Programs

if this is your first time applying, start here

Applications for Certifications of restaurants, artisans, caterers, and retailers are now accepted on a rolling basis. Businesses are certified based on the work in these categories:
Supporting the Local Food Economy • Keeping Our Food Heritage Alive
Community-Minded Business Practices • Sustainability Leadership

TCoG Certified Restaurants, Artisans, Caterers, and Retailers are recognized for a commitment to localism, heritage ingredients, sustainability, responsible business practices, and giving back to the community.

TCoG certification is a great way to increase visibility of your food business! Certified businesses will be specially promoted by TCoG, Tucson Foodie, Visit Tucson, Pima County Attractions and Tourism, Southern Arizona Attractions Alliance, and other partners. In addition, certified businesses will be able to participate in TCoG special events, such as the annual international Pueblos del Maiz Fiesta.

Starting January 2023, certifications for restaurants, artisans, caterers, and retailers will take place on a rolling basis. You can apply at any time, and applications will be reviewed by the TCoG Board by the end of each quarter. If you are interested in becoming certified, fill out this short interest form to learn whether you are eligible to apply.

If you are informed that you meet the eligibility criteria, you will be invited to fill out the online form for your business category.

Applications: artisan | caterer | Restaurant | retailer

If you are already certified and need to apply for recertification, please fill out the recertification form:

Recertification forms: Restaurant | Artisan

 TCoG-trained local chefs teach southern Arizona's food heritage and new ways to cook with traditional ingredients at international events and in our community.

Tucson is part of an international network of UNESCO-designated Creative Cities of Gastronomy. As the non-profit organization overseeing this designation, TCoG is invited to send chefs to our sister cities around the world every year and share Tucson's food heritage abroad. Chef Ambassadors also participate in events here in the Southern Arizona community. Chefs selected for the program complete a training on the reasons for Tucson's City of Gastronomy designation, heritage and local ingredients of the region, and how to work with journalists and the media. TCoG chefs have previously traveled to China, Spain, Mexico, Turkey, and France.

TCoG currently has a cohort of eight chef ambassadors: Sarah Lamberth, Ryan Clark. Travis Peters, Devon Sanner, Kelzi Bartholomaei, Roderick LeDesma, Wendy Gauthier, Obadiah Hindman. Applications for the next cohort of Chef Ambassadors will open in Spring 2024, and will start training in Fall 2024.

 Southern Arizona people and organizations preserving our borderlands food heritage at home and GROWERS CREATING A POSITIVE FOOD FUTURe

TCOG annually recognizes local Food Heroes with awards in the following categories. First-place winners in each category will receive a cash award of $1,500 to support their continued efforts. First- and second-place winners in each category will be spotlighted via TCOG’s website, social media, and one or more events. An award ceremony will take place at Kennedy Park on April 13 during the Pueblos del Maíz festival.

 Food Visionary Award

The Food Visionary Awards are a partnership with ¡Si Charro! to recognize Southern Arizonans who help us reimagine our relationships with food and demonstrate creative paths to a positive food future. The 2024 awards will focus on Southern Arizona farmers and gardeners who use sustainable growing methods, apply traditional knowledge, conserve heritage crops, involve young people, and share expertise with the community. Nominees must meet more than one of these criteria.

Jim Griffith Foodways Keeper Award

The Foodways Keeper Awards are a partnership with the Southwest Folklife Alliance to recognize Southern Arizona non-professional home cooks and food artisans who are helping to keep our food traditions alive through the continued use of heritage ingredients and techniques unique to this region and are sharing their traditional food knowledge with the community. This award is in honor of anthropologist and folklorist Jim Griffith (1935-2021) and his longtime support for home cooks who have sustained the food heritage and culinary traditions of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands.

Nominations will be open until 9:00 PM, March 31.

Nominations will be reviewed by a committee and announced in early April. If you have any questions, please contact us at tucsoncog@gmail.com.

Free business education and resources are provided to local entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses using heritage ingredients.

TCoG's The Winter/Spring 2023 Business of Heritage Foods Series is presented in partnership with the University of Arizona FORGE program, and will take place on the second Thursday of each month from January-April 2023. Find out more and register here.

For past workshops TCoG has partnered with Startup Tucson and the UA McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship. TCoG also provides food business resources at the UA FORGE center at 44 N. Stone Ave, on Thursdays from 10am-12pm. For more information on FORGE's other Thursday events, please click here.

 A month-long, bilingual, multi-national festival celebrates the gastronomies, histories, and food cultures of maize in Tucson and other UNESCO Cities of Gastronomy and Délice Network cities.

New in 2023, the Pueblos del Maiz Fiesta will include a family-friendly celebration at Kennedy Park and a crossover event connecting with the Agave Heritage Festival and Tucson International Mariachi Conference. Read more about last year's festival here

For more info, visit the Pueblos del Maiz website

 An ongoing project in partnership with the International Traditional Knowledge Foundation documents the ingredients, recipes, and stories of knowledge keepers of iconic​​ breads of cities within the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.​

Are you a baker, a miller, or a farmer? Join the Breads of the Creative Cities 2023 project! Promoted by the Creative Knowledge Foundation in partnership with Tucson City of Gastronomy, BoCC highlights the bread making traditions of a community and offers a way of sharing recipes and supporting the farmers, millers, and bakers of the UNESCO Creative Cities. Find out more about the project and register here.

Collaborative international exchanges and research explore the potential roles of heritage ingredients in our food future, and how diets and heritage cuisines can be adapted for increased climate-change resilience and health.

Our Chef Ambassadors teach the public about our heritage foods already adapted to the high temperatures and aridity of the Sonoran Desert, and how they could become more important food sources for us in the future and could help feed other communities around the world projected to shift to climates similar to our current climate.

TCoG has also collaborated on the Tasting Tomorrow project to present cooking demonstrations in Tucson and other UNESCO Cities of Gastronomy showing how iconic traditional dishes of those cities can be reimagined and kept alive during a hotter future by substituting ingredients from Tucson and other currently hot regions.