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Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: COVID-19 Project

ORAL HISTORY

Todd Richards

The Soulful Company Restaurant Group

Chef Todd Richards is the founder of The Soulful Company Restaurant Group, of Lake & Oak Neighborhood BBQ and Soul: Food & Culture. He is the author of SOUL: A Chef’s Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes. Chef Todd is an award-winning chef known for his contemporary cooking style rooted in Soul & Southern cuisines. A native of Chicago, and based in Atlanta since the early 1990s, Richards is a self-taught chef and two-time semifinalist for James Beard Foundation Awards – Best Chef: Southeast.

Chef Todd is a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and a board member of Wholesome Wave Georgia. In this interview, he discusses the impact the pandemic has had on his professional and personal life, including his experience battling COVID as a “long hauler” with symptoms lasting longer than nine months. He successfully opened two new restaurants during the pandemic.

Date of interview:
2021-01-19

Interviewer:
Diana Dombrowski

Photographer:

Download Transcript Download Transcript 2

“

"As owner, my job is to do two things, and mostly protect the assets of the company, and my employees are the number one asset of our company. So, I have to do what’s best for them first. If it gets to a point where the numbers are going to go back up and we’re finding more people are not being vaccinated, then we’ll switch our model back to what we did post-vaccine and allow our guests still to dine with us, but also, I have to protect the employees first." - Todd Richards

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