Catalog
MarComms 2022: Shepherding in the New Year - January Chapter Luncheon
While the new year often brings new resolutions, is your marketing and communications strategy agile and ready to adapt at a moment’s notice?
Watch a fireside chat with James Beard Award-winning Chef Chris Shepherd and PR veteran Lindsey Brown on their cutting-edge marketing and communications strategy that is elevating the Houston culinary scene.
Shepherd and Brown share insights into effectively growing a small business, their PR wins, the power of digital media and brand exposure, and utilizing their expertise to a launch a nonprofit, Southern Smoke, which distributed more than $6 million to 2,744 individuals in the food and beverage industry nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chris Shepherd
Midwest-raised, James Beard Award-winning Chef Chris Shepherd has helped change the landscape of the Houston culinary scene since opening Underbelly in 2012. He built the restaurant to support the Houston food community and its suppliers by buying local and drawing inspiration from the people and cultures that live in the city. Thanks to Chris’ vision and passion, Underbelly was a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best New Restaurant, was named one of the best new restaurants in the country by Bon Appetit and Esquire and was named one of 38 essential restaurants in America by Eater. Chris was named one of the 10 Best New Chefs in America by Food & Wine in 2013 and was then awarded the 2014 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest.
He formed Underbelly Hospitality in 2018 to preserve the ethos of Underbelly—learning about diverse cultures through food. In 2019, all three restaurants—UB Preserv, One Fifth Mediterranean and Georgia James—nabbed the No. 1 spot on Texas Monthly's list of the Best New Restaurants in Texas, and Georgia James was included on GQ's list of the best new restaurants in America. He was a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef in 2019 and was named Robb Report's Chef of the Year the same year. Chris’ first cookbook, Cook Like a Local: Flavors that Will Change the Way You Cook—and See the World, was published by Clarkson Potter in September 2019 and was nominated for a 2020 James Beard Foundation Book Award.
Chris' foundation Southern Smoke has distributed more than $9.4 million—both directly to people in the food and beverage industry in need via the Emergency Relief Fund and to organizations that represent the needs of people in the industry.
Lindsey Brown
Lindsey Brown launched Lindsey Brown Public Relations in 2016 to utilize her knowledge and experience to promote businesses that share her business philosophy of hard work and innovation.
Prior to starting her firm, she was the public relations and events director for Clumsy Butcher, a restaurant and bar collective in Houston. During her time on staff, Brown worked with a wide range of top-tier media outlets to tell their stories.
Prior to joining Clumsy Butcher, Brown was the director of marketing and public relations for the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau for 10 years. She launched the Where the Chefs Eat Houston Culinary Tours program—winner of the Public Relations Society of America’s Silver Anvil Award in 2011—and worked with local, regional, and national media to further Houston’s reputation as a tourist destination.
She also helped build the award-winning “My Houston” print and TV campaign featuring celebrities such as Beyonce, ZZ Top, Jim Parsons and Lyle Lovett, as well as the “Houston is…” advertising and marketing campaign that continues to appear in various publications including The New York Times and on billboards in George Bush Intercontinental Airport. She was a key player in the redesign of VisitHouston.com, the official tourism website of the city.
A tireless promoter of the city, as she helped bolster Houston’s reputation as a culinary destination over those years, Brown’s interest and passion for the food and beverage industry grew exponentially.
