Award-Winning CBD: The Story Behind Urban Roots' Cannabis Cup Wins

You don't get into the CBD business because you want to win awards. You get into it because you believe a particular product or formula deserves to exist. The awards come later, if they come at all. Most don't.

We've been lucky and stubborn enough to take multiple High Times Cannabis Cup placements over the years — including 3rd Place in 2018 for Best Topical (our Face Moisturizer) and 3rd Place in 2019 for our Freeze Cream. This post is the story of those wins, what the competition actually is, and why we keep entering.

What Is the Cannabis Cup?

The High Times Cannabis Cup is the longest-running cannabis industry competition in the United States, dating back to 1988 in Amsterdam. Today it runs in multiple U.S. states across multiple categories — flower, edibles, topicals, tinctures, concentrates, and more.

For CBD specifically, the Cannabis Cup added dedicated categories as the hemp industry grew. Submitters provide product samples that are evaluated by a panel of judges over a several-week period. Judges include industry professionals, dispensary buyers, and product specialists who use a lot of CBD products.

It's not a marketing event. You don't pay for placement. The product wins (or doesn't) based on its merits.

The 2018 Win — Face Moisturizer

Our Face Moisturizer was developed for one reason: a lot of CBD topicals on the market in the mid-2010s were geared toward post-workout muscle care. Big jars, strong scents, designed for elbows and knees. Nobody was building a daily-use facial product with hemp-derived CBD that didn't feel like industrial moisturizer.

So we built one. Lighter texture, formulated for facial skin specifically, infused with hemp CBD. We submitted it to the Cannabis Cup and it took 3rd Place in Best Topical that year.

It's still a flagship product. Available on the Face Moisturizer page.

The 2019 Win — Freeze Cream

The Freeze Cream came from a different problem. Customers were asking us for something with a stronger sensation on application — something that felt active immediately. Cooling-agent topicals were nothing new in sports recovery, but most weren't pairing them with hemp CBD.

We built one. Cooling agents from the menthol family on the front end, hemp CBD throughout, in a non-greasy cream base. 4 oz jar, 500 mg CBD per jar.

Cannabis Cup 2019: 3rd Place again. The Freeze Cream has been one of our best-selling products ever since.

Read more about how Freeze Cream works in our deep-dive on the formula.

Why We Keep Entering Competitions

Three reasons:

1. Independent feedback. Our customers are great and they tell us what they think. But Cannabis Cup judges aren't our customers. They've used hundreds of comparable products. Their evaluation is independent and we listen to it.

2. Industry calibration. The CBD industry moves fast. Five years ago, the bar for "premium CBD topical" was different. Today it's higher. Competitions force us to evaluate where we stand against the current bar.

3. The credibility matters to people who don't know us yet. Cannabis Cup placements aren't paid placements. When a customer is choosing between three CBD brands they've never heard of and one of them has multiple Cannabis Cup placements, that signal carries weight. It should.

What Makes a Winning Product

The judges don't tell you exactly what they're scoring on. But after multiple submissions, the patterns we've noticed:

• Formula coherence. The product has to know what it's trying to do. Vague "wellness" formulas don't win.
• Quality of ingredients. Cheap fillers get caught immediately by experienced judges.
• Texture and sensory experience. A topical that feels nice to use beats one that doesn't, even if both are equally effective.
• Lab transparency. Our products come with third-party COAs available on our Lab Results page. Judges check this stuff.
• Compliance. Products that overpromise or make medical claims get flagged. The strongest entries do their job and let the customer talk about results.

The Other Awards

Beyond the two Cannabis Cup placements, Urban Roots has accumulated 20+ awards across regional and industry-specific competitions over our 8 years in business. The full list is part of our origin story — a Michigan brand competing in a market dominated by larger national players, choosing to build slowly and consistently.

What's Next

We continue to enter competitions when we feel like a product deserves the evaluation. The work between competitions matters more, though. Every batch is third-party tested. Every formula gets reviewed regularly. The handcrafted small-batch process hasn't changed.

FAQ

Where can I see the lab results?
Right here. Every batch has a third-party COA available.

Are the Cannabis Cup-winning products still available?
Yes — both the Face Moisturizer and the Freeze Cream are flagship products and have been continuously produced since their respective wins.

Have the formulas changed?
Minor refinements over the years to ingredient sourcing and consistency, but the core formulas are the same award-winning recipes.

What other categories has Urban Roots entered?
Tinctures, edibles, and pet products in various competitions over the years. Topicals tend to be our most-decorated category.

Bottom Line

Awards aren't why we make CBD products. But when independent judges with no skin in the game evaluate our products against the field and put us in the top three, that's worth being proud of and worth telling our customers about.

Browse our award-winning Topicals collection or read more about our process on the About page.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

About Urban Roots Hemp Co. Urban Roots is an award-winning Michigan CBD brand in business since 2018. Our parent brand and our sister brands Kozmic Gardens (CBD edibles) and Arbor & Shore (CBD topicals) have earned multiple High Times Cannabis Cup wins — including 1st Place finishes in CBD Edibles and CBD Pre-Rolls (2018-2019) and Arbor & Shore Roll-On CBD Oil, plus 2nd and 3rd Place placements for our Body Butter, Freeze Cream, and Face Moisturizer. Every batch is third-party lab tested — see Lab Results. Browse the Urban Roots catalog or read our About page.