MIDDLEBURG, Va. — Two different segments of hospitality intersected last weekend when the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg, Va., hosted the fourth annual Family Reunion through a partnership with Kwame Onwuachi, the chef behind notable restaurants in Washington, D.C. and New York City. The event attracted more than 1,000 attendees for a weekend of food, music, storytelling, activities, networking and education.
The event took shape in 2021 as the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic began to ebb. Onwuachi had met Sheila Johnson, founder and CEO of the Salamander Collection, some time earlier during an event in the Bahamas and the two hospitality professionals forged a connection. When Onwuachi resigned from his restaurant Kith/Kin in mid-2020, Johnson was ready to help with his next steps.
“I called him, and I said, ‘I want you to join Salamander. Come join my company and let's dream,’” she recalled. Onwuachi signed on to open a restaurant at the Salamander Washington, D.C., and by summer of the next year, the Middleburg resort held the first Family Reunion with celebrity chefs (and other celebrities) cooking and talking about food, beverages, history and business. The goal, she said, was to “highlight and showcase and celebrate the best African American chefs with many women [and] people of color and bring them together so that everyone can experience their food, because they are the unsung heroes of this country.”
Highlighting the impact enslaved chefs like James Hemings and their descendants have had on the American culinary tradition, she emphasized the need to educate while celebrating cuisine.
The initial event was “like a monsoon, but we still had fun,” Johnson recalled. “We were [like the] blind leading the blind.” Over the ensuing four years, the company’s team sought ways to improve the experience, rearranging tents and pop-up kitchens as needed. The team also increased security measures to prevent gatecrashers from getting to the food before ticketholders could. For programming, the team organized everything from horseback riding to spades tournaments to instructional sessions on jerk-style cooking and barbecuing. They also brought in other experts to host or participate in panels on business ventures—whether in the culinary world or beyond. “We're just trying to educate people,” Johnson said.
Four years in, the event now attracts more than 1,000 people attending sessions, activities and tastings from Thursday evening to Sunday morning. The 2024 event included classes on barbecuing and jerk cuisine, panels on building and running businesses as well as tastings from local wineries and the Appleton Estate. “What Kwame and I wanted to curate was that feeling of a family coming together, the normal family reunion,” she said. “So come in as friends, leave as family.”
Connecting with Communities
Family Reunion is part of Johnson’s overarching initiative to connect her hotels with people in the neighboring communities. Johnson also founded the annual Middleburg Film Festival in 2013, and the Salamander resort is a central hub for festival activities. The 2024 event is slated to feature screenings for 41 films from Oct. 17-20.
“We try, here at Salamander, to provide experiences for our guests,” Johnson said. “It's not just come and check in. I want them to know that they're coming here for a purpose. We're a purposeful company that wants to reach out to all people at walks of life and to provide them [with] the experiences they wouldn't get anywhere else.”
Outreach can also include connecting with team members. Twice a year, Johnson hosts a town hall meeting with all of the company’s employees. At one such meeting, a symphony orchestra was brought in to perform for the workers. Beyond the music, Johnson saw symbolism in how an orchestra operates under a conductor’s baton.
“There's so much communication that can go on without speaking, by just watching,” she said. “It really helps you to focus and to become much more sensitive about what's going on in our different departments.” Much as the musicians must pay attention both to the conductor and to the other musicians around them, Johnson encouraged her team to be aware of their colleagues. “You need to be sensitive enough to see if that person's having a bad day, and you sit with them and say, ‘What can we do to help?”
Beyond that, Johnson—who is heavily involved in education—encourages hotel team members to move from department to department and pick up new experience. “It’s an educational experience for them,” she said. “I want them to grow, also, within the industry.”
This kind of outreach makes Salamander distinct, Johnson said. “Our value system, I think, is different in the sense that we are very, very involved with our customer base.” That value system, she added, includes imparting “honesty, authenticity, respect and compassion.” To that end, all Salamander properties have a different look that reflects their neighborhoods. “I want to be able to tell the story of each one of those cities in which we [operate], but you can feel the same quality of service, and nothing's fake,” she said.
Ultimately, Johnson wants the Salamander brand to “redefine hospitality” for both guests and team members. “We've got to be different, [or] we're going to lose our customer base.”