Gabrielle Lenart, Vanessa Parish, Mavis-Jay Sanders, and Jona Beliu founded the Queer Food Foundation with a commitment to serve as “a resource and platform for queer folks in food; and secondarily promote, protect, and fund queer food space.”
The need for queer and LGBTQIA+ spaces necessitated the foundation’s launch, which continues to grow into a collective representing the entire food industry, from farmworkers to baristas, sommeliers to waitstaff. QFF advocates for inclusive food industry spaces, where queer folks can meet and speak about their experiences.
“We want to see an intersectional, equitable food system, where queer folks are an integral part of that (both as workers and as eaters),” says Sunny Levine, 23, QFF Board member, when asked about its mission.
“Although this can come to life in a number of ways, we’re starting by targeting a few main areas: 1. resourcing and resource-building, 2. events and media, and 3. community support.”
The foundation began as a project idea that Lenart, 28, developed after working in queer food community organizations, which led to gathering experienced folks to help turn the vision into a reality. Lenart’s interest in queer food communities, which she researched heavily while in college, led her to form connections centered around queer food justice; these relationships precipitated the foundation’s establishment.
Parish, 30, joined the foundation in its initial stages after Lenart reached out to her with the idea. Beliu, 26, and Lenart had met a few years earlier at an interview for another organization, and through a friendship founded on a belief in the same principles, they teamed up. Parish explains that, over the quarantine period, the founders’ dream began to take shape.
“Queer folks, especially intersectional queer folks are left out of visibility, are not given access to opportunities, and we hope to change that and do a little to make the food system more equitable. Give credit where credit is due,” Lenart says. “It’s really cool to be surrounded by badass, inspiring queer individuals.”
In 2021, they launched the Queer Food Fund, a community mutual-aid project, to support Black queer and trans folks through continuous redistribution efforts, meeting them where they were by providing fund access through more accessible sources, as many don’t have bank account access, or cannot receive checks or money orders, according to Lenart.
In the first year, the fund raised $10,000, which has already doubled in 2022.
Additional foundation initiatives include the Queer All Year campaign and a Queer Food directory. Both initiatives are community building and help facilitate job opportunities and educational progress. The campaign includes over 100 organizations and queer food leaders working to host events. The directory operates as a database containing cookbooks, businesses, food operations, and more, for and by LGBTQIA+ individuals.
The QFF’s recent Queer Cafeteria was NYC’s first-ever LGBTQIA+ pop-up food festival and was co-hosted with the Dave’s Lesbian Bar team, an Astoria, Queens-based community space. Thousands of attendees flocked from across the five boroughs, and community partners, live music, queer food vendors, and local restaurants joined the celebration.
“It was an amazing opportunity for us to get to know more of our community while helping build it,” Levine says.
“The culture is shifting, people are starting to see the value in our service workers, our line cooks, our baristas, and our truckers,” says Beliu. The Queer Food Foundation “carves out a space within that shift to highlight and nurture queer food industry folks, and foodies.”
The foundation is currently focused on growing its team of 15 active board members and will continue to expand to cover all food-related areas. In the pipeline are industry guides and case studies, community education opportunities, as well as in-industry corporate education work.
“There are too many food folks that exist in intersectional spaces without the right amount of advocacy for their needs,” says Parish. “When we are championing queer food, we are also championing Black, Brown, Disabled, Trans, and more marginalized spaces too.”
The foundation is volunteer run. As such, its board members balance their duties with their day jobs, often in food. Lenart is a digital marketing consultant and content strategist working with food businesses. Parish is a traveling private chef and food media correspondent. Beliu is a field marketing specialist and freelance events manager, and Levine is a senior associate product manager of DTC at McCormick & Co., a food journalist, and cook.
Related: Q&A With Queer Food Foundation's Lenart; Live Coverage of Fancy Food Show Highlights Members ‘Giving Back’
Image: Hip Torres