Built by Bees wins 2022 sofi Gold

Celebrating Our Sofi Gold Award: Built By Bees 2022

Atlanta, Georgia, May 09, 2022 — Built by Bees, Georgia specialty food producer, is pleased to announce their Bee Razzled Honey Shrub was selected winner of the 2022 sofi Gold award in the Alcoholic Beverages and Cocktail Mixes category.

Their 20th food award in five years, the coveted Specialty Food Association sofi Gold medal award was tops in a challenging Alcoholic Beverages and Cocktail Mixes category. Here is the full list of the 2022 Sofi award winners from this years Specialty Food Association competition. This years 2022 sofi awards were judged at the Food Innovation Center at Rutgers University.

“We are thrilled to receive the prestigious sofi award in a highly competitive product category.” said Tim Haratine, president at Built by Bees. “The Bee Razzled Honey Shrub uses only raw ingredients, omitting raw sugars, preservatives and additives. “We find the highest quality raw ingredients to make our products unique and tasty. Our customers have found Bee Razzled excellent in cocktails, mocktails or as a food complement.”

About Built by Bees

Built by Bees is a leading gourmet honey products producer headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.  Founded in 2015 by Tim and Margaret Haratine, the two established the Built by Bees brand by initially selling at local farmers’ markets with a clean and healthy line of unique, high quality honey products. Over time, their brand expanded to include whipped and infused honeys, honey vinegars, honey shrubs and honey nut butters.

Their focus remains on excellent customer service, innovative product development and beautiful packaging. While the company continues to build its on-line customer base; they actively partner and grow with retail customers across the US. As winners of 20 prestigious awards over the last five years, Built by Bees is currently one of the top awarded specialty gourmet food companies in the country.

About the sofi Awards

The Specialty Food Association is the world’s largest member association dedicated to the advancement of specialty and gourmet foods and the industry as a whole, The sofi awards is nearing 50 years of honoring the top specialty foods worldwide in their annual gourmet food competition. sofi stands for “specialty outstanding food innovation”.

Blind Tasting

Entries were judged strictly on a blind basis—without packaging, pricing, or any brand identification. SFA has partnered with Rutgers Food Innovation Center in Bridgeton, NJ for judging and logistics management, bringing additional depth in food industry expertise to the competition.

Expert Judges

Seasoned food professionals serve as judges, including chefs, culinary instructors, recipe developers, food journalists and specialty food buyers who are experts in particular categories such as cheese, oil, chocolate, coffee, etc.

Judges have come from Food Network, Kroger, Whole Foods Market, The Fresh Market, Eataly, Food & Wine Magazine, FreshDirect, Kings Food Markets, Williams-Sonoma, Union Square Hospitality Group, UNFI, DPI Specialty Foods, and more.

Tasting & Evaluation

The judges work independently in blind-tasting sessions to evaluate each product based on a set of judging criteria. Each judge marks a score for each criteria (on a scale of 1 to 5) and the percentages for the criteria are automatically applied. The final score for an entry is the average of all the judges’ scores for that product resulting in a score between 1.00 and 5.00 points.

Elderberry Fortress and Blue Sage Honey Shrub were two of 130 winners selected from nearly 1,500 entries across 49 product categories. Products were judged in an anonymous sampling. These included measurements for taste – including flavor, appearance, texture and aroma – ingredient quality, and innovation. The sofi judging was held at the prestigious Rutgers Food Innovation Center in April following strict safety guidelines.