The Specialty Food Association just named our founder its 2026 Citizenship honoree, and honestly? It's about time.

Our founder and CEO, Starr Edwards, just took home the 2026 Specialty Food Association (SFA) Leadership Award for Citizenship. The SFA hands this one out every year to a single specialty food leader who's out there actually improving people's lives, through ethical business or philanthropy or both. This year, that's Starr.

The award lands in the same year our family-owned almond-based dip brand crossed 15,000+ retail locations across the US, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and Australia. But the thing the SFA actually called out wasn't the retail footprint. It was the people part. The stuff Starr's been building since she was selling sauce out of a folding table at the San Diego farmers' market: Bitchin' Givin', Bitchin' Kids, the community partnerships we run out of our Carlsbad headquarters every single quarter.

In Starr's words:

“Being recognized for citizenship means the world to me, because it's the work I care most about. Bitchin' Sauce has always been about more than what's in the tub. It's about taking care of people, those inside our company and out in our community." - Starr Edwards, Founder & CEO, Bitchin' Sauce

So what is the SFA Citizenship Award, exactly?

The Specialty Food Association is the trade group for the US specialty food industry, and every year they hand out six Leadership Awards across categories like Equity & Opportunity, Vision & Sustainability, Outstanding Buyer, Next Generation Leader, Volunteer of the Year, and Citizenship.

The Citizenship one is the people award. It's not about the product. It's not about sales. It's about a leader who improves lives, who runs an ethical operation, who actually gives back in a way that holds up to scrutiny.

This year, it went to Starr.

Who is Starr Edwards?

If you don't know Starr's story yet, here's the short version.

In 2010, Starr was a new mom in Carlsbad, California with a second-hand blender her husband Luke had gifted her and a single almond-based dip recipe she'd been making for her family. She wanted to sell something at the San Diego farmers' market. She brought vegan pies. She also brought a few jars of the sauce, kind of as an afterthought.

The pies didn't sell. The sauce sold out. Starr pivoted on the spot, and that pivot turned into Bitchin' Sauce.

Fifteen years later, the company she started at that folding table is still majority family-owned, still bootstrapped, still no outside investors, and now lives in over 15,000 retail locations including Costco, Whole Foods Market, Target, Kroger, and Sprouts. Starr, Luke, and their five kids are still at the center of the operation.

Most CPG founders, by the time they hit this kind of scale, have handed the company over to someone wearing a suit. Starr didn't. The thing she's actually proud of, the thing that won her this award, is that she's still building the company around the people inside it.

What Starr is being recognized for

The award isn't vague. It's pointing at a real body of work. Here's some of it.

Bitchin' Givin', or, giving back with receipts

Bitchin' Givin' is our brand's philanthropic arm. We funnel funding, in-kind donations, and employee volunteer hours into community organizations in our backyard Southern California and Nationwide. The team doesn't just write checks and call it a day. They show up.

A few of the partnerships from the last 18 months:

Bitchin' Givin' officially launched in 2020, during our 10-year anniversary. Starr's logic was simple: we'd hit a moment of real momentum, and the only thing that felt right was to point some of it outward. That's been the operating mode ever since.

Bitchin' Kids, or, why no one here has to pick between their kid and their paycheck

Starr also built one of the more unusual workplace benefits in this whole industry: Bitchin' Kids. The program reimburses employees up to $7,500 a year for daycare, preschool, day camps, and nanny services.

It started in 2019 as on-site childcare at the Carlsbad headquarters. Bitchin' parents could literally bring their kids to work with them. When the team went mostly remote, Starr didn't kill the program. She rebuilt it into a reimbursement model so it'd actually be useful for people working from home.

For context: fewer than 13% of US private-industry workers have access to childcare benefits through their employer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most CPG startups in our category offer zero.

Starr's been saying the same thing about this for fifteen years: nobody should have to choose between caring for their kids and earning a living. Bitchin' Kids is just what that belief looks like when it shows up on a benefits sheet.

Service is on the calendar, not on a press release

We give paid Volunteer Time Off. For years we ran community activations out of the Bitchin' Beach Club. Hosting organizations that serve the underserved; trauma survivors, foster families, refugees, homeless.. We do team-based service days like assembling kits, shopping for foster families, manning blood drives, and participating in community clean-up efforts.

None of this is a campaign. It's just what we do, every quarter, on purpose. The Citizenship award is for the people who'd do this work whether anyone was watching, and Starr's been doing it since long before there was anyone watching.

Why this one matters

The specialty food industry is in this weird moment where everyone's trying to figure out how to grow a brand without losing the soul of it. Most companies in our category started small, with a founder who knew every employee's name. Most of them lose that the second they cross a certain revenue line.

Starr didn't.

The SFA picking her for Citizenship is, basically, a public co-sign on a different way of doing this. Childcare isn't a recruiting line, it's a structural commitment. Community giving isn't a marketing line item, it's a department. Volunteer time isn't unpaid, it's on the clock. Family isn't a brand value on a website, it's the actual reason this whole thing exists.

If that sounds idealistic, fine. It also happens to work. We're still majority family-owned, still bootstrapped, and the team is still here.

What's the next Bitchin’ move?

Starr isn't slowing down. Not even a little.

The next chapter of Bitchin' Sauce is already in motion. We're expanding out of the dip aisle into a full healthy snacking platform: Bitchin' Chips (tortilla chips made with California almond oil), Bitchin' Bean Dips, Bitchin' Salsacados (a first-of-their-kind refrigerated avocado salsa), and Bitchin' Organics, our certified-organic, soy-free line for folks who need a soy-free option. The cookbook, Sauced: 30 Totally Bitchin' Bowls, is also live in our online shop.

Bitchin' Givin' is scaling right alongside all of it. More service days. More partnerships with Olive Crest, the San Diego Blood Bank, Oceanside Homeless Rescue, and other Southern California organizations doing the real work. More moments where our team gets to actually live the brand values together instead of just printing them on a poster.

The award is a milestone. The work is the reason behind it all.

Congrats, Starr. SFA-certified Bitchin'. We always knew.

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