The food on our plates is not disconnected from the mechanisms of social stratification and inequality. Who picks the food, cooks the food, eats the food, and pays for the food are all part of this intertwined, unequal system. This concluding chapter places Southern foodways and the inequality embedded in traditional representations of it into conversation regarding the increasing media and tourist attention garnered by popular Southern foods. While advantageous to some producers, these trends reinforce the financial hardships along with the many racial, ethnic, and gendered stereotypes faced by others who are integral to these foodways and traditions. This final chapter explores the diversity embedded in Southern foodways if we choose to look beyond the popular stereotypes, while also considering some of the larger societal changes in the restaurant industry sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.

Across each chapter the producers of craft food and beverages in the South have been shown to be grounded in the history of their industry and in place itself. History is important, whether it is geographical as in the case of Virginia and North Carolina winemakers recalling Thomas Jefferson's goal to make wine on par with those being produced in France at the time and Sir Walter Raleigh's planting of muscadine grapes, or family history as in the case of farmers and shrimpers who are the current generation in a long line of family members to make their lives on the land or water. In both cases, the importance of place, or terroir, permeates the decision-making process surrounding what products to grow that will thrive in the South.

It is this grounding in place and possibilities for the future, coupled with the South's new image as a cosmopolitan destination, that is drawing people from across the country to call the South home or to visit the region. These consumers may bring with them their own preconceived notions of the South, often reflecting narrow historical and literal black and white racial divisions, or they may come to the region viewing it as a commercialized tourist destination that takes the racial and class history of the South and makes it palatable to outsiders by offering that history for sale in quaint shops across the Southern states, selling symbols of an exotic or tranquil past for a small price (Cox, 2008).