Fat Tuesday is just 14 days away and many New Orleans area restaurants are facing a crucial two-week stretch. Louisiana Restaurant Association head Stan Harris told WWL this is a make or break it period for many businesses that just barely made it through the last roughly two years.
“That is 100% true especially for your full service or table service, not just fine dining,” said Harris who said last year’s loss of Mardi Gras parades and activities was financially devastating. “All of that was just hundreds of millions of dollars of lost opportunity.”
Many restaurants are still operating on limited hours and service in a pandemic era that’s seen a massive worker exodus from the industry. Harris said there are some signs that staffing has picked up just in time for the big crush of tourists.
“I had one operator tell me that they had hired over 60 people in the month of January when they didn’t hire that many in the last six months of the last year,” said Harris who added that staffing will play a big role in determining if restaurants will be able to stay open enough to reap the full Carnival bounty.
“That is going to really tell the tale of if restaurants can operate later in the day and expanding the days of the week that they operate.”
