2025: Impactful Year for Chefs Brigade & Partners

In 2025, Chefs Brigade stepped up with purpose—planning boldly and delivering results. In just a 12-month span this small nonprofit organization, which connects, organizes and educates across food sectors, managed to build and host two OysterNights across the metro area; teamed with JEDCO to promote the new off-bottom oyster brand - Grand Isle Jewels; partnered in Jefferson Parish’s bi-centennial celebration, and partnered on a coastal restoration project with NFL Green for Super Bowl LIX. 

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Here’s a snapshot of Chefs Brigade 2025:

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⬬ The New Orleans New Year began tragically with the terror attack on Bourbon Street. Chefs Brigade, born out of the COVID-19 pandemic to feed first responders, immediately mobilized with our partners, the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation and Community Coffee, to provide meals and sustenance to officers and other emergency workers and agents on the scene. 

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⬬ As part of Super Bowl Week in early February, Chefs Brigade teamed up with NFL Green, the Super Bowl LIX Host Committee, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL), Force Blue, Verizon, Entergy and hundreds of volunteers to build an oyster reef in Lafourche Parish using discarded oyster shells from our restaurant partners. In honor of Super Bowl LIX, volunteers placed 59,000 pounds of oyster shells into a site in Lafourche Parish, creating an oyster reef that will provide habitat for new oysters and other wildlife and slow the rate of erosion. 

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⬬ Just two days later, Chefs Brigade launched the inaugural OysterNight: “A Celebration of the Protein that Built New Orleans.” More than 50 New Orleans restaurants participated in the event with thousands of diners enjoying raw oysters or plated dishes featuring the famous bivalves - more than 7,000 pounds of oyster shells were recycled. 

⬬ 2025 brought a new partnership to Chefs Brigade that we look forward to continuing into the future. Our friends at the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission (JEDCO) launched Grand Isle Jewels, a brand umbrella for off-bottom oysters coming from Grand Isle, Louisiana. Unlike wild-caught oysters, off-bottom oysters are grown in floating cages by oyster farmers. Because the “farms” are located in various coastal areas off of Grand Isle with varying degrees of salinity, mineral content, and other influences, the individual farms have distinctive flavor profiles - like wine.

⬬ The new JEDCO/Chefs Brigade affiliation was front and center at the Jefferson Parish Bicentennial Ball at Lakeside Mall in June. Chefs Brigade and JEDCO co-sponsored a raw oyster bar stocked with Grand Isle Jewels, and another nearly 20 Chefs Brigade partner restaurants served a multitude of delicious cuisine at the lavish celebration.

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⬬ The main event for the partnership occurred during 2025’s second OysterNight in September, which premiered with a Grand Isle Jewels OysterNight Kickoff at Deanie’s Seafood Restaurant in Bucktown. WWL-AM Radio 870’s Newell Normand broadcast his show live at the restaurant with JEDCO, Chefs Brigade, Grand Isle officials and oyster farmers as guests.

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Throughout the day and night, more than 70 New Orleans metro area restaurants participated in OysterNight with 9,750 pounds of oyster shells recycled - wild-caught and farmed. As a result of the two oyster celebrations, more than eight tons of oyster shells will be strategically returned to the water to rebuild the fragile but vital Louisiana coast through the efforts of CRCL and the oyster shell recycling program. Chefs Brigade is proud of the work it has accomplished with CRCL and looks forward to a brighter future in the years to come.

It’s been a busy, but satisfying year with strong results. None of it, however, is possible without the numerous relationships that Chefs Brigade has developed and sustained over the years with so many talented foodservice and seafood people, restaurants, partners and organizations. Thank you. We will build off of the successes of 2025 and make 2026 another year to remember.  

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Stay tuned...

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