Nearly a week after the July 4 weekend floods started in the Hill Country, recovery efforts are still going strong. In San Antonio, that’s especially thanks to restaurants. But one hospitality industry nonprofit, the Southern Smoke Foundation, is saving its efforts for the “second phase” of recovery, with its new Texas Hill Country Fund launching August 15.
The Houston-based Southern Smoke wears many chef’s hats, helping hospitality workers facing individual emergencies to cover basic life costs, offering mental health support, and offering grants after natural disasters. Some of its notable past engagements have been responding to Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and the Los Angeles fires in 2025; the latter is ongoing, Southern Smoke co-founder and Executive Director Lindsey Brown says.
The first wave of efforts in flood response have largely included search and rescue, donating basic necessities for displaced people, and distributing meals. But pre-packed care kits can only go so far, and as much as Texans have felt fulfilled in giving supplies, soon more individual needs will emerge.
“What we’ve seen with some of the previous disasters that we’ve responded to is that people don’t really know what their needs are for at least a couple of weeks,” says Brown. “In some cases, they don’t even have Wi-Fi to fill out the application. … We’ll be here when it’s time to pay the rent or pay the bills. We don’t need for them to be scrambling to figure out all those details now.”
Individuals — “anyone in the American food chain,” according to a press release, including servers, bartenders, farmers, cooks, restaurant owners, ranchers, winemakers, and more — will be able to fill out a form in August requesting a grant of a standardized amount that the foundation still needs to decide.
“We’re looking to give priority to people in the most vulnerable populations, which, honestly, in Kerrville, it seems like it’s almost everyone,” says Brown. “People [whose] homes or workplaces were damaged, people that have children in the home, people that are dual-income food and beverage workers, so they’re doubly affected, people that have lower annual incomes — so those are going to be the people that we’re really looking to fund first.”
She also emphasizes that the foundation is seeking to prioritize giving a “meaningful” amount to a smaller number of more vulnerable people, rather than spreading smaller grants across a wider population. In California, the foundation arrived at a figure of about $3,000 per person. In Texas, the number will likely be different because of different needs and a different cost of living.
All these moving parts don’t mean potential aid recipients are out of luck until mid-August. Southern Smoke’s regular emergency relief program operates year-round. The press release encourages this option for people who need immediate funds for funerals and urgent medical needs.
The foundation is also working in partnership with the University of Houston to provide free video counseling. Each program member will get up to 20 sessions, and the topic doesn’t need to stick strictly to floods. Brown explains that if separate issues cause the university to recommend more intensive treatment (for example, perhaps the patient has a complicated disorder), the recipient may have to leave the free program — but they can always apply for an individual grant to cover the new cost.
Finally, Southern Smoke has already set aside $150,000 from its general fund to establish the new fund. As it continues adding to the fund, it’s partnering with restaurant food distributor Sysco, which is matching up to an additional $15,000.
Brown says that on top of the risks anyone else would have in a crisis, restaurant workers often have to face losing work hours (and the money they would bring). If they do work, they are often experiencing trauma at the same time that they’re helping others through it by cooking and serving food.
“People that work in restaurants can’t help themselves from serving the community,” Brown says. “They’re always out there…. In every single disaster you see, there’s not one situation where you’re like, ‘Nope, there are no restaurant people out here helping people.'”
San Antonians can donate to Southern Smoke through its online portal. The foundation’s flagship event, the Southern Smoke Festival, is also coming up on October 4. Tickets for the Houston event are now on sale for $225 at southernsmoke.org.