comes from, and why we chose to get our ingredients from those places. They’re basically promoting businesses that have responsible business practices,” explained Franger.

“It was really fun. There was an overwhelming amount of amazing food,” Franger said referring to the award ceremony.

The addition of the sticker means outside recognition for the quality of Blue Bus products. “It’s becoming a more recognized symbol as the awards happen for longer and longer, so for us it certainly helps it [Blue Bus products] stand out on the shelf just when people realize that it’s an award winning kraut,” said Franger. “If you’re going to buy it, never having tasted it before, seeing that it was an award winner gives it some merit which is really awesome.”

“For us it was just really reassuring,” Franger said, “because we feel like the food that we make is tasty and is special. But to have national recognition that, especially because it’s based upon taste, was really a boost of confidence for us and it was reassuring that what we’re doing is worthwhile and it actually tastes good.”

Since receiving the Good Food Award, Blue Bus has been able to expand its reach to include Whole Foods as a stocker of its tangy, sometimes spicy, fermented goods.

“We’ll probably go again next year, hopefully,” Franger said.