Golden State Foods Chairman's Challenge Award

Golden State Foods Doles Out Awards: Opelika Plant Repeats for Top Honors

March 14, 2023

Company’s Chairman’s Challenge Award recognizes top plant annually for performance in people, quality, growth, financial results and ESG metrics.

Andy Hanacek

Golden State Foods (GSF) recently celebrated the 2022 Chairman’s Challenge Award winner, GSF’s Opelika, Alabama Protein Products manufacturing facility, a repeat winner and only the second facility in GSF history to win the company’s highest honor for two consecutive years. GSF has given the prestigious award annually for 23 years to recognize one plant’s exemplary performance in the areas of people, quality, growth, financial results, and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG).

According to the company, Opelika’s 2022 award-earning accomplishments include: performing to the highest standards in quality audits conducted internally, externally, and with customers; successfully supporting customer demand, while overcoming supply chain challenges; servicing customers through innovative solutions that increase equipment efficiencies; excelling in cost management; delivering financial results; improving associate experience survey scores; earning an industry safety award; and sustaining active GSF Foundation associate participation and community involvement.

In addition to its second consecutive Chairman’s Challenge Award, the Opelika team earned GSF’s 2022 Quality Focus Award and Safety Excellence Award, as well as its third consecutive GSF “Best in Class” Platinum Award in the food processing category. Comprising the finalists for Chairman’s Challenge, the company’s annual “Best in Class” awards honor large facilities (Platinum Awards) and small facilities (Diamond Awards) in distribution and food processing.

For 2022, GSF Fresh! China won the “Best in Class” Diamond Award in the food processing category for its third consecutive year. The distribution category winners include first-time honoree, Quality Custom Distribution (QCD) Chicago West, for the 2022 “Best in Class” Platinum Award and another repeat winner in its category, QCD Phoenix, Arizona, for the 2022 “Best in Class” Diamond Award.

About the Author

Andy Hanacek | Senior Editor

Andy Hanacek has covered meat, poultry, bakery and snack foods as a B2B editor for nearly 20 years, and has toured hundreds of processing plants and food companies, sharing stories of innovation and technological advancement throughout the food supply chain. In 2018, he won a Folio:Eddie Award for his unique "From the Editor's Desk" video blogs, and he has brought home additional awards from Folio and ASBPE over the years. In addition, Hanacek led the Meat Industry Hall of Fame for several years and was vice president of communications for We R Food Safety, a food safety software and consulting company.