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September 9, 2024
A Day in the Life: Kris Reid of Piedmont Culinary Guild
How Reid balances the constant demands of a non-profit, her business, and her health
by Jacqueline Pennington
Kris Reid, founder of Piedmont Culinary Guild. Photo courtesy
Kris Reid is one busy woman. Originally a chef by trade, Reid became a founding member of the Piedmont Culinary Guild when she and a few of her colleagues saw a gap that could be bridged within the culinary industry in Charlotte.
“We got together and thought that since we’re sharing farmer resources, why don’t we create a bigger group that could take advantage of this sharing of resources, like labor and farmers?” Reid says. “We pulled together a group of chefs and farmers and everyone got behind it very quickly. It became a non-profit in 2012 with pillars to share resources, educate the community and create regional recognition for innovation, culinary, and agriculture in our area.” Since then, the Piedmont Culinary Guild has created a community of individuals who want to enact positive change in the food and beverage industry. (Disclosure: UP editor Kristen Wile is a volunteer PCG board member.)
Reid left her chef role and started working full time for Piedmont Culinary Guild in a volunteer capacity in 2015 while also taking on a flexible job to continue providing for her family. Piedmont Culinary Guild was up to 500 members when the pandemic hit and the entire landscape of the industry they supported changed. “All systems were firing coming into 2020, then the pandemic pushed us into dormancy,” she says. “The board decided that because of the level of the crisis and the displacement that was happening in the industry, that the most reasonable and respectful thing to do was to give people time and space to save their businesses and their lives.”
These days, Reid is working to hack away at the lost membership while running her for-profit business, Total Hospitality Consulting. Her consultancy offers support for events management, operational guidance, and industry recruitment for food and beverage outlets. That business financially supports her ability to continue working as executive director of a non-profit organization.
Reid is fully immersed in her passion for food in all aspects of her life, whether it’s with her professional commitments, tending to her garden, cooking whole food meals, or sharing her love of food with others. “Food is my religion,” Reid says. “It’s what I’ve been doing for over 20 years. It’s my life. From the moment that I get up until I go to sleep, I’m touching or involved somewhere along the lines with food.”
Here is what a day in her life looks like.
6 a.m.: Reid starts her day with movement, coffee, and time in her garden. “In the first hour of my waking, I’m hydrating, I’m moving, and I’m getting natural light into my eyes. So, going out into the garden is that part. I’m either watering, pulling weeds, or replanting things early in the morning and, whatever I harvest, there has to be a plan of what I’m gonna do with that.”
“I also typically do yoga. I have a chronic hip problem, so without mobility exercises I have a hard time moving. I have to stay disciplined in my movement practice — that includes yoga, daily walking, and lifting weights. My daily practice includes a lot of taking care of me because I am a one-woman show. If I’m not well, I can’t run a non-profit and I can’t run a for-profit business.”
8 a.m.: “The next hour is based on communication. I have six different email accounts that I have to check every day. So, I get into my email accounts, I get on social media and see if there’s comments or urgent communication that I need to respond to. That helps me to design the rest of the day based on what needs are coming in.”
10 a.m.: By this time, Reid has mapped out her entire day in the notebooks she uses to organize her life. “I keep three notebooks: One for Total Hospitality Consulting, one for PCG, and one for my personal life. Then, I’m spending time doing any kind of social media posting that I need to do.”
12 p.m.: “I try to stick to intermittent fasting, so I don’t eat first thing in the morning. Usually, my first meal of the day comes closer to noon. I’m a big eat out of the yard type of person no matter the time of year. I try to make sure that I’m eating something that came out of my yard as part of my religious practice with food. It’s something that helps to ground me.”
Reid then gets refocused to handle whatever tasks are left for the day. “Once social media is done and I get some food in myself, I start working on whatever projects are going on. Right now, I have six major projects that I’m trying to touch every single day.”
To name a few, Reid is currently working to plan the annual Piedmont Culinary Guild Farm to Fork Picnic on Sept. 29, an annual fundraiser that will host 600 people and include 30 food stations. At the same time she’s building nonprofit’s membership, planning meetups, and working on a sponsorship campaign for the Guild. For Total Hospitality Consulting, she’s managing talent recruitment for four clients while also being the food coordinator for the Sustainable Agriculture Conference for the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.
Listening to Reid’s to-do list is not for the faint of heart. She credits her passion for food as the driving force in all her hard work.
“I consider the ‘work’ to be my life’s work — my purpose. Like, why am I here? And what am I supposed to do with my time here? I believe wholeheartedly that what I’m supposed to do with my time here is help people be closer to food. I have a core belief that food can change the world and even if I’m just changing it through one or two people, then I’m doing my job.”
4 p.m.: “I take a very intentional clarity break every day to map out what’s left in the day. That may include some more movement, like a walk if I feel like I really need it, or it might include some more time in my yard, if the weather permits.”
“I’m an ingredient household, I don’t have any processed food in my house, so dinner usually starts early or at least I start to plan for it. My physical health is so important because if I don’t have the endurance to do all this, I’m sunk. There’s so much emphasis on my physical health from the start of my day to the end of my day. It’s a part time job just trying to keep myself upright.”
6 p.m.: “I try to eat before 6 p.m. because of the intermittent fasting. Like I said, everything is just based on this cycle of trying to keep myself healthy.”
“I don’t have a lot of scroll time and I don’t have a lot of TV time,” Reid says. She spends the little free time she has at the end of the day with her daughter and two dogs.
10:30 p.m.: Reid relies on her circadian rhythm to determine when she wakes and goes to sleep; this time of year, she turns in around 10:30 p.m. It’s yet another daily practice to maintain her health so she can continue her impactful work the next day.
