The James Beard Foundation

You know, I'll give you a, a good example.

There's a, a foundation called James Beard Foundation.

Great foundation, been around forever.

It's, um, uh, y'all have similar things here.

average anywhere between $500 to $1,000 per person per night, which is about a $7,000 vacation.

But when you think about the fact that we're the official cruise line of the James Beard Foundation.

Okay.

We have specialty dining venues on board, right? You have all meals included, including 24-hour room service to your room.

The restaurant has been listed in the Michelin Guide's Big Gourmand section for affordable, high-quality restaurants every year since it launched in the Bay Area in 2008.

And in 2009, it won the James Beard Foundation's America's Classics Award, which honors longtime independently-owned restaurants with cultural impact.

It is delicious, and they do still have the Stevenson location.

We'll be right back.

The challenge has been, can we really bring it to the masses and educate and inspire, and also talk about a new lens? Because that's where we are right now.

We're at a stage of transition where we're watching organizations like James Beard Foundation do overhauls of their program to include and be more diverse and ensure that we're not just pigeonholing ourselves into one specific style of cooking, one specific style of eating.

So when we look at something like Michelin and we see the brand, which is what it is, it's a business, it's a brand, we're watching that company evolve its business module.

For any of our listeners who have not splurged to dine at a Michelin spot themselves, me included- What is that experience like, both from a customer point of view and your knowledge from back of the house?

So there was good vibes and I'm always grateful to be a part of it.

Huge congratulations to all of the nominees and winners, the entire James Beard Foundation team and everyone involved in the outstanding production, including Resi Amex and Bon Appetit, which were new partnerships for James Beard this year.

And many thanks to everyone who joined me in conversation on this show and took time to share their experience and answer my fun question.

It was really wonderful to see you all and celebrate together.

I spoke with so many amazing people, including Sarah Thompson of Casa Playa at WID Las Vegas, who was the winner of Best Chef Southwest.

Chris Shepard of Southern Smoke Foundation, who was the honoree of an Impact Award.

presenter, chef, and media personality Andrew Zimmern, as well as Jamila Robinson, editor-in-chief of Bon Appetit, who is also a presenter, Claire Reichenbach, the CEO of the James Beard Foundation, as well as Dave Barron of Celine, the winner of Best Chef California, and Nancy Silverton of Mozza Restaurant Group, honoree of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

plus Annie Shi of Lay, winner of Best New Restaurant, and Noxon Toneron of Kalaya, the winner of Outstanding Restaurant.

We have the James Beard House, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that later, uh, where we have, uh, private events and dinners and things like that.

And then we have Platform at Pier 57, Platform by JBF, which is where, uh, we met-

Yeah

... and where all of our public dinners take place.

Yeah

... and the environmental perspective also.

I mean, a lot of the restaurants and chefs that we work with in the, in the JBF ecosystem, the majority of them probably are very, uh, focused around sustainability.

How do they limit their environmental footprint? How can they reduce food waste? Um, you know, what are the pro- can they start composting programs? What are all of the things that they can do to be better stewards of the environment? Uh, the type of seafood they might be using, their dependence on animal protein, et cetera.