A year ago, five San Francisco organizations stood on stage at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce’s 2025 Excellence in Business Awards (EBBIES) when they heard their names called as a winner of their respective award, whether the Excellence in Business, Non-Profit of the Year, or Community Champion to name a few. What happens after the applause fades matters just as much, and we wanted to check in and see how our winners have been doing since they took home an award.
Here’s an update on each of them, and why we think you’ll want a seat when we crown a new class of winners in 2026.
HOK – Excellence in Business
HOK continued to earn recognition across the architecture and design world, with four projects receiving 2025 American Architecture Awards. The firm was also celebrated for its work on new hospitals in the UK and Ireland. Adding to the momentum, HOK was named Best Architecture Practice at the UK Life Sciences Awards.
Fast Company also named HOK the No. 2 Most Innovative Firm in the Workplace category on its 2026 Most Innovative Companies list.
La Cocina – Non-Profit of the Year
La Cocina won the Non-Profit of the Year award for its work helping women, immigrants, and people of color build real, lasting food businesses through affordable kitchen space, training, and mentorship. That mission is still very much in motion. This year, three La Cocina entrepreneurs brought their food to Outside Lands, putting small business owners the organization has supported directly in front of tens of thousands of festival goers.
Snowline – Sustainability Excellence
Snowline picked up the Sustainability Excellence award last year under a different name: VoltAir.ai. Since then, the company has rebranded, a decision rooted in where its work was headed. As its product became smarter and more capable, the name VoltAir.ai was tied to the hardware behind it, not the mission ahead of it.
Snowline refers to the elevation where preservation is permanent, the point where stability begins, and that’s the standard the company is building toward. Its goal isn’t simply to track cargo as it moves. It’s to make sure that cargo, whether food or pharmaceuticals, arrives exactly as it left.
This year, Snowline held a ribbon cutting for its first software defined refrigerated truck, a step toward rebuilding how the cold chain works from the ground up.
Gumbo Social – Small Business of the Year
Gumbo Social won the Small Business of the Year award, and this year the neighborhood favorite kept right on cooking. The team upgraded their kitchen, served up gumbo at Outside Lands, and hosted their annual Seafood Boil in August. They’re also being featured in an upcoming Netflix documentary, and they’re currently raising funds to open for dinner service, a natural next step for a business that’s become part of the fabric of its neighborhood.
Nancy Pelosi – Public Servant of the Year
Nancy Pelosi was honored as Public Servant of the Year, recognizing decades of leadership connecting business and government in service of the region. That award reflects a career built on bringing people together, something San Francisco continues to benefit from.
Holy Stitch! Factory – Community Champion
Holy Stitch! Factory Fellowship took home the Community Champion award, and the organization has kept building on its mission of empowering youth and displaced workers through hands-on training in sewing, screen printing, embroidery, and more.
Given San Francisco’s long history with denim, Holy Stitch! opened a denim school this year inside its own factory, teaching industrial machinery and construction to repairs, fitting, and finishing. It’s the kind of program that turns a skill into a career, and sometimes into a brand of your own.
Meet the Business Professionals Exemplifying Excellence This Year
The Excellence in Business Awards bring together companies that are already on an upward path, and the event itself is where much of San Francisco’s business community crosses paths with them.
That’s what makes EBBIES worth attending each year. It puts you in the same room as the organizations moving the city forward, where a conversation or a connection made that night can matter for years to come.
Tickets for the 2026 Excellence in Business Awards are available to purchase, and if you grab yours in September, you’ll lock in Early Bird pricing. Get your ticket today and be in the room October 13th when we celebrate the next class of San Francisco businesses on the rise.