Greg and Subrina Collier, co-owners of Leah & Louise, had toyed with the idea of launching a food festival for a few years. But festivals take a lot of work to organize, and the Colliers had plenty on their plate: Aside from running one of the most lauded new restaurants in town, the pair also helps lead Soul Food Sessions, an ongoing dinner series, and participated in President Biden’s Small Business and Entrepreneurs Advisory Council.

But as they continued to attend festivals where representation seemed to fall by the wayside, their vision for a festival to showcase Black culinary talent became a priority. Subrina noticed only a few Black attendees at many events, even in cities with a majority Black population, and it was even rarer to spot chefs, mixologists, and brewers of color. “It was,” she says, “almost comical.” The Colliers would do things differently.

On Oct. 22-24, the Colliers will host the BayHaven Food & Wine Festival at Camp North End. The festival was designed to celebrate and promote Black talent, and more than 75 local and national culinarians, from farmers to distillers, have already signed on to participate. In conjunction with the event, the Colliers have also formed the BayHaven Restaurant Group. (In late May, they renamed the festival, originally called the Black Food & Wine Festival, to better align with and promote the new restaurant group.) This venture, which aims to launch as many as 10 restaurant concepts in the next decade, will capitalize on the Colliers’ track record of making their visions a reality — and making space for other Black chefs to do the same.

Greg and Subrina Collier, owners of Leah & Louise, are starting a food festival. Photo by Peter Taylor

In 2016, the Colliers joined a few other local chefs to launch Soul Food Sessions, a dinner series showcasing culinarians of color. Just two years after they inaugurated the series, a sponsorship from local Coke distributor and bottler Coca-Cola Consolidated helped the series go national, with events in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Charleston. The Colliers went on to open Leah & Louise and the now-closed Uptown Yolk to critical acclaim. (We said Leah & Louise was home to “some of the most creative dishes in Charlotte.” Read the full review.)

In October 2019, Subrina helped organize a Soul Food Sessions dinner and block party at Camp North End, and the experience lent insight into how to plan a festival. Even though the BayHaven event will be on a much greater scale, requiring over a year of planning and expected to draw more than 1,000 attendees, the Soul Food Sessions festival gave the Colliers specific ideas about how to innovate on the traditional format and serve their broader mission.

First, they want to make the event convenient for participants. While festivals provide exposure, they often mean that chefs do a lot of work for not much money. “We want to be able to pay them or compensate them in some way or give them a room,” Subrina says, “because you want to accommodate their challenges.” Camp North End will provide a central location, so participants won’t have to travel back and forth across town. These concessions to convenience will make sure participants can focus on having fun, another priority for the Colliers.

The Harlem Renaissance inspired their vision for the festival’s vibe. “Even during a really bad time for Black people,” Subrina says of that era, just one generation after slavery, “we were still getting up and dressing to the nines and going to these ballrooms and these clubs.” Black people still face threats to their lives and livelihoods, and Black chefs struggle to find footholds in their industry, but the festival will be a place to celebrate hard-won accomplishments and find communion.

Greg has prioritized mentoring at Uptown Yolk and Leah & Louise, and the festival will expand on that commitment, providing an opportunity to network, exchange ideas, and find guidance. (In a similar way, the Harlem Renaissance brought together writers, artists, musicians, philosophers, and activists, and fostered collaborations that helped shape the 20th century.) Although Subrina wants attendees to leave with greater awareness, it’s not all about education. She wants them to enjoy themselves enough to come back to the annual event year after year. But an even more important measure of success, she says, will be whether the participants return. Festival organizers often forget about the talent in their quest for profit, she says, but “I want my talent to really enjoy this and want to be a part of this.”

The mission to promote Black culinarians and give Black foodways their due is at the heart of all of the Colliers’ projects. Their personal history in Memphis’ Whitehaven and Frayser (known as the Bay) neighborhoods inspired their cuisine as well as the name of their food group and festival, while the cultural history of Camp North End and its historically Black surroundings led the Colliers to locate Leah & Louise there. From these roots grew a mission, and the BayHaven Food & Wine Festival, Subrina says, “is another branch on that tree.”