Chef Chris Shepherd and Lindsey Brown, Southern Smoke Foundation
Chef Chris Shepherd and Lindsey Brown, Southern Smoke Foundation (photo credit: Daniel Ortiz)
Welcome In: Chef Chris Shepherd and Lindsey Brown, Southern Smoke Foundation
Interview by Paul Oswell
In 2017 in Houston, Texas, James Beard Award-winning Chef Chris Shepherd and his wife Lindsey Brown began a charitable enterprise that would become today’s Southern Smoke Foundation. This dynamic non profit now operates nationally, providing emergency financial assistance and free mental health services to workers of all kinds in the food and beverage industry. Whether responding to natural disasters or offering ongoing services, Chris and Lindsey want to make a difference to the service industry. We caught up with them to find out more. (Chef Chris was unavailable for the first portion of the conversation as he had to respond to a vet with questions about their cat - who is fine! - so the comments are from Lindsey until noted otherwise).
OAD: Thanks for hopping on today and thanks for your time! I’m sure you know that we have the 20th anniversary next week in New Orleans of Hurricane Katrina. Do you feel like these big anniversaries carry more emotional weight? Do you see a spike in people needing your services, because of the media attention?
Lindsey: That’s a good question, but hard to answer. We have definitely seen an increase in the past couple of months in applications for assistance. What we can attribute that to, I'm not completely sure. I think it is somewhat to do with growing awareness. The two natural disasters that we have responded to so far this year are the California fires and the Hill Country floods, but those applications have been slower coming in.
Why is that?
I think it’s for a couple of reasons. I think in California it’s because of application fatigue. They've had to deal with so much and I think with the Hill Country floods, they are extremely guarded because they've already had scammers down there. The media was a little more intrusive than I think they could have been. Influencers were down there filming a lot of inappropriate behavior.
You don't need all of that in the mix, really.
Exactly. So what we're hoping is that once we fund a couple of people in that region, word will get out that we're the real deal, and we're here to help. But it's been slow going.
Tell me the scale of your operation. You're countrywide at this point, right?
We're nationwide for emergency relief. For free access to mental health services, we're currently operating in twelve states.
That’s so impressive, congratulations on growing so quickly. But take me back to the beginning. You’ll have answered this question a million times, but how did Southern Smoke start?
Well, a friend of ours who's a sommelier in Houston came to us and asked if we would do a fundraiser for the MS Society because he had just been diagnosed. We had just had a chef there who had also been diagnosed with MS. He didn't tell anyone. He was really promising, but he was no longer able to hold his knife, and he died by suicide. No one knew that he’d been diagnosed. And so Antonio, our sommelier friend, said, I want to be the face and for people to ask me questions, and so we called up a few of our friends. We called Aaron Franklin from Austin, and we called Sean Brock and Rodney Scott from Charleston and said, we're going to do this thing. Do you guys want to come? Chris and Aaron can cook Texan cuisine, Rodney and Sean can cook Low Country cuisine. And that's how the name Southern Smoke came to be.
Ah, that makes sense.
We went to the mayor's office and said, we want to do this thing in the backyard of the restaurant, and she said, “I'm going to close the streets and give you our stage. I'm going to tell all of these vendors to work with you and give you a good deal!”
Amazing!
We walked out of her office, and thought, well, I think we're throwing a festival (laughs). That year we had about a thousand people and raised $180,000. Next year got bigger, and raised $280,000. For year three, which was 2017, we were about six weeks from the festival, and Hurricane Harvey came through. We noticed that there was all this fundraising happening, but none of it was going to dishwashers, bussers, or bartenders, and we realized that our 501C3 allowed us to do that. So we completely changed the focus. We still give some money every year to the MS Society, just to remember where we came from, but as of 2017 we are fully emergency relief. After that year’s festival, we were able to grant 139 affected individuals in the food and beverage industry around half a million dollars.
Wow, that's incredible.
At that point, we quietly became a national organization. We only have two qualifications, six months in the industry at 30 hours a week, and that's it.
How much of your work is outreach or do people just know who you are now?
I feel we’re well known in certain circles, but we're always growing. Chris and I spent a month in Napa, California recently hosting a fundraiser with people in the wine and food businesses. Events like that are interesting because right after we always see a spike in applications for both of our programs. California is our biggest state with availability for mental health slots. So we provide grants to universities that have clinics, and in turn, their PhD candidates provide counseling for us.
My next question was going to be: how do you recruit the counselors? But that's the system. That’s great.
We love this system because all of these university clinics have very similar standards and operations, so we feel confident that we're providing a consistent level of care across the country. People in, say, California and New York are getting the same service. That's really important, I think.
What are the specific needs for F&B workers in terms of mental health?
So one thing that's important up front is that we don't know any personal histories, we’re not accessing case notes for anyone after we set them up. But in general, here are the top challenges that we see, for food and beverage workers: post traumatic stress, anxiety and depression, work related burnout, substance misuse, and then relationship issues.
And what about things beyond natural disasters? What would you say are the most pressing external factors creating these kind of mental health problems at the moment?
I think it's a lot of things. There's a lot of anxiety and stress over immigration and raids. That was a big conversation that we had in California, and our partners at Cal Lutheran have all been trained on how to specifically counsel people on this because so many of their clients, even outside of the Southern Smoke clients, are dealing with it. Cal Lutheran also has the largest number of Spanish speaking therapists, which is great. We get a lot of restaurant closures or news that restaurants are still slow, so people aren’t getting their hours. But the major things that we're funding right now are major medical issues.
I guess many people in the service industry don’t have health insurance, right?
Right. So they wait, and then they wait and it gets worse and worse and sometimes it's multiple problems. By the time they come to us, it can be a huge medical issue.
I also wondered if - within the food and beverage sector - is any one job more stressed out than another, like bartenders or servers or restaurant managers, etc?
The number one job title that utilizes mental health services is bartender. And then managers and supervisors. Then servers, then chefs.
(Chris returns!): I imagine because everybody feels like the bartender is the person they can talk to.
They're the most public facing, with no real escape.
C: Right, Exactly.
Are there success stories that you can share?
L: We got this really wonderful email from someone. When we funded him, he was almost homeless and was having all of his services disconnected. He said, your grant allowed me to remain in the house we were renting, and that was all it took for me to pull things together. After getting the grant, he helped his wife get a green card. She got a good job. He opened his own business. He was able to cook with his culinary hero, and then he got a chance to buy a house.
Wow. That's so impressive on both sides.
L: I think everyone on our team was in tears.
C: I think it is very important. What they were trying to say is that the grant not only saved their life, it changed it for good. Drastically.
Just that basic amount of stability leads to so much growth and development. I would have that email printed out on my wall I think. Many congratulations on stuff like that.
L: That's what I'm so proud of with our team. They’re working these cases every single day, doing their due diligence. One of our biggest hurdles, and we see this a lot right now, particularly with some of these immigration cases that we're working with, is we can't fund without documentation.
Right.
I'm not talking about status documentation. We need to see copies of leases. Medical bills. We're doing our due diligence for our donors, so we need to know that, and see documentation that the crisis is indeed happening. Sometimes it's a cultural barrier, where people are paying each other in cash and they're understandably not recording anything. But that's just something that we're really trying to drive home: please keep copies of everything you can, because we're not going to be the only people asking for it that can help you. Any non profit that is providing this kind of assistance will need the same information.
I just wondered if there's a message I could give to New Orleans service industry folk who are feeling overwhelmed.
Know that we are here for you. I think that's one of the things that breaks my heart a little bit about the Texas Hill Country is that they were feeling so alone and guarded, and not realizing that there are people out here that genuinely want to help them. But before anything happens, make sure you know where your paperwork is, and have it ready to go so we can help you as soon as possible if something happens.
Proving that you're authentic with the best intentions must be a barrier for you.
Yes, going back to 2017 after Harvey, the biggest hurdle was gaining the trust of the people that were filling out our applications, because we ask for sensitive information. It’s a challenge to prove that we’re legitimate and trustworthy.
So are you both holding down full time jobs as well as this, are you still chefing, Chris?
L: This is my full time job!
Chris: I have TV work, I write. I'm more in the media now. I still cook a lot for special events and such, just not in a restaurant kitchen. But I have many, many jobs…
Understood! Thanks so much for taking time to talk to us today, thanks for all that you do and best of everything for the future!
With that, we wrapped things up so that Chef Chris and Lindsey could go and collect their cat, but please - share this feature with any service industry workers that you know, and visit the Southern Smoke website at www.southernsmoke.org
Interview by Paul Oswell
In 2017 in Houston, Texas, James Beard Award-winning Chef Chris Shepherd and his wife Lindsey Brown began a charitable enterprise that would become today’s Southern Smoke Foundation. This dynamic non profit now operates nationally, providing emergency financial assistance and free mental health services to workers of all kinds in the food and beverage industry. Whether responding to natural disasters or offering ongoing services, Chris and Lindsey want to make a difference to the service industry. We caught up with them to find out more. (Chef Chris was unavailable for the first portion of the conversation as he had to respond to a vet with questions about their cat - who is fine! - so the comments are from Lindsey until noted otherwise).
OAD: Thanks for hopping on today and thanks for your time! I’m sure you know that we have the 20th anniversary next week in New Orleans of Hurricane Katrina. Do you feel like these big anniversaries carry more emotional weight? Do you see a spike in people needing your services, because of the media attention?
Lindsey: That’s a good question, but hard to answer. We have definitely seen an increase in the past couple of months in applications for assistance. What we can attribute that to, I'm not completely sure. I think it is somewhat to do with growing awareness. The two natural disasters that we have responded to so far this year are the California fires and the Hill Country floods, but those applications have been slower coming in.
Why is that?
I think it’s for a couple of reasons. I think in California it’s because of application fatigue. They've had to deal with so much and I think with the Hill Country floods, they are extremely guarded because they've already had scammers down there. The media was a little more intrusive than I think they could have been. Influencers were down there filming a lot of inappropriate behavior.
You don't need all of that in the mix, really.
Exactly. So what we're hoping is that once we fund a couple of people in that region, word will get out that we're the real deal, and we're here to help. But it's been slow going.
Tell me the scale of your operation. You're countrywide at this point, right?
We're nationwide for emergency relief. For free access to mental health services, we're currently operating in twelve states.
That’s so impressive, congratulations on growing so quickly. But take me back to the beginning. You’ll have answered this question a million times, but how did Southern Smoke start?
Well, a friend of ours who's a sommelier in Houston came to us and asked if we would do a fundraiser for the MS Society because he had just been diagnosed. We had just had a chef there who had also been diagnosed with MS. He didn't tell anyone. He was really promising, but he was no longer able to hold his knife, and he died by suicide. No one knew that he’d been diagnosed. And so Antonio, our sommelier friend, said, I want to be the face and for people to ask me questions, and so we called up a few of our friends. We called Aaron Franklin from Austin, and we called Sean Brock and Rodney Scott from Charleston and said, we're going to do this thing. Do you guys want to come? Chris and Aaron can cook Texan cuisine, Rodney and Sean can cook Low Country cuisine. And that's how the name Southern Smoke came to be.
Ah, that makes sense.
We went to the mayor's office and said, we want to do this thing in the backyard of the restaurant, and she said, “I'm going to close the streets and give you our stage. I'm going to tell all of these vendors to work with you and give you a good deal!”
Amazing!
We walked out of her office, and thought, well, I think we're throwing a festival (laughs). That year we had about a thousand people and raised $180,000. Next year got bigger, and raised $280,000. For year three, which was 2017, we were about six weeks from the festival, and Hurricane Harvey came through. We noticed that there was all this fundraising happening, but none of it was going to dishwashers, bussers, or bartenders, and we realized that our 501C3 allowed us to do that. So we completely changed the focus. We still give some money every year to the MS Society, just to remember where we came from, but as of 2017 we are fully emergency relief. After that year’s festival, we were able to grant 139 affected individuals in the food and beverage industry around half a million dollars.
Wow, that's incredible.
At that point, we quietly became a national organization. We only have two qualifications, six months in the industry at 30 hours a week, and that's it.
How much of your work is outreach or do people just know who you are now?
I feel we’re well known in certain circles, but we're always growing. Chris and I spent a month in Napa, California recently hosting a fundraiser with people in the wine and food businesses. Events like that are interesting because right after we always see a spike in applications for both of our programs. California is our biggest state with availability for mental health slots. So we provide grants to universities that have clinics, and in turn, their PhD candidates provide counseling for us.
My next question was going to be: how do you recruit the counselors? But that's the system. That’s great.
We love this system because all of these university clinics have very similar standards and operations, so we feel confident that we're providing a consistent level of care across the country. People in, say, California and New York are getting the same service. That's really important, I think.
What are the specific needs for F&B workers in terms of mental health?
So one thing that's important up front is that we don't know any personal histories, we’re not accessing case notes for anyone after we set them up. But in general, here are the top challenges that we see, for food and beverage workers: post traumatic stress, anxiety and depression, work related burnout, substance misuse, and then relationship issues.
And what about things beyond natural disasters? What would you say are the most pressing external factors creating these kind of mental health problems at the moment?
I think it's a lot of things. There's a lot of anxiety and stress over immigration and raids. That was a big conversation that we had in California, and our partners at Cal Lutheran have all been trained on how to specifically counsel people on this because so many of their clients, even outside of the Southern Smoke clients, are dealing with it. Cal Lutheran also has the largest number of Spanish speaking therapists, which is great. We get a lot of restaurant closures or news that restaurants are still slow, so people aren’t getting their hours. But the major things that we're funding right now are major medical issues.
I guess many people in the service industry don’t have health insurance, right?
Right. So they wait, and then they wait and it gets worse and worse and sometimes it's multiple problems. By the time they come to us, it can be a huge medical issue.
I also wondered if - within the food and beverage sector - is any one job more stressed out than another, like bartenders or servers or restaurant managers, etc?
The number one job title that utilizes mental health services is bartender. And then managers and supervisors. Then servers, then chefs.
(Chris returns!): I imagine because everybody feels like the bartender is the person they can talk to.
They're the most public facing, with no real escape.
C: Right, Exactly.
Are there success stories that you can share?
L: We got this really wonderful email from someone. When we funded him, he was almost homeless and was having all of his services disconnected. He said, your grant allowed me to remain in the house we were renting, and that was all it took for me to pull things together. After getting the grant, he helped his wife get a green card. She got a good job. He opened his own business. He was able to cook with his culinary hero, and then he got a chance to buy a house.
Wow. That's so impressive on both sides.
L: I think everyone on our team was in tears.
C: I think it is very important. What they were trying to say is that the grant not only saved their life, it changed it for good. Drastically.
Just that basic amount of stability leads to so much growth and development. I would have that email printed out on my wall I think. Many congratulations on stuff like that.
L: That's what I'm so proud of with our team. They’re working these cases every single day, doing their due diligence. One of our biggest hurdles, and we see this a lot right now, particularly with some of these immigration cases that we're working with, is we can't fund without documentation.
Right.
I'm not talking about status documentation. We need to see copies of leases. Medical bills. We're doing our due diligence for our donors, so we need to know that, and see documentation that the crisis is indeed happening. Sometimes it's a cultural barrier, where people are paying each other in cash and they're understandably not recording anything. But that's just something that we're really trying to drive home: please keep copies of everything you can, because we're not going to be the only people asking for it that can help you. Any non profit that is providing this kind of assistance will need the same information.
I just wondered if there's a message I could give to New Orleans service industry folk who are feeling overwhelmed.
Know that we are here for you. I think that's one of the things that breaks my heart a little bit about the Texas Hill Country is that they were feeling so alone and guarded, and not realizing that there are people out here that genuinely want to help them. But before anything happens, make sure you know where your paperwork is, and have it ready to go so we can help you as soon as possible if something happens.
Proving that you're authentic with the best intentions must be a barrier for you.
Yes, going back to 2017 after Harvey, the biggest hurdle was gaining the trust of the people that were filling out our applications, because we ask for sensitive information. It’s a challenge to prove that we’re legitimate and trustworthy.
So are you both holding down full time jobs as well as this, are you still chefing, Chris?
L: This is my full time job!
Chris: I have TV work, I write. I'm more in the media now. I still cook a lot for special events and such, just not in a restaurant kitchen. But I have many, many jobs…
Understood! Thanks so much for taking time to talk to us today, thanks for all that you do and best of everything for the future!
With that, we wrapped things up so that Chef Chris and Lindsey could go and collect their cat, but please - share this feature with any service industry workers that you know, and visit the Southern Smoke website at www.southernsmoke.org