New Orleans Restaurants, Used to Disasters, Reckon With Something Worse

Larger fund-raising efforts are underway to cushion the blow to unemployed hospitality workers. New Orleans has one of the country’s highest poverty rates, and most people working in restaurants don’t earn enough to build up savings. According to the Data Center, an independent local research firm, 93 percent of the full-service restaurant employees in New Orleans are in low-wage jobs where most workers make less than $15 an hour.

Halting tourism and closing restaurants “affects the hotel worker, it affects the bartender, it affects the Uber driver, it affects the tour guide, it affects the whole economy,” said Andy Kopplin, the president and chief executive of the Greater New Orleans Foundation. “Because of our economic base, we’re particularly vulnerable.”

On Monday, the foundation started the Louisiana Service and Hospitality Family Assistance Program at the urging of Gayle Benson, the owner of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, who contributed $500,000, with another $100,000 from the McIlhenny Company, the Louisiana-based maker of Tabasco.

The fund is intended to benefit the neediest hospitality workers first, Mr. Kopplin said.

“There are tens of thousands of people in New Orleans who are out of work,” he said. “Every single one of them needs help. The lower-wage workers who were raising kids or taking care of parents before the pandemic, those are the folks who need it the most.”

A provision of the federal stimulus package that President Trump signed into law on Friday provides forgivable loans to businesses that use the money to retain employees and keep the doors open. “It’s a way of making sure you don’t make a decision today that you regret tomorrow,” said Mr. Hecht of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, a former restaurateur himself. “I would encourage people to pay attention to it.”

While they wait for help to arrive, restaurant owners are turning their attention to caring for recently laid-off employees.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/dining/new-orleans-restaurants-coronavirus.html