Kathryn Lott watched the emails pour in Tuesday morning. As the executive director of the Southern Smoke Foundation — a nonprofit dedicated to providing assistance to people working in the food and beverage community in times of need — she knew a surge would come as the new coronavirus forced people to distance themselves from one another, driving down business.

Thousands of emails flooded her inbox the day after Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo announced that clubs, bars and restaurants were closing except for takeout and delivery. They included hundreds of applications from bar and restaurant workers from around the county and the country.

“We’re getting the real calls of need,” she said. “‘I can’t afford my medication.’ That kind of thing.”

The Southern Smoke Foundation was founded in 2015 by James Beard award-winning chef Chris Shepherd and public relations specialist Lindsey Brown after Shepherd learned that his friend and former sommelier Antonio Gianola was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

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Since then, the foundation’s scope has broadened both in scale and geography. After Hurricane Harvey, Southern Smoke donated $501,000 to 139 people in need, according to its website. It has also supported those affected by Hurricane Florence and California’s numerous wildfires.

This, by far, is the biggest crisis the foundation has ever seen.

“We have people applying from Rhode Island to Chicago to Los Angeles,” Lott said.

Tuesday morning, she started the day with a staff phone call going through applications and prioritizing those with medical needs. Then she turned her attention to fundraising.

To say there was more financial need than Southern Smoke could provide was “the understatement of the century,” she said. “There’s a huge need for people in any kind of crisis. And when you work shift to shift — there’s just no safety net there for many of them.”

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To that purpose, she finalized the details of an online auction — Southern Smoke’s annual fundraiser, originally set for March 28, was canceled because of the coronavirus — and reached out to Shepherd, Luby’s and Fuddruckers about getting the word out about fundraising.

“We’re getting a major influx of people looking for guidance,” Lott said.

There are not many organizations with a system set up to vet applications and allocate financial aid to people in the food and beverage industry, so organizations from cities across the country were reaching out to Southern Smoke, she said.

“We’re creating earmarked funds for cities that specifically want to raise money for their communities but don’t have the right channels to distribute it.”

Lott fired off calls and emails from her home office, armed with coffee and sparkling water to fuel her.

“What’s different about this particular crisis is — we know when the tornado is over,” she said. “We know when the flood has receded. We can say: Your roof is caved in. That’s the dollar amount we’re putting on that. This is by far the most difficult crisis we have faced because we don’t know what the real financial effects of this will be or when it will truly be over.”

rebecca.schuetz@chron.com

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