James Beard Foundation takes over Asheville in Chef Action Summit, tackle tariffs, Helene

ASHEVILLE – The James Beard Foundation, known for its awards program celebrating food and beverage excellence, continued its work to strengthen and uplift the restaurant industry by hosting its annual Chef Action Summit in Asheville from April 6-8.

According to the New York-based foundation, nearly 300 attendees from 37 states registered for the summit. The attendees included hospitality professionals, chefs and restaurateurs, and food system and industry leaders. Their common goal was to support and improve restaurants and communities’ food access nationwide.

The Chef Action Summit covered resilience amid tragedy, climate change and solutions, sustainable agriculture and restaurant practices, and food policy and nutrition.

Advocacy, the volatile political climate and tariffs were hot-button issues.

The topics hit close to home for many Asheville residents in attendance.

“Having all these chefs from all over the country involved in advocacy come to Asheville and have a summit here about climate solutions is perfect,” said Meherwan Irani, a summit presenter and co-founder of the Chai Pani Restaurant Group. “If you want to have a summit on climate change and climate solution, why not have it in a place that just went through it?”

The city was selected as the host city several months after Tropical Storm Helene, which devastated Western North Carolina last fall.

Trevor Payne, chef and owner of Tall John’s and attendee, said hosting the summit in Asheville served as an economic and awareness driver for the quality of the food industry in Asheville and challenges it faces after Helene.

Payne said Meherwan Irani’s presentation on planning and responding to crises made him reconsider what could have been done better at his restaurant in the storm’s aftermath and how to strategize for future natural disasters and other emergencies. Irani said many lessons were learned the hard way during the COVID-19 pandemic and Helene.

“I was surprised at how many things I was doing that could have been done more streamlined if I’d had a plan in place,” said Payne, who opened Tall John’s in 2022. “Unless the Gulf Stream is going to lower two and a half degrees, we’re going to have a hurricane season every year of my life in Asheville.”

Advocating for positive change

Keynote speaker Katie Button, executive chef, co-founder, and CEO of Katie Button Restaurant Group, which includes Cúrate, delivered a spirited message, “Why restaurants matter.”

Lyndon Smith, co-founder of North Carolina-based cider company, Botanist and Barrel and summit attendee, said it motivated him to advocate more for Asheville’s hospitality industry as it recovers from Helene.

“The practice of us all being here together – Helene has triggered a collaborative spirit to have it in the city,” Smith said. “Through every moment of chaos is an opportunity for something; it’s just how we respond to it.”

“There’s been some amazing speakers, and the presentations have been through this lens of ‘Let’s be good, but don’t stop there. Let’s make it great,’” said

Button spoke about the role of restaurants as community connectors and leading economic drivers. She hailed Asheville’s hospitality sector for becoming front-line responders devoted to feeding and caring for people following Helene.

She raised the issue that, more than six months after Helene, the Asheville hospitality community continues to struggle due to issues like the lack of financial support and business interruption insurance coverage.

Smith said that, due to Helene, Botanist and Barrel only had one harvest day at one of its WNC apple orchards, which he estimated as 5% of the regular harvest volume compared to the one to two dozen harvest days per year.

Like many other businesses, Botanist and Barrel’s downtown tasting room was closed for weeks while the North Fork Reservoir underwent extensive storm-related repairs. The closure and post-storm tourism decline were another financial hit for the hard cider company.

Button encouraged summit guests to demand that lawmakers make changes, like reforming the business interruption insurance policies, and the recognition that communities cannot survive without a strong hospitality industry, which further impacts the nation’s economy.

Payne said Button’s message was one that broader audiences should have heard to understand the significant roles restaurants play in communities, and the symbiotic relationship between restaurants, farms and suppliers, where their success depends on one another.

“Restaurants are a conduit for the larger ecosystem that is your community,” Payne said.

Torn by tariffs

The Chef Action Summit featured a segment addressing the potential impact of tariffs on restaurants.

Irani said restaurants haven’t seen the impact of tariffs yet, but that the industry is experiencing “emotional whiplash.” He said he is concerned about the potential cost increase of materials, food and beverages that could come with President Donald Trump’s imposed tariffs on goods, which have a 10% universal baseline tariff rate, and an increase for more countries. As of April 10, China faced a 145% tariff.

Construction material price hikes could curtail entrepreneurs’ opening of new businesses, which he said could be devastating for Asheville, as it could prevent new owners from investing in reopening or introducing concepts after Helene.

“These restaurants may stay empty for a long time, and that worries me,” he said.

Payne said tariffs are a complicated problem that restaurants are left to figure out alone.

“It’s going to take another quarter to see how that plays out,” Payne said. “I’m hoping we can make decisions internally so that the first default is not raising prices but having to continue to think more strategically about how we engineer menus and the types of products we work with.”

Irani said some restaurants have started stocking up on goods in anticipation of the tariffs, which could raise the price of ingredients and products used and sold at restaurants and the cost of transportation. He said tariffs could set off a domino effect.

“I’m concerned that with these supply costs going up that restaurants will either raise prices or cut back, which leads to a lesser experience for our guests that’s going to eat out less and starts a slow, downward spiral, which we can’t afford in our town coming out of this hurricane,” Irani said.

Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Tips, comments, questions? Email tkennell@citizentimes.com or follow @PrincessOfPage on Instagram/Bluesky.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville chefs sound off on tariffs, hurricane resiliency, next steps