Golden State Foods (GSF) presented the company’s highest honor, the Chairman’s Challenge Award, to the 2023 winner, GSF Fresh! Guangzhou, China, during its Global Leadership Conference in San Diego on February 22, 2024. Pictured from left to right: Brian Dick, GSF President and CEO; Campbell Cooper, GSF Corporate Vice President and President, International Business Group; Tracy Li, GSF China Finance Director; and Conrad Wetterau, GSF Board Chairman.
IRVINE, Calif., (February 27, 2024) – Last week, Golden State Foods (GSF) presented the 2023 Chairman’s Challenge Award to the GSF Fresh! Guangzhou, China Produce Products team. A celebrated 24-year tradition and annual recognition of the outstanding operational performance by its leading facility team, the prestigious award recognizes the GSF Fresh! China team’s exemplary results in the areas of people, safety, quality, financial results, assured supply to customers and community engagement.
“Congratulations to the entire team of GSF Fresh! China associates on earning the Chairman’s Challenge Award for their truly spectacular performance in all areas of produce processing operations,” said Brian Dick, president and chief executive officer, Golden State Foods. “This impressive and deserving team has consistently performed among GSF’s top operational facilities for the past three years, and their most recent achievements have contributed significantly to our company’s overall success in 2023.”
Honoring GSF Fresh! China’s numerous 2023 accomplishments, Brian Dick co-presented the Chairman’s Challenge Award with GSF Chairman Conrad Wetterau during the company’s annual awards ceremony at GSF’s Global Leadership Conference in San Diego. Among the highlighted results announced during the award presentation, the winning facility team maintained the highest standards in quality audits conducted internally, externally, and with customers; provided assured product supply to its customer supply chain; demonstrated high safety performance; excelled in cost management; achieved financial results; earned favorable associate experience survey scores; and inspired associates’ community involvement.
“It’s unbelievable and great exciting news to me and to our GSF Fresh! China team—and also a great encouragement to our whole GSF team in China,” said Michael Hu, Group Vice President, Operations – GSF China. “I’d like to thank our team for their hard work and great efforts in 2023. And great thanks to the leadership from the International Business Group and special thanks to all the continuous support and trust from the Corporate team.”
In addition to its Chairman’s Challenge honors, the GSF Fresh! China team received GSF’s 2023 Quality Focus Award and its fourth consecutive GSF “Best in Class” Diamond 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 2023, GSF’s Opelika, Alabama Protein Products team won the “Best in Class” Platinum Award in the food processing category for its fourth consecutive year. The distribution category winners include first-time honoree, Quality Custom Distribution (QCD) Charlotte, for the 2023 “Best in Class” Platinum Award and a three-peat winner in its category, QCD Phoenix, Arizona, for the 2023 “Best in Class” Diamond Award.