Bringing Hope to Houston

Chef-favorite charity cultivates blossoming Houston urban farm

Hope Farms broadens Recipe for Success' mission.

Photo by Michelle Watson/CatchLight Group

Houston is home to lots of food-related charities that want to improve the way the city eats, but few have a higher profile than Recipe for Success. Devoted to combating childhood obesity through education, the organization has grown by leaps and bounds since its founding by Gracie and Bob Cavnar in 2005.

Earlier this year, Recipe for Success took a major step forward by realizing its 10-year dream of opening its own farm. Located in the Sunnyside neighborhood on a seven-and-a-half acre piece of property formerly owned by HISD, a $200,000 grant from Wells Fargo helped make the project possible. As its name implies, Hope Farms constitutes a major step forward in improving children’s eating habits.

“Honestly, Sunnyside was always in our top target list for locations,” Gracie Cavnar tells CultureMap. “I thought, oh my god, there’s a reason it took so long for the stars to align. That campus is the perfect location. We were able to submit a bid and purchase the land from HISD. We closed that purchase in April 2016 and went about the onerous business of permitting to drill a well and build out our infrastructure.”

Produce from the farm is available for purchase at a Saturday morning farmers market. Houston chefs, who have always supported the organization’s fundraising dinners and educational programs, are among the farm’s most consistent customers. Diners can find the farm’s produce on the menu at restaurants such as Bistro Menil, Nobie’s, BCN, and Roost.

As Cavnar explains, Hope Farms is more than just an agricultural operation. Having a dedicated facility that’s large enough for community events has allowed Recipe for Success to expand its mission of inspiring healthy eating, teaching healthy eating, and training the next generation of urban farmers. Farm tours and events like an annual Earth Day festival help inspire healthy eating, and cooking classes help teach how to prepare more nutritious food.

“The other piece of empowering healthy eating is our initiative at the farm to train a whole brigade of urban farmers. We’re focused on empowering veterans to become urban farmers,” Cavnar says. “[United Healthcare or the USDA] pay all the tuition and we pay the trainees to train. The nice thing is veterans are getting it, and they’re learning to farm. Also the training is entrepreneurial in nature, they’re learning how to run a small business. We’re incubating their small businesses. With that initiative, we’re hoping to expand urban farming in Houston to a constellation of farms, especially in food deserts.”

Recipe for Success is currently in what she describes as the “quiet phase” of a $5 million campaign that will allow the organization to expand the range of services its able to provide at Hope Farms. Phase one includes an air conditioned culinary classroom that will allow it to host cooking classes year round, as well as greenhouses and a permanent farm stand.

Phase two is to construct a food hub that will serve as a gathering point for all of the produce grown by the new urban farmers that are currently in training. A commercial kitchen will allow farmers to expand their offerings by turning some of their tomatoes into salsa, for example.

“If you’re a major grocery store, you’ve got to buy your produce from suppliers that meet general agricultural guidelines,” Cavnar explains. “This food hub is a several million dollar project. We hope to make that happen in the last several years.”

In phase three, Recipe for Success will build a large, fully air-conditioned community center with a commercial kitchen that large enough to support big events. That facility will give Hope Farms all-weather utility.

“That’s super important to us,” Cavnar says. “We feel like it would be a way to connect all of Houston with a source of their food, but it’s not critical to agricultural production. That’s why it’s third on the list.”

While those future projects might be years in the making, people can connect with Hope Farms right now by shopping at its weekly farmers market, signing up for a cooking class, or attending an event. On October 7, the farm will host the next Chefs in the Field dinner. The most intriguing aspect of the lineup is that chefs Mayank Istwal and Shivek Suri from Musaafer by the Spice Route Company will be serving food to Houstonians for the first time; their high-profile Indian restaurant is expected to open in the Galleria VI above Fig & Olive early next year. Tickets are on sale now ($250).

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Chris Cusack explains

Houston bar owner speaks out about surprise arrest for health code violations

Photo by Sergio Trevino

Chris Cusack owns two locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse.

Certainly one of the most unusual interactions between a restaurant and City of Houston officials took place on Wednesday, May 6 when Betelgeuse Betelgeuse owner Chris Cusack was arrested for health code violations at his location on Washington Avenue.

News of the arrest spread quickly across social media over the weekend. Now, Cusack is ready to tell his side of the story.

Cusack, whose time operating restaurants in Houston goes back more than 15 years to Down House and its affiliated restaurants such as Hunky Dory and D&T Drive Inn, tells CultureMap the problem began on Monday, May 4 when a health department inspector came to Betelgeuse Betelgeuse and asked to see the restaurant’s grease trap.

The only problem is that location has never had a grease trap. Prior to becoming Betelgeuse Betelgeuse, it was Liberty Station, a pioneering bar in Houston’s craft beer and craft cocktail scenes. In the early days, Betelgeuse served food from a food truck. More recently, it prepares its food next door at The Bell and Crane. Cusack acknowledges he didn’t share this information with the inspector.

“Usually I’m a charmer with the health department, but I was a little defensive. She kept asking me. I said, ‘ma’am, we don’t make food here,’” he explains. “The tone wasn’t my finest moment, but there was no name calling or anything like that. She said, ‘where does the food come from?’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter where it comes from. It’s produced in a commercial kitchen.’”

Cusack says he knew there would be a follow up, but he was shocked when the inspector returned two days later with more colleagues from the health department, TABC inspectors, and Houston Police Department officers.

“I got somewhere between 21 and 25 citations,” Cusack says about the return visit. He got dinged for everything from graffiti in the bathroom to a missing Harris County tax stamp on the photo booth he leases from a vendor (it has both State of Texas and City of Houston stamps, Cusack says).

One inspector told Cusack he needed a food dealer’s permit. He showed the inspector that a food dealer’s permit had been issued for the restaurant's address under the former food truck’s LLC but not to the LLC that operates Betelgeuse Betelgeuse. Cusack says he had renewed the food truck’s permit in March, but that wasn’t good enough for the inspector. In Cusack’s telling, he was arrested for not having the permit, since it was also flagged as missing in an inspection from October 2025. He's the only person he knows who has ever been arrested for a misdemeanor violation of the health code.

Cusack says he spent 21 hours in the Harris County Jail. When he got out, he says he was contacted by a more senior official within the Health Department. Once Cusack confirmed he owned both LLCs, he was told he could reopen. Both locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse have been operating normally since Friday, May 8.

Cusack maintains he never knew about the October 2025 inspection, which is why he renewed the food dealer’s permit for the food truck’s LLC rather than applying for one under Betelgeuse Betelgeuse’s LLC. “There’s no paper trail that shows I was given this information,” he says. “I did not get the email [from the Health Department].”

As for why things got so out of hand, Cusack theorizes he was a victim of Houston Mayor John Whitemire’s crack down on “reckless behavior” on Washington Avenue and stepped up enforcement on bars generally that led to the temporary closure of near northside cocktail bar Rabbit’s Got the Gun.

Cusack says he’s a “huge supporter” of efforts to reduce crimes like street racing, drug dealing, and sex trafficking along Washington and in its surrounding neighborhoods. Still, he feels targeting by the city for being impolite to a health inspector.

He plans to fight both the arrest and the citations in court. “I want the charges dropped, and I want it expunged completely from my record. That’s the first thing, and I’m going to try very hard to do it,” he says.

“That’s going to end up costing thousands of dollars just to deal with the sheer volume,” he adds.

CultureMap contacted Mayor Whitmire’s office. A representative said the mayor was not aware of the situation and has no comment on an open investigation.

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