The Albany Gazette - Podium Coffee Club Launches the Podium Index, the First Leaderboard to Rank America's Coffee Roasters by Competition Results Alone

SEATTLE, WA / ACCESS Newswire / November 3, 2026 / Podium Coffee Club, the subscription coffee service rated a perfect 5.0 by Forbes Vetted and recommended by Wired, CNN Underscored and Bon Appétit, today announced the public launch of the Podium Index, a ranking system that aggregates results from major blind-judged specialty coffee competitions into a single leaderboard.

The problem Podium Index sets out to solve is a familiar one in specialty coffee: thousands of roasters nationwide, dozens claiming "award-winning" status, and no consistent way for coffee lovers to tell which claims are real. The Podium Index answers that by tracking coffee competitions where judges don't know whose coffee they're tasting - removing marketing-speak from the equation entirely.

Podium Index currently tracks results from the U.S. Coffee Championships Roasting competition, Golden Bean Americas, Golden Bean World Series, Good Food Awards (coffee category), and the Global Coffee Awards. Each roaster's total score is a weighted composite of their podium finishes across these events, adjusted for competition significance and recency; a result from this year counts in full, while older wins count for progressively less, reflecting how quickly roasting teams and sourcing relationships can shift in a craft business.

The competitions behind Podium Index do valuable work. Their blind judging gives roasters an unbiased, comparable test of their craft, and Podium Index exists because of it. Until now, each competition has measured roasters on its own. Because Podium Index amalgamates scores for every podium finish across multiple events and years, it rewards roasters who place consistently, not just those with one standout result.

"We built the Podium Index because we wanted an answer we could actually stand behind: not our opinion, not a roaster's own notes, but results from the most credible coffee competitions U.S. roasters compete in," said Sam LaRobardiere, co-founder of Podium Coffee Club.

Forbes Vetted's own testing illustrates the stakes: reviewer Anna Perling called the coffees from Podium Coffee Club's Platinum tier "exceptional, standing out as among the best coffees we tasted," singling out Lamppost Coffee Roasters' Golden Bean World Series-winning Colombian coffee, a blend of two co-ferments from Edwin Noreña, and writing that "drinking this coffee was transcendent."

Other publications have reached similar conclusions. Wired wrote that Podium "is the best way I know to sample the best beans, from the best roasters, all over the country." CNN Underscored's reviewer called a Podium coffee "by far the best coffee I tasted." Bon Appétit called Podium Platinum "a great coffee subscription" for anyone looking to "discover award-winning roasters from across the country."

The Index is free to browse at podiumcoffeeclub.com/pages/podium-index and updates as new competition results are published, typically within days of each event. It also functions as a sourcing filter for Podium's own subscriptions, Podium Gold and Podium Platinum, which source only from roasters competing at this standard.

About Podium Coffee Club

Podium Coffee Club is an independent, non-VC-backed coffee subscription built on a single standard: every roaster in the lineup has stood on the podium at a major U.S. coffee competition, and coffees always ship within 24 hours of roasting.

Podium holds a perfect 5.0 rating and "Best Upgrade Coffee Subscription" title from Forbes Vetted, and has also been applauded by Wired, CNN Underscored, and Bon Appétit.

Media Contact:

Podium Coffee Club
[email protected]

SOURCE: Podium Coffee Club

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

(O.Robinson--TAG)