About Smoke Point Partners
Smoke Point Partners is a food, hospitality and community-development studio based in Morehead City, North Carolina.
Founded by Leah Godfrey and Michael Weber, Smoke Point is built from a life-long love affair with food, pressure-tested in restaurants, bakeries, catering kitchens, food halls, retail stores, markets, farms, civic food projects, events, communications, brand development and hospitality work from local kitchens to international food brands.
We believe good food work honours the whole system: the growers, fishers, farmers, bakers, producers and artisans who bring food into being; the restaurants, markets and hospitality teams who shape it into experience; and the people who gather around it, return to it, talk about it and carry it forward.
Smoke Point Partners is our way of bringing our life in food to the place we now call home, working with care, building with discipline, and helping good food businesses grow in ways that feel rooted, generous and built to last.
Providence · Boston · Chapel Hill· Newport RI · Charlestown · Salem · Dorchester · Glasgow · West London · East London · New York City · and now, thankfully, Carteret County
Leah Godfrey
At 19, Leah co-launched a wholesale cake company in Newport, Rhode Island, supplying cakes and tarts to many of the city’s leading restaurants. By 27, she had built food ventures in Newport and Boston, led multi site bakery, café and catering operations, contributed to teams that won Best of Boston Caterer three years running and personally won Best of Boston Muffin.
She was then recruited by Whole Foods Market to build its North Atlantic Corporate Catering programme from the ground up, reaching $1 million in annualised revenue in five months. She later became a Marketing Director at Whole Foods, where her community-building, marketing and brand work contributed to a revised store-opening model rooted in activating local relationships contributing a 20% lift in opening sales.
After moving to London, Leah founded Pink Door Creative and later L2 Foundry, expanding her work into strategy, storytelling, events and public-facing growth across civic, cultural, charitable and sporting life. She has developed and led first-of-their-kind events at major London venues, served on many prestigious boards and helped organisations make emerging ideas clear enough to gather support, move people and grow.
At Smoke Point, Leah works on the public life of food businesses: the way they sound, show up, gather people and become part of the memory of a place. Her photography runs through Smoke Point’s website and social channels as part of that work: food, people, weather, landscape, tables and the lovely rituals of gathering. She is currently developing Pop Vesta Markets and Events, named for Michael’s grandmother Vesta Davis, beginning with Bureau of Crushes, Orangery and future market-facing food concepts.
Leah Godfrey is a founder, strategist, communications expert and multi-award-winning event director whose work is rooted in community-building and social impact. A creative and operational leader, she brings three decades of experience across food, hospitality, culture, civic work, research, social impact and sport.
Leah grew up in New England and her life in food began at 15, in a British baking internship, learning the science and alchemy in a kitchen overlooking a North Atlantic tidal strait. This apprenticeship and others inspired her lifelong passion and reverence for honest ingredients, guest experience and the belief that care is often carried in the smallest details.
SELECTED EXPERIENCE
Food & hospitality
Built and led food and hospitality ventures across the US and UK, from wholesale cakes and corporate catering to multi-site bakery, café and event operations, with Best of Boston recognition across catering and baking.
Brand, Communications & Storytelling
Led brand, communications, global audits and storytelling work for food businesses, founders, civic organisations, charities, campaigns, sports clubs, leagues and cultural projects across the US and UK, helping ideas become clearer, more compelling and easier to act on.
Events, Fundraising & Public-Facing Programmes
Directed major events, auctions, galas, campaigns and revenue-generating programmes across the US and UK, spanning food, education, local government, charity, culture and sport, including first-of-their-kind and largest-of-their-kind events at major London venues.
Civic Food, Community & Social Impact
Worked across food banks, land trusts, local government, food insecurity, governance and community development, shaping a view of food as part of a wider system of land, labour, access, health, belonging and commerce.
Research, Evidence & Sector Development
Developed research-led strategy across women’s sport, governance and social impact, working extensively with universities and national organisations to turn evidence into sector change. Projects have included convening a board to develop a neurodiversity white paper for Team GB, Campaign 243 with Leicester and Loughborough Universities examining the lived experience of Black and Brown female officials, and major player centric research with Fordham University.
Selected Clients & Partners
Michael Weber
Michael Weber is a Morehead City native, food operator and commercial strategist with three decades of experience across restaurants, premium food retail, hospitality, food halls, cafés, ecommerce, sourcing, supply chain, private label and growth.
His career has included senior leadership roles with Whole Foods Market, Daylesford Organic, Selfridges, John Lewis, Waitrose, Mercato Metropolitano and Brindisa, spanning operations, commercial strategy, food retail, hospitality, digital transformation and multi-site growth.
Michael is currently based in London, where he serves as Commercial Lead at Brindisa. He remains a co-founder and strategic adviser to Smoke Point Partners and takes on a limited number of projects where his operational and commercial experience is particularly relevant.
Michael is the great-great-great-grandson of John Ross Royal, the Cape Lookout lighthouse keeper appointed in 1854, with deep Carteret roots through the Davis, Wade, Livingston and Royal families.
In Carteret County, history is rarely abstract. It survives in family names, cemeteries, church pews, old roads, boats, storms and the stories that are still passed from one generation to the next. Michael’s connection to the county sits within that longer coastal inheritance of maritime work, weather, navigation, endurance, family and an enduring care for place.
SELECTED EXPERIENCE
Food Operations & Commercial Growth
Three decades leading food, hospitality and retail businesses across the US and UK, with experience spanning P&L, sourcing, supply chain, purchasing, private label, service and profitability.
Restaurants, Hospitality & Multi-Site Operations
Led restaurant, café, food hall and hospitality operations across complex multi-site businesses, with particular expertise in operating models, guest experience, margin improvement and growth.
Digital, Ecommerce & Future Food Retail
Worked across ecommerce, digital ordering, technology, customer proposition and future food-retail strategy for major UK and international brands.
What This Means For Smoke Point
Smoke Point Partners brings together two kinds of experience that strengthen and enrich each other creating more resilient ideation, delivery and outcomes.
Michael brings the operator’s view: numbers, systems, food, labour, supply chain, service, sites and the commercial realities that make a restaurant or hospitality business work.
Leah brings the founder and storyteller’s view: product, language, events, community, brand, photography, civic context and the ability to make ideas compelling enough to unite diverse stakeholders and simultaneously stop that scroll.
Together, we help hospitality businesses, nonprofits, cities, boroughs and towns, 501C3, and charities become clearer, stronger, more profitable and more resilient.
We are based in Morehead City and are building this work with reverence for Carteret County, Down East, SOBX and coastal North Carolina.
Tell us what you are building, fixing or trying to grow.
