Forecasting trends, participating in the Best Of
Are you an exhibitor on Gourmet Selection? Enter your product in the competition via your exhibitor area. The Best Of label is a guarantee of quality that allows the winners to distinguish their products and establish their reputation in the sector.
The award ceremony will reveal the winners during the show in the Experts' Agora, in front of an audience of professionals and media.
Best Of competition product selection charter - Gourmet Selection
“I have now had the pleasure for the past four years of chairing the judging panel of the Best Of competition at Gourmet Selection, surrounded by passionate industry professionals. We have seen a huge array of quality products pass before us, and each year we have distinguished the crème de la creme of the fine food basket. Many of those who were not fortunate enough to see their products entering this ‘selection of the selection’ want to know what criteria guide our choices, seeking to understand our approach and conform to it. The following short charter offers the merit of presenting the guidelines for our deliberations to which successive judging panels may in turn refer when they judge and compare competing products. Our only desire is to help ‘speciality grocers’ and, through them, end consumers, to access ‘the best of the best’ without having to taste everything, as we taste on their behalf.” Vincent Ferniot, chairman of the judging panel
The choices of the judges are guided by the following criteria:
Quality
While it is highly subjective by nature, the taste criterion is the first judging criterion. To be as objective as possible, the Best Of judging panel accompanying the chairman is made up of sector professionals hailing from a wide range of backgrounds, chosen by the panel chairman and the exhibition’s management team. The collegial nature of tastings is a guarantee of independence and honest choices from among the products entered.
Innovation
With a constantly evolving market, fierce competition between producers and pressing demand from the media, another need in addition to quality is new products. To assess this quality, the judges draw on the selections of previous years and the wide-ranging market knowledge of the judges, all of whom are capable of judging the impact on the public and most importantly whether the product is innovative or not. Having said that, “Concentrate on making it taste good before making it different” remains the guiding principle to earn a place on the winners’ podium.
Singularity
A product can stand out and earn visibility due to many factors that go towards making it unique or, in any case, different. This criterion is different to the previous one, in that it is not necessary to innovate to make a product singular. It must merely stand out from the crowd through a criterion or set of criteria is that make it unique and easily identifiable at first sight.
Naturality
A set of criteria touching on consumers’ desires to eat natural and healthy foodstuffs, both through the ingredients and raw materials used and in the choice of the packaging and its resulting environmental impact. All consumers are increasingly conscious of the need to have the lowest possible impact on the environment and this translate into keener environmental awareness when purchasing their food.
The judges make sovereign decisions and by custom, these four judging criteria do not require justification.