Serving Up Success

By Jenny West Rozelle

Merinda Watkins-Martin ’91 and her husband, Reggie Martin, run Lemond Kitchen, a gourmet Southern cuisine catering and event business in Houston. Watkins-Martin learned her business acumen at the feet of her father, a man with a third-grade education who built a successful business from the ground up and emphasized the importance of education for his family. She began working for her father when she was 4 years old and was helping with his accounting before she was a teenager. Martin is a third-generation chef and developed his skills while working for his grandmother, Emelda Lemond, who began her catering business in 1959.

Watkins-Martin and Martin have instilled a similar work ethic in their own children: 13-year-old Chris and Elizabeth, who is a sophomore at Brown College. “Our kids understand that this is their business as well, so they helped from a very early age,” said Watkins-Martin. “Chris at 3 years old was emptying trash cans, and Elizabeth demonstrated products at catering events around age 5.”

The family established the nonprofit Lemond Foundation with the mentality that “you have to help people however you can.” They deliver food weekly to senior citizens and donate school supplies, books and computers to students. “We put 10% of Lemond Kitchen’s retail sales into the foundation,” Watkins-Martin said.

Recently, Lemond Kitchen led a group of 18 local restaurants and catering companies and 43 faith-based, nonprofit and educational partners through the Houston Eats Restaurant Support (H.E.R.S.) program. The $2.2 million program, funded by the city of Houston as part of the federal CARES Act, went into action in early November 2020. The restaurants were paid to supply meals, and volunteers from the churches and nonprofits distributed the food to high-risk, homebound, low-income or unemployed individuals and families in 31 Houston ZIP codes that were hardest hit by COVID-19. The program, which aimed to give people relief over the holidays, also provided small business support to these restaurants. “Being paid to provide 50 meals a day made a difference in staying open for some restaurants,” said Watkins-Martin.

The family established the nonprofit Lemond Foundation with the mentality that 'you have to help people however you can.'

The H.E.R.S. program served 218,059 meals in 7 1/2 weeks. Watkins-Martin spent much of her time training the other restaurants to do invoices, develop their menus and refine other business skills she honed at Rice while earning her B.A. in managerial studies.

Having a good work-life balance is vital to Watkins-Martin, who also serves on the School of Social Sciences Dean’s Advisory Board at Rice. “Success doesn’t necessarily mean making huge sums of money at a Fortune 500 company. It’s about defining your own success.”