Sep 18, 2008

Superior Product Honored at Atlanta Market

ATLANTA — AmericasMart Atlanta — home to the nation’s largest gift, home furnishings, area rug and apparel collections—celebrated the best of the gift and gourmet industry during the September 13-15, Atlanta Fall Gift & Home Furnishings Market and the Atlanta Gourmet Market. The September Market featured two distinguished awards: Best of Show—recognizing outstanding visual display in the Gift and Gourmet temporaries—and Best of Atlanta—an annual AmericasMart-exclusive honor—spotlighting superior gourmet products and celebrating achievement in originality, manufacturing and packaging.

Atlanta’s culinary experts sampled and judged dozens of gourmet products, selecting those with distinctive tastes and innovative packaging. For the first time this year, the judges had the opportunity to visit the booths to experience the product on display and interact with the creators and representatives of the product. Previously, judging took place with a blind tasting.

Winners were selected in 12 product categories and were unveiled during the Best of Atlanta reveal on Saturday, September 13, and continued to be on display for the remainder of Market. The 2008 Best of Atlanta winners are:
Best Candy: Bertie County Peanuts – Peanut Brittle
Best Chocolate: Fancy’s Candy Inc. – Sin in a Tin
Best Beverage: Not Yo’ Mama’s Gourmet Food – Bloody Mary Mix
Best Condiment: Oak Leaf at Belmont Specialty Foods LLC – Tomato Basil Sauce
Best Dessert: Charleston Cookie Company – Hummingbird Tart
Best Gourmet Gift: Old World Gourmet – Party in a Pitcher
Best Healthy Food/Organic Product: Splendid Spreads – Salmon Antipasto
Best Jam/Jelly/Preserves/Honey: Cherith Valley – Mango Bread Spread
Best Packaging: Home & Garden Classics, Inc. – Sugah Cakes Classic Pound Cake
Best Extra: Killer Seafood – Killer Seafood Simmerin’ Sauce
Best Snack: Old World Gourmet – Simply Sensational Trail Mix
Best Soup: Gullah Gourmet – Corn Chowder

In addition, AmericasMart honored one individual booth in both the Gift and Gourmet temporary booths for visual display excellence. The 2008 Best of Show winners are:

The Atlanta Gourmet Market: Chrissie Schubert’s Homemade Treats
Atlanta Fall Gift & Home Furnishings Market: Punkydoodle

For more information on AmericasMart Atlanta and its annual markets, please call 1-800-ATL-MART or visit AmericasMart.com.

AmericasMart Atlanta is the largest wholesale marketplace of its kind in the world, and is a leading international market source for a wide variety of consumer goods. It hosts 17 wholesale markets and six Market Wednesdays that annually attract more than 548,000 attendees from every U.S. state and 80 countries.

Retailers attending its markets identify AmericasMart as the gift/home furnishings/area rug wholesale marketplace most important to their business—as compared to all competing U.S. wholesale markets—in independent research conducted by Moore & Symons, Inc.