Even before airing overseas, Ottawa-based Gusto TV’s original series One World Kitchen has picked up the International “Gold Panda” prize for Most Innovative Lifestyle Show at the Sichuan TV Festival in Chengdu, China.

The award is open to completed productions from anywhere in the world, irrespective of whether the show has aired in China or not.

At this stage, Gusto TV, which produces One World Kitchen in-house, is in talks with a number of platforms in China, said founder Chris Knight. The channel is taking the show to the Asia TV Forum & Market (ATF) in December, where Knight said he hopes to finalize the ongoing negotiations he has for the show across various platforms.

The appetite for global content is driving production ahead of schedule at Gusto, says Knight, who launched the channel two years ago.

“This is a conversation I didn’t think we’d be having for another one or two years. But there’s such a demand for content out there globally that we’ve really accelerated out production schedule because we have to get to a point where we have a critical mass of original Gusto content to push out into the world, as opposed to the programming that we’ve acquired for the Canadian market,” said Knight.

Knight added that while Gusto’s primary focus is on its domestic performance, the channel’s current objective is to launch in foreign markets. With this in mind, the shows are created deliberately with an international approach to food, said Knight, which he hopes will translate to international sales.

One World Kitchen is a show that follows five female cooks with five different culinary perspectives: Thai, Indian, Argentinian, Italian and Japanese.

Gusto TV’s goal is to make 100 hours of original content each year, shooting in HD for the Canadian market and 4K for the international markets. For Asian markets and Germany in particular, added Knight, the appetite for 4K is far greater than domestically. Both One World Kitchen and another Gusto TV series, the millennial-targeted A is For Apple were first announced in March, 2015, just prior to Gusto launching its international distribution arm.