Josh Davis is Back with Another Season of Brown and Balanced, Highlighting The Black Hospitality Community

During these unprecedented times, the hospitality industry needs leaders like never before. Josh Davis is an industry veteran with over 15 years of experience and he is also the founder of Brown And Balanced which started as an event at Portland Cocktail Week and Camp Runamok and has since built into a stand-alone entity.

The first season aired last fall, with a focus on different Black hospitality professionals. It was such a success and is back again for another season.

At the core of Brown and Balanced is the mission to share talents and stories of Black and Brown food and beverage professionals and the projects they’re developing through digital content. As Davis describes it, “think In Living Color and Mad TV meets Charlamagne Tha God meets Black and Brown Bartenders. BOOM.”  And we are so here for any sentenced that is punctuated with a BOOM.

When quarantine and lockdowns swept the nation, Brown and Balanced hosted a series of Happy Hours over on Instagram featuring bartenders, servers, and cocktail enthusiasts from all over the U.S. to share their stories and backgrounds. After taking time to rest and restore, Brown and Balanced is coming back to continue conversations.

Some words on Season Two from Brown and Balanced founder and host Josh Davis:

 

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“Wow….Season 2 is here. I still can’t believe we are in season 2. But before we talk about the now, let’s go back and talk about the past.

July 31st 2017, was the very first Brown And Balanced Event. To be completely transparent, July 2017 was one of the worst months of my life. My father who had been fighting multiple strokes, had taken a turn for the worse, and my best friend, Aaron Womack (I told him I would get his name in the lights some kind of way), suddenly died and I was one of the 2 people who found him in his apartment. So needless to say, I needed a huge pick me up.

We got to planning and with the help of my Lush Life Team we headed to Dallas where Micah Anderson and myself knocked out the 1st event at Shoals Sound & Service (A Black Owned establishment in Deep Ellum) and the amount of love and energy in the room was just what was needed, not only for me, but for our industry as a whole. It showed that 2 Black Bartenders could bring an audience of all races into our culture without “Stepping and Fetching” or being caricatures of what the “Urban” experience is truly like.

4 years later, we have done 13 events all over the country, have thrust over 20 Black Bartenders into the national scene, and put a stamp on the industry that, WE ARE HERE, AND WE AIN’T GOING NOWHERE!!!

2020 was a crazy year and we’ve moved Brown And Balanced into a virtual space. I started off just doing cocktails and conversation on Instagram, before partnering with Campari America and Thirsty to produce Season 1 of our Live segment show on the Portland Cocktail Week Facebook Channel. We featured 6 AMAZING Bartenders and had hella featured guests and segment hosts. It was completely a joy to meet some new people and learn new things about humans that I have a ton of respect for!

With the success of Brown & Balanced LIVE Season 1, WE ARE BACK with Season 2!! Starting later this week on February 26th with the kickoff show (Featuring Duane Sylvestre, Monique Brackett, J’Nai Williams, Kisira Hill and thirsty’s Tara Fougner) to get you ready for this 12 EPISODE season. We will be bringing you MORE Black Bartenders, MORE segments, MORE special guests, and a few surprises along the way!! I would give you guys a sneak preview but that would take all the fun out of it. So in preparation for Season 2 I ask you all to do a couple things….

Follow @camparicommunity, then click the link in their bio to sign up on the Campari Mailing list (you’ll hear this a few times over the course of the 12 episodes). Follow @BrownAndBalanced, @Thirsty, and @pdxcw on Instagram to stay up to date on episode announcements. Follow Portland Cocktail Week on Facebook and Youtube for the live shows at 1pm central/2pm Eastern. And, if for some reason you can’t make the live show, they all will be recast on Youtube and Facebook!

I am excited to bring you all season 2, and I will see you all (virtually) on Friday!!

Josh Davis

Founder of Brown And Balanced

 

 

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