The community
Good Food
Ambassadors
When you buy food directly from the person who made it — at a farm, a market stall, a small producer's door — something simple and profound happens. You look them in the eye. You hear their story. You trust what they tell you, and they trust you with something they made. That exchange is as old as food itself.
Trade is too. Humans have always moved food across distances, cultures, and languages. Spices from the East, salt across deserts, wine along rivers. Every great food culture in history was shaped by movement — by ingredients, techniques, and people crossing borders and mixing with what they found on the other side. Food cultures travel with people. People travel for food. Diasporas carry their cuisines with them and transform the places they arrive. Long and complex supply chains are not the enemy of good food. They are part of what makes it possible. Isolation is the death of progress. Good food has no borders.
What changes when supply chains grow longer is visibility. The farmer who grew the grain, the family who pressed the oil, the fisherman who pulled the catch — they are still there. Their work, their territory, their craft is still in that product. It is just harder to follow. The original trust between maker and eater gets spread thinner across more hands, more miles, more languages.
The web can make this worse — an overwhelming flood of claims, labels, and noise where it is hard to know what to believe. But it can also do something else entirely. It can be a place to connect with people who share the same curiosity. To find fellow travellers asking the same questions about where food comes from, how it travels, what it does to the planet, to our bodies, to the communities and cultures around us.
Good Food Ambassador is that place. A directory that brings together what is already findable — origins, producers, methods, journeys. And a community of people working to understand it better: growers, makers, chefs, traders, eaters, researchers — anyone, anywhere along the chain, who believes that understanding food is one of the most human things we can do.
Good Food Ambassadors are the people keeping that original trust alive — across every distance, every border, every supply chain food travels to reach a table.
Growers & Makers
Eaters & Cooks
Traders & Movers
Chefs & Hosts
Are you one of them?
If you grow, make, move, research, cook, or simply care deeply about food — this community is for you. Get in touch and tell us what you do and where you are.
Join the community →The people
Giovanni Quaratesi
Olive Oil Expert · Geographical Indications Specialist · Private Label Programs · Educator · New York City
Food professional, educator, and one of the founders of Good Food Ambassador. Based in New York City, Giovanni specialises in extra virgin olive oil, Geographical Indications (PDO/PGI), and private label program development — working at the intersection of international trade policy and retail procurement across Europe, the Mediterranean, and North America. He lectures, advises, and helps organisations build honest, traceable food programs.
GFA focus: Oils & Condiments · Geographical Indications
Riccardo Astolfi
Food & Beverage Innovation Strategist · Bologna, Italy
Over twenty years at the intersection of food culture, fermentation, and product innovation — working with cooperatives, organic producers, startups, and food communities across Italy and beyond. Riccardo writes Gastrocene and No/Lo Bolo, two newsletters that treat alcohol-free drinking as a gastronomic category in its own right. He researches, tastes, and thinks about what good drinking can mean on its own terms.
GFA focus: Low & No Alcohol
Vigil Yangjinqi Yu
Packaging & Circular Economy Specialist · Plastics Policy Expert · Spain
Vigil brings a background in plastics policy and the circular economy to Good Food Ambassador's evaluation of packaging — the layer of a product's story that's often the least examined. She currently serves as Senior Program Officer for Plastics Policy and Markets at Verra, where she navigates international and regional policy landscapes and identifies market opportunities to catalyze investment in circular solutions for plastics. Previously, she spent years at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, managing a cross-sector stakeholder network across China and facilitating dialogue between policymakers, industry leaders, and researchers to advance circular economy development. Her expertise spans plastics, food systems, and science communication for sustainability. She holds a Master of Science in Industrial Ecology from Leiden University, TU Delft, and Chalmers University, through the Erasmus Mundus program.
GFA focus: Packaging & Circular Design
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