Overview Southern Smoke Festival is an afternoon on Discovery Green in downtown Houston where chefs and bartenders from around the country cook and pour for a paying crowd, and a recent edition, with 85 of them, raised $1.8 million for food and beverage workers in crisis. One ticket covers the food, the drinks and the live music inside. It is the flagship of the Southern Smoke Foundation, which Houston chef Chris Shepherd started in 2015 after his friend and former sommelier Antonio Gianola was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. After Hurricane Harvey in 2017 the foundation turned to emergency relief for restaurant and bar workers, sending $501,000 to 139 people that year, and it later added Behind You, no-cost counseling for industry workers. On site The park is split into named zones. The Chef's Lawn is the biggest, with more than 50 chefs and 11 bars; Maconda's Grove, The Boardwalk, Center Stage and The Lakehouse hold smaller groups of chefs and bars. Chef demos run on the Transier Bandstand with chairs set out on the Grace Event Lawn. VIP guests get a two-story indoor-outdoor restaurant of 12,000 square feet looking over the park. People sit on the hill for the music, and the waste is sorted at stations for a zero-waste target. The festival also stages a giant check reveal. For the talent the festival is a whole weekend at the Four Seasons Hotel Houston: a hospitality suite, a welcome party, a pool party, a mental health breakfast and after parties three nights running. Audience The festival draws two groups. On the lawn are guests who pay one price and eat their way through the park, some of them flying in: a recent guest wrote that she saw the festival on Instagram and bought tickets to Houston on a whim. Behind the stations is the industry itself. Recent talent came from 22 states and Washington, D.C., and the foundation says every one of them makes the buying decisions at their own restaurant or bar. Talent and Influencers A recent bill ran from Houston kitchens, among them Aaron Bludorn of Bludorn, Adrian Torres of Maximo and Nicolas Vera and Stephanie Velasquez of Casaema, to Kelly Jacques of Ayu Bakehouse in New Orleans, Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel of Birdie's in Austin and Tyler Akin of Bastia in Philadelphia. Food and Wine counted 22 of its Best New Chefs cooking that year, and pitmaster Rodney Scott served his King St. corn. The foundation hosted more than 49 credentialed media and 14 influencers at a recent festival. Track record The foundation counts 578 million media impressions and 41 press hits for the festival over a recent August-to-October stretch. Stephen Barber, executive chef at Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch in Napa, told the foundation that Sysco's sponsorship got it a meeting for one of the biggest accounts in Napa County, which it had chased for more than 15 years. Brand presence Nearly every part of the park is sold by name: the presenting position, the VIP area, the Culinary Stage and each lawn, where a partner builds an open-air lounge with games and giveaways. Recently Lexus had the VIP area and YETI the Culinary Stage. Partners can also sponsor a chef, covering travel and lodging with their name on that chef's signage and menu, or take the talent side of the weekend at the Four Seasons. Activation costs are the partner's, and spirits poured in the VIP area are bought by The Grove and bought back from the foundation.