Kimberly Brock Brown, a past president of the American Culinary Federation, was kicked off the organization’s board of directors last month, accused by seven board members of “inactions and irresponsible performance of duties.” Among her transgressions, as outlined in an “admonishment” letter obtained by The Food Section, were her tendency to “vote mostly against and to the contrary of the rest of the board,” and her conduct in Zoom meetings held between September 2023 and May 2024, including when she once ate on camera and twice dealt with connectivity problems.
The document also singled out Brown’s clothing choices at an international culinary competition as having been made “with complete disregard while representing the ACF.” According to the document, “Brown was seen in a pink sweatshirt while walking in public areas,” and wore a sequined chef’s jacket to a function.
When she was elected in 2021, the Summerville, South Carolina pastry chef became the first woman and first African American to serve as president of the 95-year-old federation, which claims to be the largest professional chefs’ organization in North America and whose accreditation is eagerly sought by culinary schools across the country.
In an interview with The Food Section, Brown didn’t refute the allegations, but accused ACF’s all-male board of reinterpreting its bylaws to oust her. “No other president has been called out, lied on, and verbally abused as I have been,” she said. “The misogyny is real.”
Brown was initially given the opportunity to resign from the board voluntarily, citing “extenuating circumstances.” But when she refused, current ACF president Rene Marquis moved to approve the admonishment letter. Reached by The Food Section, he said, “I’ve been cleaning this mess up for a year. If you want to do a story on our board’s great work, fine, but if you think you’re going to do a story about Kimberly Brock Brown, you need to reach deep down inside and figure out why everyone agreed to remove her.” He continued, “No previous ACF president has acted like she acted. She can use the race card; she can use the female card. I was a soldier, and bullets don’t discriminate.”
In social media posts and phone interviews with The Food Section, a dozen longtime members of the organization—which over the last decade has faced membership attrition and crushing debt—said they view Brown’s removal as confirmation that the white men in charge of ACF are more interested in maintaining power than addressing problems plaguing the food-and-beverage industry. The higher-ups’ perceived commitment to upholding the status quo has alienated some chefs who say they prize integrity, transparency, and progress over medals and plaques.
“Being a guy who is working in kitchens now and not 20 years ago, the current board does not exemplify what our kitchens look like, or the diversity I embrace,” said Tampa chef Jeffrey Schlissel, who last week published a book about maintaining mental health in restaurant kitchens.
Schlissel joined the ACF in 1994 and served two terms as president of its Palm Beach chapter, but cancelled his membership when Brown lost her re-election bid as ACF’s national president in May 2023. One-third of ACF’s 14,000 members have left the organization over recent years.
“We need a group that lobbies for us in the industry to get insurance, to get us out of the dark ages,” Schlissel continued, noting that ACF still touts the 1976 reclassification of chefs as professionals in U.S. Department of Labor’s Dictionary of Official Titles as its prime legislative achievement. “That’s like every Dolphins fan hanging on to 1972. Things change: This is an opportunity for ACF to step up to empower women and minorities—the people in our industry.”
Founded in 1929, the American Culinary Federation represented the unification of the Société Culinaire Philanthropique, the Vatel Club, and the Chefs de Cuisine Association of America. It emerged as the industry’s preeminent training and accreditation organization, with culinary schools in every state touting ACF affiliation.
Beyond certification programs and organized cooking competitions, ACF was for generations widely acknowledged as the nexus of networking for hospitality professionals. For Schlissel, a journeyman chef often looking for speaking gigs and job opportunities, that perk was invaluable.
Tina Powers, a volunteer firefighter and master gardener in Oregon who worked as a chef and culinary instructor for 47 years before retiring, credits ACF with connecting her with mentors that made her career possible.
“These great chefs were supportive of you,” she said. “They were tough, but they were tough with everybody: They did not discriminate. Now it’s become a really stinky good ol’ boys’ club.”
Patti Curfman, the first woman on the West Coast to complete a culinary apprenticeship through ACF, had a similar experience. “I started in 1977, when girls weren’t even allowed in the kitchen,” she said. “They helped me along because I was female, and I was willing to do the hours.”
But it wasn’t long before the organization’s male-centric focus began looking anachronistic. In 2001, Powers flipped through every issue of ACF’s print magazine published over the previous 10 years, and discovered all the women pictured were in dresses.
“They were all secretaries or in an ad,” she said. “I [told] the then-president of ACF, ‘We’ve got a problem. Where are all the lady chefs?’”
Eddie Leonard dismissed her complaint until he confirmed her assessment. He handwrote a letter of apology to Powers, then read her note calling attention to the lapse out loud at the ACF convention, declaring 2002 would be the Year of the Woman. Powers felt like Leonard’s declaration helped put ACF on a more equitable path.
In interviews, ACF members pinned blame on various presidents in the 2010s for cultivating a spirit of entitlement and elitism that they felt was contrary to the organization’s mission of training and inspiring young chefs. When Brown, a longtime ACF member who started her career in the pastry departments of The Grove Park Inn in Asheville and Charleston Place, announced her intention to run for the presidency in 2021, many of her peers were thrilled.
“There were a lot of people ready for change,” Brown said. Her platform stressed “bringing more people to the table.”
Once elected, Brown worked to broaden the group’s definition of diversity, equity, and inclusion to include LGBTQ chefs and chefs with disabilities. Her supporters credit her with trying to iron out the organization’s troubled finances.
Brown felt like her approach was resonating with representatives of major hospitality companies, some of which she said had kept their distance from ACF because of the group’s reputation for nurturing an old boys’ network. When she launched her reelection campaign in 2023, she intended to continue those conversations, envisioning new revenue sources for an organization that in recent years had halved its staff and sold off its St. Augustine headquarters in a bid to stay solvent.
Brown’s opponent in the election was Marquis, a Maine-born chef from Tampa Bay who performed one-armed pushups outside ACF events to remind members that he would be the first military chef to serve as president. Marquis’ campaign slogan was Chefs, I Got Your Six, an expression popular in the armed forces and law enforcement. Brown said she knew from the start that he’d win the support of Northeastern members and retirees, each of whom had as much say in the election as their working peers.
By contrast, student members are allocated one-fourth of one vote, which Brown knew could spell trouble for her youth-oriented message. The board rejected her proposal to upgrade them to full-voting members, and Brown’s re-2023 election campaign failed amid gossip that she referred to white people as “crackers.”
“I don’t talk race like that,” Brown said in a phone interview. “I don’t use that word.”
Marquis was inducted in July 2023, along with Jeff Bacon as secretary, and Kyle Richardson as treasurer. Brown assumed the role of immediate past president and chair of the ACF Foundation, per tradition.
At the first meeting with Marquis at the helm, the board agreed to fire ACF’s executive director, Heidi Cramb, who had held the role for 18 years. Cramb did not return a message seeking comment.
Other ideas that Marquis had for ACF included contracting with a company to oversee online registration at the national convention, reliably the year’s biggest budget item. Brown questioned the two-year contract, priced at $250,000 annually.
“They were so excited, and I was like, ‘I know we don’t make that kind of money [on registration fees]’,” she said. She received an email in June 2024 from Marquis alerting her to a vote on the proposal and prompting a positive response.
“Please see my message below asking for an electronic vote to approve MCI handling and taking care of our Conferences in the future…we will still have oversight and QA on all of this to include selection after we get out of the Handcuffs that the p[r]evious administration left us in,” he wrote in the message included in Brown’s dismissal document.
Brown paraphrased her response as “No, we haven’t done any kind of discussion. We didn’t get any other kind of a bid. We don’t make enough money.”
Marquis took note of her dissension. He had also been tracking what he considered Brown’s other policy infractions, focusing closely on her wardrobe. He took exception to the sequins and sparkles on the chef jacket she wore for speaking engagements and television appearances, deriding the ornamentation as inappropriate. The board in March 2024 issued a Vote of No Confidence based on her dress at the 2024 Culinary Olympics in Germany, following up in April with a censure vote based on her alleged “negative, combative, and defiant” demeanor.
“He didn’t like the sequined jacket, but it’s not for him to like,” Brown said.
Both Curfman and Powers were particularly galled by Marquis criticizing Brown’s outfits. According to Curfman, Marquis wore a t-shirt, shorts, and Crocs when he addressed the accreditation committee at the National Convention in Phoenix last month.
One day prior to the convention, Marquis had moved to approve the admonishment letter removing Brown from the board of directors. In a recording reviewed by The Food Section, Brown responded by asking if there would be any discussion of its contents.
“There is no discussion,” Marquis can be heard saying in the recording. “There is no discussion to be had. The admonishment letter is forthcoming after the opportunity of you not wanting to sign the resignation letter. The resignation letter, you said you did not want to sign. So, we’re going to proceed directly to the vote.”
All seven board members joined Marquis in voting for admonishment.
Marquis declined to comment further on Brown’s dismissal, saying, “We don’t want a story like this being done. We don’t want a press release on this. All the members know exactly what happened and why.” Upon learning that what he’d already said was on the record, he concluded, “This conversation is being recorded, and you’ll hear from our attorneys. I don’t give you permission to use anything,” before hanging up.
Curfman characterized the whole situation as “really sad.” As she sees it, ACF stands to lose more than Brown and the members upset by how she was treated. The future of ACF, which for generations has provided rigor to an industry forever threatened by economic uncertainties, celebrations of excess, and personal greed, is at stake.
While Curfman admits she can’t guess what’s next for the organization, she might soon learn what Marquis and fellow board members have in mind. Marquis is hosting an online town hall meeting for ACF members tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern.
I had a very similar experience with the gulf to lake chapter in FL. I became the youngest and first Afro Latino president in history and they voted me out when I didn’t fall in line and do what they wanted.
We’ve always been stereotyped as belonging in the kitchen, yet when we make our way into professional kitchens, we’re kicked out over little things by people who had been there for 11 months, while Brown had been their for 7 years. No questions asked, just sexism and lies.