Specialty Food Magazine

Experts to Blindly Taste sofi Entries Judging for the Specialty Food Association's 2021 sofi Awards will begin on April 12 and run through May 7. For the second year, the SFA has partnered with the Rutgers Food Innovation Center for logistics management, and for the first time, judging. A panel of five expert judges at Rutgers FIC will blindly evaluate each product. Entries in general categories will be judged for their taste (70 percent of overall score), which includes flavor, appearance, texture, and aroma, and ingredient quality (30 percent), with factors such as the necessity of additives or artificial ingredients, and the creativity of ingredients used, taken into account. Products vying for a New Product Award must have been introduced to the U.S. market after March 1, 2020 and before October 1, 2020. These entries will be judged according to taste (60 percent of overall score), which includes flavor, appearance, texture, and aroma; ingredient quality (30 percent), including the necessity of any additives and artificial ingredients, and the creativity of ingredients used; and innovation (20 percent), with factors such as whether the product delivers an unexpected culinary experience, its creativity, and whether it is "on trend," being considered. As part of an effort to keep the program competitive, the SFA has eliminated the Bronze statue from this year's awards program. Entries made in the general categories will vie for Gold and Silver Awards. There will also be a New Product Award winner in each of the general categories. In years past, only a single Product of the Year Award had been given to the highest scoring general categories product. As the judging criteria for general entries differs from that of New Product entries, a second Product of the Year Award for New Product has been added to the program. The sofi New Product and Gold and Silver Award winners will be announced in early May. The Product of the Year Award winners will be revealed on May 11 at 10:45 a.m. EST during Specialty Food LIVE! More information about sofi Awards can be found here. SFA Grows Infinite Aisle Member Benefit The Specialty Food Association is building participation in its Infinite Aisle member benefit. The e-commerce marketplace, which works as an extension of the Fancy Food Show discovery experience, is designed to allow SFA product qualified members to make buyer-seller connections and sell their products. Hundreds of SFA maker members and thousands of their SKUs have been loaded into the system, according to Leo Squatrito, vice president of events and member development, SFA. "As our members are onboarding into the program, we are creating a truly Infinite Aisle of products to be made available to thousands of retailers through our distributor partners and the SFA's marketplaces," he says. "Best of all, Infinite Aisle is a free SFA member benefit." When a retail buyer purchases maker products through a distributor on Infinite Aisle, the products are shipped directly from the maker to the retailer at no cost to the maker. Because distributors don't have to warehouse these items, there's no limit to how many SFA member products they can offer to their retail customers. Makers can assign product attributes to their offerings and retail buyers and distributors can search Infinite Aisle by product category, subcategory, attributes such as keto or low-fat, ownership such as women- or veteran-owned businesses, and for sofi Award winning products, for instance. Buyers seeking local products can sort makers based on their distance from the store. SFA has teamed up with Specialty Food Partners, which facilitates the platform and brings its specialty food distributor partners to the product marketplace. SFA's distributor members are also being onboarded with Infinite Aisle. The Infinite Aisle platform will allow food makers who are transactional on the marketplace to make direct sales during Specialty Food LIVE!, taking place May 10-14. Buyers will be able to purchase their products by accessing a "buy now," button in their digital booth. More information about Infinite Aisle can be found here. Œ– SPECIALTY FOOD SPECIALTYFOOD.COM ASSOCIATION NEWS

• Cover
• COV2
• 30_Spotlight-Condiments
• COV3