Passions can run so high in choosing winners of a Silver or Gold Plate that time-outs have been called to let members of the selection jury settle back into their indoor voices.
The information shared about the candidates might surprise even their families, coming as it often does from jurors’ personal interactions with the individual. Unknown achievements are brought to light. So, too, are career moments not quite as flattering.
Inside the room where the selection jury chooses the year’s best operator in nine foodservice segments, complete candor is the overriding rule. Equally as important is that nothing shared within the four walls leaks into the outside world. Jurors are even required to sign a nondisclosure pledge.
The goes-no-further rule ensures the jurors—a mix of past plate winners, industry VIPs, and journalists who cover the food-away-from-home business—can deliberate in utter frankness.
Former bosses can offer candid assessments of past employees under consideration, and vice-versa. Operators don’t have to be diplomatic in sizing up a competitor, though those accounts are often far more positive than anything they’d dare say publicly. Recounts of personal experiences with a nominee, and what they say about that person, are routine.
The mandate for discretion isn’t going to be suspended here (full disclosure: This author has served on the jury 27 times.) But appreciating the rigors of the Silver and Gold Plate selection process is crucial to understanding why the honors remain the most prestigious in the food-away-from-home industry.
The jury meeting is the last step in the selection process. Every January or February, a different group of judges is invited to Chicago to choose a Silver Plate winner in up to nine industry sectors. Those honorees become the finalists for the Gold Plate, a designation synonymous with operator of the year.
All are selected via a secret ballot. In the Gold Plate round, the votes are collected in a locked box that’s then given to an outside firm for tabulation.
The result remains unknown to jury and Silver Plate winners alike until the Gold Plate winner is announced. Even the administrator of the awards, the IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, is unaware of who’ll be presented with the Gold at the trade group’s annual gala, scheduled this year for May 17 at the Grand Hall of Chicago’s Union Station. (Click here for the list of this year’s honorees. Click here for information on attending.)
The selection process begins months earlier when IFMA announces it will start accepting written nominations for the next year’s Silver and Gold Plates. Most of the submissions will come from industry suppliers looking to spotlight the executive of a client company whose leadership clearly stands out. An individual can be nominated by multiple vendors, and often are.
The forms ask for a significant download of information about the nominees, from how many meals their operations serve to how much each contestant has given back to the industry and their communities.
The submissions typically number more than 100. That large field is then winnowed down to a handful of finalists in each of the nine major segments that make up the operator community.
Three encompass so-called commercial restaurants (Chain Full Service, Chain Limited Service, Independent Restaurants/Multi-concept Groups) and four represent onsite foodservice sectors (Colleges & Universities; Elementary and Secondary Schools; Healthcare; and Business & Industry/Foodservice Management.) Two are for hybrids that reflect the blurring of lines within the food-away-from-home business (Grocery, Convenience & Specialty Retail, and Travel & Leisure.)
Each submission is reviewed by members of the Gold & Silver Plate Society, an elite group composed of past winners. They pare down the submissions within the segment for which they won their award, usually to about three finalists.
The written nominations for the finalists are then provided to members of the jury before they meet face-to-face in January or February. For reasons that baffle even meteorologists, that half-day get-together invariably coincides with the sort of snowstorm or arctic blast that has made Chicago infamous.
The jury discusses each of the finalists category by category, with one judge assigned responsibility for leading a detailed analysis of the candidates. Other jurors are invited to share their perspectives and assessments. All are encouraged to draw on their firsthand knowledge of the finalists, be it from having interviewed the nominee for a story or a juror having worked with a nominee early in their careers. In more than one instance, a jury member had shared living quarters with a finalist back in those trying early days.
After the discussions of all the finalists in a category, the jury votes via secret ballot on who should win the segment’s Silver Plate. That winner is revealed to the group.
The jury has the leeway to hold off on naming a winner in a category if it agrees that no nominee is deserving of the award.
Once every Silver Plate winner has been selected, the jury focuses intently on which of those honorees deserves recognition as the best of the best, the winner of the Gold Plate. To facilitate the debate, jurors may be asked to serve as an advocate for a particular candidate and make the case for that nominee being chosen for the top award.
The jury then votes on who should be honored with the Gold Plate. The members won’t know who the winner is until the banquet in May.
Although IFMA officials are present during the jury meeting, they do not partake in the voting.
The Silver Plate winners are announced annually at the Chain Operators EXchange, IFMA’s annual spring meeting.
This year’s class of Silver Plate winners is already known. Who’ll be taking home the Gold?
Click here to reserve a seat and find out.
As Managing Editor for IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, Romeo is responsible for generating the group's news and feature content. He brings more than 40 years of experience in covering restaurants to the position.