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.

cCertifications for restaurants, artisans, caterers, and retailers will take place on a rolling basis.

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 community events in Southern Arizona. Chefs selected for the program complete training on the reasons for Tucson's City of Gastronomy designation, heritage and local ingredients of the region, how to do cooking demonstrations on the road, and how to work with journalists and the media. TCOG chefs have previously traveled to China, Spain, Mexico, Turkey, France, and Italy.

PRESERVING FOOD HERITAGE, FOSTERING COMMUNITY PLACEMAKING, AND BUILDING SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH FOOD

The program presents recipes, oral histories, video interviews, cooking classes, and workshops, all designed to center community voices and ensure ethical, reciprocal documentation and sharing of traditional food knowledge. The program also demonstrates how desert-adapted foods can support climate resilience and facilitates global knowledge exchanges on sustainable, climate-smart heritage cuisines among UNESCO Creative Cities. 

 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. Second-place winners receive $500 each. First- and second-place winners in each category are spotlighted via TCOG’s website, social media, and one or more events. An The 2025 award ceremony will take place on October 18 at the Tucson Meet Yourself Folklife 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 2025 awards will focus on Southern Arizona school and community gardens. Eligible gardens use sustainable growing methods, apply traditional knowledge, involve young people, and share expertise with the community. Those gardens have also existed for at least five years and have sustainable funding. 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.

FREE BUSINESS EDUCATION AND RESOURCES ARE PROVIDED TO LOCAL ENTREPRENEURS AND EARLY-STAGE BUSINESSES USING HERITAGE INGREDIENTS

Presented in partnership with other local organizations and programs supporting Southern Arizona food entrepreneurs. 

AN ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL CELEBRATING AND PRESERVING GASTRONOMIES, HSTORIES, AND FOOD CULTURES OF MAIZE (CORN) IN TUCSON AND ITHER PARTICIPATING UNESCO CREATIVE CITIES OF GASTRONOMY AND FOOD CAPITALS OF THE DELICE NETWORK

Each year, this event starts in Tucson, where maíz has been cultivated for more than 5,000 years, then moves through each of the other participating cities throughout the rest of the year. The cities send chefs to collaborate with local chefs in other cities, brew special maíz beers under the festival label, host traveling exhibits, and engage in other collaborative exchanges. Participating cities also promote the conservation of maíz biodiversity locally and globally and increase awareness about how some traditional maíz varieties and other heritage ingredients can be used to adapt heritage cuisines to climate change. 

The 2025 dates in Tucson will be September 25-28. 

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 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.