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9 Austin culinary pioneers win $53K from the Texas Food & Wine Alliance

CULINARY INNOVATION

Photo courtesy of the Texas Food & Wine Alliance

Texas’ skyrocketing culinary scene is about to get a huge boost. The Texas Food & Wine Alliance’s grant program has awarded $107,500 to 19 culinary innovators around the state. This marks the Alliance’s 11th year providing funding to support culinary projects contributing to local communities.

The award winners were announced in a ceremony at Austin's Holdsworth Center on January 21. A private panel of distinguished culinary experts chose the winners out of 40 grant applications this year. Nine winners hail from Austin, three from Dallas-Fort Worth, three from Houston, and four from San Antonio. The awards range from $1,500 to $10,000, with a special $25,000 grant investment from Austin favorite Tito’s Handmade Vodka in honor of the company’s 25th anniversary. Grant funding will support chefs, farms, and culinary education groups, among others.

Austin-area winners received the most funding from the grant program, totalling $53,750, while San Antonio winners received $21,250. Dallas/Fort Worth winners were awarded $19,750, and the three Houston recipients won $12,750. All of the 2022 winners reflect just how diverse the state's trailblazing culinary scene continues to expand.

“All of this year’s funded projects will further enrich the state through innovation and giveback,” said Erika White, executive director of the Alliance. “We’re extremely grateful to each of the Texas communities, our sponsors and their support in allowing us to reward these mold-breaking projects.”

In Austin, organic farm Trosi Farms was awarded the most funding, totalling $10,000 from Tito’s and the Austin Food & Wine Alliance. The wild crop-breeding operation will be able to use the funds to construct a germination shed for more stable plant start production. Locavore pioneer Boggy Creek Farm won $7,500 in grants to provide ADA-compliant accessibility to their new climate-controlled Tomato House. Texas’ first organic feed mill, Coyote Creek Organic Feed Mill & Farm, received $6,250 to help purchase a building to be used as a store for the local community.

The six other Austin area grant recipients, each winning $5,000, include Vista Farms at Vista Brewing, Jamaican family business Tierra Todun ATX, coffee roasters Rising Tide Roast Collaborative, culinary educator Chef Pascal Simon from Bake Austin, East Austin food truck Community Vegan, and Latinx pastry project Comadre Panaderia (who also just earned a James Beard nomination). All winners will be able to use their grants to improve efficiency and expand their businesses, or in Chef Pascal's case, further research and development for her upcoming cookbook for Gen-Z young adults.

After starting the program in Austin, grant co-chair and TFWA past president Cathy Cochran-Lewis says it was the Alliance’s dream to expand the grant statewide.

“We’re so humbled and thrilled to now not only support worthwhile projects across Texas but also to give more than a half million dollars in funding over the last decade to help dreams come true,” she says. “This is a tribute to the culinary talent and the community mindset we are lucky to have in our state.”

Out of the four San Antonio area winners, Talking Tree Farm received the most from the grant program, $6,250 to purchase shipping containers for storage and to buy a solar-powered cold room for their harvests. John Marshall High School’s culinary arts program will use their $5,000 grant to establish a morning café. Agricultural project Habitable Spaces and pasture-raised chicken farm Cielito Lindo Farm also won $5,000 each to purchase equipment or build infrastructure to further their endeavors in the culinary space.

The winners in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas include:

For this year's Honorable Mention, the Alliance chose San Antonio eatery Tacos Cucuy, who will soon open a brick-and-mortar space with an expanded menu. Tacos Cucuy are currently looking for support to develop a Tex-Mex charcuterie program called La Cura Carnes Especiales.

More information about the 2022 grants and its recipients can be found on texasfoodandwinealliance.org.

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Rodney Terry named Longhorn basketball head coach after successful March Madness run

Interim no more

Rodney Terry’s wait has finally ended. And on his birthday, no less.

The erstwhile “interim” head coach of the Texas Longhorns’ men’s basketball team has officially been tabbed to run the program just one day after his club was eliminated from the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Tournament. He’s set to sign a five-year contract worth $3 million per season and will be formally introduced at a press conference on Tuesday, March 28.

Terry began the season as an assistant under then head coach Chris Beard before the latter was suspended by the university after being arrested for assault of his fiancée back in December 2022. Once the Angleton native ascended to the helm, he provided a steadying presence in guiding a talented team to a 16-7 record over the remainder of the regular season en route to a second-place finish in the Big 12, with all but two of the losses coming against top-25 opponents.

During that stretch, many began to wonder when he would be officially promoted to head coach, and the outcry only grew as The Sporting News named Terry its “Men’s Basketball Coach of the Year” on March 8 before the Longhorns proceeded to run the table in the conference tournament. The Horns’ deepest March Madness run in 15 years only solidified the Terry’s hold on the job. While Texas’ athletic director Chris Del Conte has a policy of not negotiating coaching contracts during the season, he wasted no time in removing the “interim” tag from Terry’s title once the season concluded.

The 55-year-old has spent much of his life in Austin. He played his college ball at St. Edward’s University before beginning his coaching career as an assistant there in 1990. He would serve as the head coach at James Bowie High School for the following three years. The coaching carousel would land him at several other stops before bringing him back to UT Austin as an assistant to Rick Barnes from 2002 to 2011. Terry departed to head up the Fresno State and UTEP programs over the next decade before returning to UT Austin as an assistant in 2021.

This time, he’s looking to stay a while.

4 new library branches could be in the books after Austin City Council adopts new plan

EXPANDING AUSTIN LITERACY

This is a dream come true for Austin bookworms. The Austin Public Library system could be seeing a huge expansion with the recent adoption of a plan by Austin City Council.

The Austin Public Library Comprehensive Library Strategic and Facilities Plan creates new goals for the library system that includes expanding current branches and constructing new ones. With the ever-growing population in the city, the “library square foot per capita” has fallen behind neighboring cities. The facilities plan addresses this growth disparity by proposing four new library branches in addition to expanding, replacing, or relocating over half of the pre-existing branches.

Austin Public Library Director Roosevelt Weeks said in a press release that this new plan will allow the library system to continue providing necessary creative and learning resources to all community members.

“Five and a half years ago, Austin opened a new world-class Central Library in downtown, and that building remains the crown jewel of the city,” he said. “However, our neighborhoods deserve world-class library facilities too. The plan adopted by the City Council today lays out a vision for growing and updating our entire library system to meet the needs of the rapidly changing, dynamic city we serve.”

The Strategic and Facilities Plan was a year in the making, thanks to plenty of community outreach tactics. Successful methods included a survey that received over 5,400 responses, several pop-up events throughout Austin, and “listening sessions” with library staff and stakeholders.

The plan also introduces new mission and vision statements for the library, as well as five community-based strategic goals. The new library mission statement is: “Inspiring all to discover, learn, and create” and the new vision is to be “a model of equity, inclusion, access, and diversity.”

The five strategic goals include:

  • Provide community-centric programs and services
  • Design and develop spaces for community connections
  • Foster stakeholder relationships
  • Expand library access
  • Engage staff

“On behalf of everyone at the Austin Public Library, I am excited that the Council has adopted this vision for the future of our community’s libraries,” said Weeks.

More information about the Strategic and Facilities Plan can be found on the Austin Public Library’s website.

Texas rises through the ranks of most innovative states, says new report

MOVING ON UP

The Lone Star State has again taken a step up on an annual report that ranks the most and least innovative states in the country — this time cracking the top 15.

Texas ranked No. 15 in personal finance site WalletHub's 2023’s Most and Least Innovative States ranking. It's a steady improvement for the state, which ranked No. 16 in 2022 and No. 17 in 2021.

The report analyzed the 50 states and the District of Columbia and how each performed across 22 key metrics, including population of STEM professionals, venture capital investment activity, number of technology companies, patents per capita, and more. The data was pulled from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Science Foundation, National Center for Education Statistics, United States Patent and Trademark Office, and other records.

Here's how Texas performed at a glance:

  • No. 18 – for share of STEM professionals
  • No. 16 – for projected STEM job demand by 2030
  • No. 25 – for eighth grade math and science performance
  • No. 21 – for share of science and engineering graduates aged 25 or older
  • No. 13 – for share of technology companies
  • No. 31 – for R&D spending per capita
  • No. 18 – venture capital funding per capita

For the 11th year, Texas won Site Selection Magazine's Governor's Cup, the governor's office announced earlier this year. The award, which Texas has won 19 times since its inception in 1978, recognizes the nation’s top-performing state for job-creating business relocations and expansions.

"Texas truly is America’s economic engine, and we stand apart as a model for the nation. When choosing where to relocate or expand their businesses, more and more innovative industry leaders find themselves at home in our state," Governor Greg Abbott says in a news release about the award.

"I congratulate the exceptional economic development teams at the local, regional, and state level who have worked so diligently to attract and retain these growing businesses and the jobs they create in diverse communities across this great state," he continues.

The most innovative states included the District of Columbia, which ranked at No. 1, followed by Massachusetts, Washington, Maryland, and California, respectively. The least innovative state was identified as Mississippi, followed by Louisiana, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Arkansas, respectively.



Source: WalletHub


Access to quality education is a significant contributor to each state's innovation economy, the experts say in the report.

"Investing in education, particularly K-12 but also at the University level, it is no accident that innovative ecosystems develop in states with strong education systems and research universities," says David L. Deeds, professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. "These institutions build strong capable modern workforces that attract capital, and jobs and create innovations. The benefits do not happen overnight, in fact, they take years if not decades, but consider what The UC’s or the University of Texas at Austin have meant for the development of premier innovative ecosystems."

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