We all chipped in to help our favorite local spots when the food and beverage industry was on the brink of extinction, but Lindsey Brown didn’t stop, even as dining rooms filled back up. A PR guru and true champion of Houston’s food scene, Lindsey founded Southern Smoke Foundation (SSF) in 2015 with her husband, James Beard Award-winning Chef Chris Shepherd.
Under Lindsey’s leadership as executive director, SSF has provided over $12.3 million to food and beverage (F+B) workers in need and has offered more than 5,100 no-cost counseling sessions to F+B workers struggling with mental health. Please welcome our newest FACE of the South, Lindsey Brown of Southern Smoke Foundation!
Tell us about your gravitation toward food and hospitality.
I went to college in Austin and majored in PR. After working at several agencies, I did PR for the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, promoting the city for 10 years. I helped launch a program called Where the Chefs Eat Culinary Tours, where chefs paired up and took 16 people on a bus to the places they eat on their days off … the places that inspire their menus.
We did that one Sunday a month for five years, and it really helped people outside the city understand Houston because it’s so big and so diverse. We’re not all steakhouses and Tex-Mex. We have vibrant Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indian cultures. The tours really brought the city’s food scene to light.
How did you meet your husband and Southern Smoke Foundation Partner, Chris?
After 10 years with the Houston CVB, I wanted to do something different, so I went on staff doing PR for a local restaurant group that Chris, who’s now my husband, was running. He had been a frequent chef on the culinary tours, so that’s where we got to be friends. I eventually started my own PR firm, which I ran for nine years.
What spurred you to plan the first Southern Smoke Festival?
We had recently lost a chef and friend. He was diagnosed with MS and didn’t tell anyone. He lost the use of his hands and died by suicide. It rocked the Houston food community. Four months later, another friend, a sommelier who now runs a wine shop, was diagnosed with MS. He came to us and said, “I want to be the face of MS. I want people to ask me about it.” That launched our first Southern Smoke Festival.
We thought we were just throwing a party in a back yard. We invited Sean Brock, Rodney Scott, and Aaron Franklin. When we went to the mayor’s office to close some sidewalks, the director of the special events department said, “I’m giving you a stage, shutting down all the streets, and giving you access to vendors at a great discount.” It had turned into a festival during that meeting.
How did this one-day festival grow into the national foundation it is today?
In 2017, we were six weeks away from our third festival, which kept getting bigger and bigger, with more chefs coming in every year. Then Hurricane Harvey hit. We realized that, even with all the fundraisers happening, none of that money was going into the hands of a dishwasher, a barista, or a bartender. Restaurants shut down, and even two weeks without wages is detrimental for people who live paycheck to paycheck.
Our 501c3 gave us the ability to write grants directly to individuals. So, we created an application, translated it into English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and went around town telling people, “You’ll be anonymous. We won’t share your information.” The community was putting a lot of trust in us. After the festival, we were able to grant $501,000 to 139 individuals affected by the storm.
During that time, there were also fires in California and tornadoes in Tennessee, which doesn’t even count all the individual crises and medical issues that food and beverage workers all around the country experience every day. So, we very quietly became a national foundation. In 2019, we granted about $70,000 in total. We granted $400,000 just last month.
F+B workers also struggle with mental health. Tell me about the second branch of SSF, Behind You, and how it came to be.
We had a round-table discussion with the chefs at our 2018 festival. We asked them, “What can we do? What does the industry need? What are we struggling with?” What we gleaned from that discussion was that mental health care for the food and beverage industry was direly needed. But we didn’t know what that looked like.
We started making connections with everyone that we could. We were connected with the University of Houston’s mental health clinic. Their PhD students couldn’t get their hours during the pandemic. They said, “They need hours, and you need counseling for your food and beverage workers? This could be the solution!”
It turns out there are universities all over the country with mental health clinics and entire programs with supervisors, PhD candidates, and researchers. We provide grants to those universities in exchange for the services. Those are the two pillars of Southern Smoke: Emergency Relief and Mental Health. We’re in 50 states and Puerto Rico for emergency relief and 10 states and DC for mental health, and we’re growing!
What’s a common misconception about having a career in F+B?
Precisely that — the fact that it IS a career. People think it’s a step to something else, but it’s a great career for many people. Post-pandemic, our most significant challenge is helping people understand why this profession truly matters. When it was teetering on the brink of extinction during the pandemic, people said, “Yes, let’s give all this money to restaurants.” But now people see busy dining rooms.
They don’t really understand how devastating a hurricane can be for someone living paycheck to paycheck. So, we’re reminding people that supporting the food and beverage industry should be just as important as supporting the arts, healthcare, or your favorite animal charity. Keep us in mind as well. This industry matters.
What’s something that people are surprised to learn about you?
I’m ranked in Tetris in Houston. Last I checked, I was 80th.
Where can we find you on your days off?
On the couch with a book and my cats.
What’s the best advice you’ve received, and from whom?
This is cliché, I know, but toward the end of my tenure at the Conventions and Visitors Bureau, I read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. One sentence reads, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” I thought, “I would quit my job.” And that made me take the leap.
Besides faith, family, and friends, name three things you can’t live without.
My cats, Beans and Rosie, a wonderful meal with great wine and friends, and traveling to see new things.
LIGHTNING ROUND!
A meal you’d eat all over again? Pêche in New Orleans is our happy place. We go there time and again. It’s been 11 years, and every meal is still perfect.
Go-to birthday present to give? Their birth-year wine. It often takes some hunting to find.
Recent favorite book or podcast you’ve consumed? I just read Real Americans. And I’m a nerd about West Wing, so I listen to the West Wing Weekly podcast, which analyzes each episode.
F+B workers experiencing an unforeseen hardship can apply to receive an Emergency Relief Grant here, and F+B workers residing in California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington DC who are interested in receiving no-cost counseling can apply for Behind You here.
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Southern women are doing inspiring work. Meet more of them over at our FACES archives!
