Southern Smoke Festival 2025

On Saturday, October 4, 2025, Southern Smoke Foundation (SSF), the national nonprofit supporting food and beverage workers in crisis, returns to Discovery Green in Downtown Houston for its biggest and boldest park party yet: Southern Smoke Festival, presented by Sysco (SSF25). More than 85 of the country’s acclaimed chefs, beverage professionals, and hospitality visionaries will gather to serve unforgettable bites, drinks, and experiences, all while raising critical funds for emergency relief and mental health support for hospitality workers.

Guests have the option to purchase the following ticket types: 

• General Admission ($225): All-inclusive food, drinks, live music, and access to the YETI Culinary Stage and cookbook signings. Entry at 4 p.m. CT. 
• Lexus VIP ($550): Early access at 3 p.m. CT, with elevated experiences inside the air-conditioned Lexus VIP lounge at The Grove, curated bites, cocktails, premium wine, and exclusive gifts. 
• Talent Supporter (starting at $5,000): A chef sponsorship covers the cost of food, equipment, and travel for one SSF25 chef of your choice on a first-come, first-served basis. Talent Supporters can skip the line for their chef (up to two people), and each chef’s signage and menu will list their Talent Supporter as their chef presenter. This ticket also includes two VIP passes with early entry at 2:30 p.m. CT (even earlier than standard VIP entry) for Chris Shepherd’s pre-shift speech with all the talent and an exclusive invitation for two to attend the Chef Welcome Party on October 2. Talent sponsorships are going fast, so act quickly!

Activations at this year’s festival will be bigger and better than ever before. Highlights include:

• Kindred Stories will be onsite selling cookbooks, with a full schedule of signings taking place throughout SSF25. 

• *The 2025 Class of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs—who have yet to be announced—will cook together for the very first time at SSF25, in a special area presented by Skadden. 

• Four Seasons is back as SSF25’s Official Hotel Partner! The Four Seasons Hotel Houston offers exclusive festival rates starting at $345 per night, while inventory lasts, and can be booked directly via the link HERE. 

• Sysco as Presenting Supporter: Chief Merchandising Officer and Senior Vice President Victoria Gutierrez: "We at Sysco have a unique view into the challenges and opportunities facing food and beverage workers. Through our Global Good program, we’ve contributed more than 123 million meals and $349 million in value to communities worldwide. We’re proud to partner with Southern Smoke Foundation to further help the industry thrive.”
• The Lexus VIP area now features eight culinary heavyweights, including Tavel Bristol-Joseph, Joanne Canady-Brown, Ana Castro, Ashley Christensen, Cassidee Dabney, Billy Durney, Kevin Fink, and Mason Hereford. Alba Huerta of Julep will helm the bar, and Stella’s Wine Bar will provide premium wines.
• The Resort at Paws Up, the luxury Montana getaway, brings a brand new immersive activation to The Lake House, an air-conditioned space in the center of Discovery Green.  
• YETI Culinary Stage makes a grand return, offering cooking demos, surprises, and standout culinary voices. 

About the Southern Smoke Foundation

Founded in 2017 by James Beard Foundation award-winning chef Chris Shepherd and Executive Director Lindsey Brown, Southern Smoke Foundation provides access to mental health services through its program, Behind You, and emergency relief funding to food and beverage (F+B) workers nationwide. This includes restaurant, bar, and cafe workers; farmers and ranchers; winemakers, distillers, and brewers; and anyone in the industry faced with financial hardship because of a natural disaster, medical emergency, accident, or other unforeseen incident.

To date, Southern Smoke Foundation has granted more than $14.5M to F+B workers, and since 2020, has provided over 7,400 no-cost counseling sessions to F+B workers and their children in California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington D.C. To support the Southern Smoke Foundation or to apply for assistance, visit southernsmoke.org.

If you are an F+B worker experiencing an unforeseen hardship, we encourage you to apply to receive an Emergency Relief Grant on the SSF website or by clicking HERE. If you are an F+B worker residing in California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Washington D.C., or Virginia and are interested in receiving no-cost counseling, please apply for the Behind You mental health program on the SSF website or by clicking HERE.

About Sysco

Sysco is the global leader in selling, marketing and distributing food and related products to customers who prepare meals away from home. This includes restaurants, healthcare and educational facilities, lodging establishments, entertainment venues, and more. Sysco operates 340 distribution centers, in 10 countries, with 76,000 colleagues serving approximately 730,000 customer locations. The company generated sales of more than $78 billion in fiscal year 2024 that ended June 29, 2024.

As the world’s largest food-away-from-home distributor, Sysco offers customized supply chain solutions, bespoke specialty product offerings, and culinary support to drive customers to innovate and optimize their operations. We act as a trusted business partner to our customers, helping them grow through our industry-leading portfolio that includes fresh produce, premium proteins, specialty products, sustainably focused items, equipment and supplies, and innovative culinary solutions. For more information, visit www.sysco.com. 

For more information and a complete list of guests and sponsors, click here.