PUSHING FOR CHANGE After Black chefs and food influencers complained about the lack of diversity in the lineup of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, management addressed the issue
Nicole Gates was missing only popcorn to watch the social media maelstrom brewing between the South Beach Wine & Food Festival and Miami’s Black community before last year’s annual festival.
“You had to be hiding under a rock to miss what was going on,” Gates said.
As a Black co-owner of Lil Greenhouse Grill in Overtown, a historically Black area of Miami, she watched with interest as two major Black food and cultural influencers skewered the festival for showing a lack of diversity. When the festival announced its judges for last year’s Burger Bash — the most high-profile event at the annual four-day festival — there was not a single Black judge among them.
“I guess not one Black person was available to be a judge. Shaking my head. Not. This is Miami,” Yvette Harris, a longtime public relations professional and consultant, wrote May
21, 2021, on Twitter and her public Facebook page.
Harris posted a screenshot of the event, touting chef Bobby Flay and eight other judges, none of whom were Black.
The next day, Starex Smith — a food blogger who started posting dining reviews after facing discrimination at restaurants — raised the stakes on the Facebook page for his blog, The Hungry Black Man.
“The South Beach Food & Wine (sic) Festival has offended Black folks for the last time,” he wrote. He announced his intention to start a food festival centered around Juneteenth, the holiday that celebrates the day the last Black people in America received word they were free.
“They were saying, ‘We didn’t build this with you in mind,’” Smith said.
The festival could not ignore the criticism.
After meeting with Harris and a group from the National Association of Black Journalists, the festival says it made several substantive changes as a first step toward making this year’s festival, which runs Thursday through Feb. 27, feel more inclusive.
The festival hired a Black marketing manager and a Miami Gardens diversity consultant who recruited more Black chefs, restaurant owners, media and entertainers, and involved local high school and college students to volunteer for credit and service hours at the event. And when the Burger Bash judges were announced this
year, six of the eight were Black, among them, Heat great Dwyane Wade, chef and television personality Melba Wilson, Today show’s Al Roker and former Run DMC rapper Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons.
“When it was brought to my attention, we committed to doing things different,” festival founder Lee Schrager said. “We went out of our way to find the best people and have it be more diversified.”
The calls for better representation at the festival were not new — but they were louder.
Harris’ initial post rode upon a year of groundswell as marches across the country forced institutions, from police and government to corporations, to examine their roles in propagating institutional racism.
For years Black restaurant owners and locals had complained the festival failed to include them, that the festival marketed itself as an event made for and directed at whites.
But as this discussion was finally gaining momentum, the festival pushed back its start date three months because of COVID.
“The noise was a bit louder but the festival was a bit quieter because of COVID,” Gates, who has owned Lil Greenhouse Grill for six years, recalled. “The response was heard a lot more.”
Harris posted out of frustration. Others heard themselves reflected.
“It was evident from the programming that there was a lack of diversity,” Harris said. “When I’d go, I didn’t see anyone who looked like me and I’m Black.”
Harris spoke to the heads of South Florida’s chapter of NABJ and together they met with
Schrager and the festival’s communications team in November 2021.
“Probably listening to what we had to say was uncomfortable — but a lot of growth comes from being uncomfortable,” she said.
The festival hired former Miami Gardens City Council member Lisa Davis as a diversity consultant. Davis, a Miami Gardens resident of more than 40 years, founded the Miami Gardens Food and Wine Festival in 2015.
“Sometimes change is hard, but for them it wasn’t,” Davis said. “They helped make the change.”
With only three months before the festival, she got to work. Knowing money is often a barrier for momand-pop restaurants, she got the festival to extend a $750 stipend it started in 2021 to all participants in 2022 to help offset costs. (Her Miami Gardens festival awards $1,000 stipends.)
She approached traditional Black media, from
Essence to the Miami Times, about covering the festival. Her connections with chefs and restaurants led to 39 new Black chefs agreeing to come to the festival.
Gates’ Lil Greenhouse Grill has been a favorite for more than six years in Overtown — and was visited and promoted by Oprah Winfrey — but had never been invited to participate until Davis’ involvement this year. She and chef/business partner Karim Bryant will be at two events.
“Just the invite alone has gotten us attention from some major players,” Gates said, noting that she has now been invited to participate in a second event by singer Trisha Yearwood. “A little exposure goes a long way when you have a good product.”
Davis used her connections to offer high school students in predominantly Black areas community service hours for volunteering at the festival. This year, Norland, her alma mater, will participate and next year’s festival will open to student volunteers from Carol City, Jackson, Northwest and Miami
Central high schools. Students at Florida Memorial College will be offered dual enrollment class credits for volunteering at the festival.
“I want to see some of these kids come back and become chefs, celebrity chefs,” Davis said.
Scrolling through the festival’s 93 events, only six are advertised showing a person of color. And Smith, the food blogger, points out that most of those are events like jazz, gospel or fried chicken events that are stereotypical of Black culture.
But Gates said any chance to celebrate Black culture before a new audience is an opportunity to expand her culture’s reach. She hopes that what started as a handful of influential voices will have a lasting impact in the festival and on her small, growing business.
“It’s important to shine a light on that part of our culture,” she said, “But we want to leave a footprint long after the festival is over.”
Carlos Frías: 305-376-4624, @Carlos_Frías