Twenty years ago on Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, leaving families displaced, streets flooded, and the city struggling to recover.

During the chaos, a familiar staple of New Orleans cuisine—red beans—became a comforting part of post-storm meals and a symbol of continuity, community, and tradition.

Aerial flooding of New Orleans (NOAA aerial photo). Taken by officers of the NOAA Corps.

Part of this city’s unfolding story was Camellia Brand, a 100-year-old family-owned company whose dedication to its community extended beyond its warehouses.

“I remember we were really concerned about where everybody was, were they safe, what their living conditions could be,” said Vince Hayward, the third-generation CEO of the company.

“So of course, all the cell phone towers were down. The communication was very difficult, and a lot of the communication was about, ‘Have you spoken with anyone?’ ‘Have you heard from this person or that person?’”

They put together a list of where everyone—family and employees, some of whom had been with the company for decades—was, a difficult task with cell phone towers down and landlines disconnected by winds or flooding.

“Communication was difficult,” said Hayward. But the company managed to get the word out that trailers were being set up for employees and their families to live outside the factory in Harahan, located in neighboring Jefferson Parish. The building had only lost power for 10 days and no structural damage. 

For 36-year Camellia Brand employee Vanessa Smith, who lived in the 7th Ward in New Orleans, the flooding during and after the storm was all too real.

New Orleans, LA–Aerial views of damage caused from Hurricane Katrina the day after the hurricane hit August 30, 2005. Photo by Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA

“The water was coming in. It was getting higher and higher, then the levees broke,” Smith said, adding that she saw people struggling to survive and those who did not during the storm and after.

“You looked around, everywhere you looked, there was obvious destruction and obvious need,” Hayward said.

The city was almost unidentifiable. “When I first came back into the city, I really was just so surprised by how I really couldn’t recognize it,” said Alon Shaya, restaurateur, cookbook author, and CEO of Pomegranate Hospitality.

Once Camellia Beans was up and running, said Hayward, “We were contacted by people about doing feeding operations. They wanted to know if we had any beans we could donate or, get to them because they were helping out areas that were still suffering without power, without any type of utilities or infrastructure.”

Relief groups, volunteers, chefs and everyday people found their way to obtaining bags of Camellia Beans, giving them the means to feed people, whether it was first responders, displaced residents, and anyone who was hungry.

Jayda Atkinson, consulting chef and TV personality, who had stayed during the storm, but left for Texas, spent three days not knowing where her family was.

Atkinson ended up in Atlanta, where she was living “in a FEMA hotel with a bunch of other locals who were trying to figure it out.”

Then, she said, a light bulb went off in her head.

“Camellia Beans! So I went to Publix, got a bag of Camellia Beans, knowing what beans did for me and my family,” she said, adding that her grandfather was the family red beans and rice guy. 

“Whenever grandpa was fixing red beans, we all felt good,” she said. “So I wanted to offer the same feeling to other people.”

When the beans were done, she set up a table outside her hotel room, and people flocked to her, happy and crying as it “reminded them of home.”

From there on out she continued to make the beans. “It became a small act of healing, for me and for others,” she said. 

Shaya cooked at the Walmart on Tchoupitoulas Street, which was being used as “sort of a command center for the National Guard, FEMA, the police, state troopers, and people who had been rescued from their homes.”

Shaya said he walked through the store and picked up a “big bag of Camellia red beans, a crawfish boil pot, a big propane tank, a bottle of Tabasco sauce, Tony Chachere’s seasonings, and walked into the parking lot and started cooking red beans.”

“I was giving people really their first hot meal in several days.”

The humble bean, shelf-stable and protein-rich, emerged as an unexpected hero in New Orleans’ darkest hours. 

“Gathering to share red beans and rice with other people from New Orleans was kind of like having communion in church. It’s a reconnection of you with the community and with something more powerful than you as an individual,” said writer Lolis Eric Elie.

“Cooking red beans and rice wasn’t just about food — it was about love, memory, and comfort,” said Atkinson.

While the storm’s waters reshaped the physical landscape, Camellia strengthened its deep roots in the community, proving that in times of crisis, the simplest foods can sustain not just bodies, but hope.