How we choose

Our editors. Businesses reach us in three ways: our people on the ground point them out, we find them ourselves searching guides and public registers, or they put themselves forward.

From there on the path is the same for all three. Putting yourself forward does not move you ahead.

Four things. They hold for every category, and only the way they apply changes.

1. 01

   Who recognised it before we did

   Guides, awards, public registers, professional rolls. They are the easiest thing to check, because whoever awards a title has a name and a date. They are not required.

2. 02

   What its customers say

   We read public reviews. Consistency over time interests us more than the average: ten enthusiastic reviews in one month say nothing, three years of reviews repeating the same thing do.

3. 03

   What it works with, and how

   Where the raw material comes from, how much of it is transformed on site, what technique that takes. Where there is no physical material, as in services, we look at the competence of whoever does the work.

4. 04

   How long it has been there, and how it relates to its area

   The year it opened, the changes of hands, the craft tied to a place, the role the business has where it stands.

There must be evidence on at least two of the four things we look at. And at least one piece of that evidence must come from outside, not from the business itself.

An example. A bakery with no award at all, which our people saw kneading flour from a mill in its own valley, and whose customers have been writing the same things for five years: it has two pieces of evidence and both come from outside. It goes to verification.

What this rule rules out is the business that only speaks well of itself.

Passing the threshold does not entitle anyone to join. It means we open a verification, and the final decision stays with our editors.

Four sources. Any one of the four counts as outside evidence.

An outside body

A guide, a chamber of commerce, a consortium, a professional roll.

Its customers

When they have spoken in sufficient number and over a long time.

One of our scouts

People who live in the area and tell us what they have seen for themselves. It is the source the others do not have.

Our editors

Documents checked, visits made, materials read with care.

No. No payment opens a verification and no business joins because it has paid.

Those chosen then sign an annual membership. It covers the services they receive: the page on the site, the plaque, the anti-counterfeiting verification code, the presence on the map. Those who do not pass the verification pay nothing, because there is nothing to pay for.

No, and the difference matters. We are not a standards body, nobody has accredited us and we do not attest anyone's conformity to a technical standard.

What we do is editorial work: we look, we check what can be checked, and we say where we know it from.

Anyone reading this page. The criteria are written down, the recognitions we take into account are named one by one with the body that awards them, and for nearly all of them a public register exists where anyone can go and check.

If you find a business in the network that in your view should not be there, write to us. We reopen the verification.

Because a restaurant, a winery and a workshop are not looked at in the same way. The four things we look at stay the same, but the recognitions that count and the evidence we seek change from one trade to another.

Each document names the recognitions of its category, says who awards them and how they are checked, and closes with the list of things that are not enough on their own. They are read here and cannot be downloaded.