MAD PRIEST NAMED GOOD FOOD AWARDS FINALIST!

Wait What?!

Mad Priest is thrilled to announce that we have been named one of the 2022 Good Food Awards 25 Coffee Finalists alongside the best coffee roasters in the county! Our Yemenia Bait Alal Special Reserve Coffee met all of their responsible production criteria, in addition to being a top scorer in the August Blind Tasting amongst a pool of almost 2,000 entries in the coffee category. We’re so proud of each member of our team and how we’ve worked hard for this achievement. 

As a Finalist, we are also taking part in the first-ever Good Food Awards Finalists Pop Up Shop, a two-week long e-commerce shop, showcasing all the Finalists, which goes through the end of November. Click here to shop our *exculsive* Yemenia coffee box at the GFA online shop (1 Yemenia Bait Alal + 1 Yemenia Abdo Yahya + branded wooden box). 

OR Click here to purchase a bag of our new Yemenia Abdo Yahya that we got in this year’s ‘Best of Yemen’ Auction with Qima Coffee and Alliance for Coffee Excellence. ⁠

From the Good Food Awards website, “Each January the Good Food Awards presents the nearly 200 Winners: the exceptional food crafters who top the charts in a Blind Tasting and meet the environmental and social responsibility standards of the Good Food Awards. Over 2,000 entries from all 50 states are submitted each year.”

And our coffee submission to GFA from Yemen has a pretty cool story behind it as well. 

* * *

Last fall, we made a bold move and bid on a lot of the newly discovered coffee mother species “Yemenia” in the “Best of Yemen” 2020 Auction. The auction was in partnership with Qima Coffee in Yemen and Alliance for Coffee Excellence and drew some of the biggest names in coffee from around the world to pay upwards of $140 per pound for this incredible new coffee species. We took this risk by purchasing some of the world’s most expensive coffee, because we wanted to take a stand to help Yemeni farmers in the midst of the ongoing humanitarian crisis there, and as well as raise awareness for Yemenia, called “the coffee discovery of the century”. 

And we did just that. 

 Not only did we quickly sell all of our Yemenia coffee around the holiday season, we began a relationship with Qima Coffee which extended further to help Qima Foundation with their big “Amal Yemen” event-turned-movement in 2020. And Mad Priest was invited to join the prestigious international jury of coffee professionals to judge the coffees from Yemen to be in the 2021 Best of Yemen Auction. 

So our Yemenia Bait Alal coffee isn’t just a revolutionary coffee that placed in the finalists of the Good Food Awards. (And yeah, we’re pretty excited about that.) It is also a symbol of the relationship we’ve built with Qima Coffee and the incredible work they are doing in Yemen investing in coffee farmers, the future of coffee, and the future of the country. This achievement is a massive win for Mad Priest, but even more, it’s a win for Yemen. 

(Yemen images from Qima Coffee)