New Orleans Black restaurants preparing for ‘No crumb left behind campaign’ despite setbacks caused by pandemic and Ida
4th October 2021 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
In February of this year, Arkesha Baquet was finally able to reopen her restaurant, Lil Dizzy’s Cafe in Treme, after months of being closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was a major step forward in Baquet’s effort to revitalize and re-start her culinary venture, which is the latest of several eateries owned and operated by Baquet and her family in New Orleans over the last 70 years.
But then, just six months after the cafe’s reopening, Hurricane Ida walloped the New Orleans area on Aug. 29, wreaking havoc on the region that forced Baquet to once again temporarily shutter her restaurant, a reluctant action taken by dozens of other family-owned businesses in the storm’s wake.
Last Monday, Lil Dizzy’s was able to open its doors once again, and while Baquet said business was fairly brisk during the day, she also stressed that obstacles remain.
“It’s businesses in general,” she said. “There’s been a lot of challenges. We had the pandemic, and then Ida hit. It was one right after the other. It makes it much harder to stay in business.”
But Baquet and many of her peers in the local restaurant scene also know that being a Black-owned-and-operated business presents even more barriers to entrepreneurial survival and success.
Located in the historic Treme district that has birthed so much of local Black culture over the decades, Lil Dizzy’s and other Black restaurants continue to play a key role in the sustaining and growing of those cultural traditions and heritages.
“[Restaurants] are very vital to the African-American community,” Baquet said. “There’s an abundance of them, and the ones that are still around play a very important part in the community.”
Having served up Louisiana delicacies locally for three generations, Baquet and her relatives maintain deep roots in the New Orleans Black community, and in the city overall. From her treasured little spot in Treme, Baquet, like many of African-American restaurateurs, persists because of what it means to her, her family and her community.
“It’s very important to us to be a staple in a historic neighborhood like Treme,” she said. “That’s something that we’re very proud of.”
LaVerne Toombs, executive director of the New Orleans Regional Black Chamber of Commerce, said quality eateries like Lil Dizzy’s and others similar are in many ways the lifeblood of Black New Orleans.
“Black restaurants are the very essence of New Orleans,” Toombs said. “I believe in supporting our local Black businesses, especially neighborhood Black-owned restaurants. The dollars hit the community right away. We must keep the footprints of black-owned restaurants alive and never let our history or culture fall by the wayside.”
Fortunately, one nationwide grassroots organization is reaching out to Black-owned, mom and pop restaurants across the country. Since its founding in 2016, Black Restaurant Week LLC has provided assistance to more than 670 culinary establishments by offering marketing and PR support and other logistical help that has helped boost the average sales of restaurants, bartenders, chefs, caterers and food trucks.
Black Restaurant Week organizers say such support is essential to minority-owned restaurants during the COVID pandemic, during which Black-owned businesses’ struggles have been compounded by the long-existing economic and systemic barriers that face African-American businesses nationwide.
According to an Independent Restaurant Coalition fact sheet, more than a quarter of all jobs lost in Louisiana since the start of the pandemic, a fact that disproportionately affects local communities of color. Because roughly 60 percent of chefs are minorities, and because the restaurant business features more minority manager-employees than any other industry, people of color run an elevated risk of job loss and insecurity, which causes lack of income, debt, loss of benefits like health insurance and other consequences.
BRW LLC organizers say that several factors – such as a lack of access to business loans and trouble generating public awareness of exposure to Black culinary establishments – spurred the BRW founders to launch their efforts.
Although BRW LLC began in Houston as a one-city food experience, the organization has since expanded to 15 markets nationwide, including New Orleans. Organizers hope that BRW can contribute to and enhance the social and racial justice movement that has continued to grow across the country in recent years.
Most recently, the organization just launched its new outreach and support campaign, No Crumb Left Behind, which includes a nationwide tour and culinary showcase, with a stop scheduled for New Orleans Oct. 8-17.
The purpose of the No Crumb Left Behind campaign, according to a BRW press release, is to publicize the existence of hundreds of Black-owned restaurants that desperately need their communities to learn about and patronize them, thereby boosting the eateries’ bottom lines, especially as the pandemic drags on.
“The No Crumb Left Behind campaign is to ensure that we are helping as many culinary businesses stay afloat as the world recovers from the pandemic,” Derek Robinson, Black Restaurant Week marketing director, said in a statement. “We are adding more activations and working with additional partners to present programming to serve our full audience of restaurants, bakeries, caterers, chefs and food trucks.”
One of the BRW co-founders, Falayn Ferrell, told The Louisiana Weekly that New Orleans, as one of the stops on the No Crumb Left Behind tour, provides a unique opportunity to support and cultivate Black-owned culinary businesses, particularly now as Crescent City restaurants gradually reopen following Ida and as economically-important events like music festivals and Mardi Gras face uncertain short-term futures because of COVID.
“New Orleans is a city that thrives on its tourism and festival season, which lasts from February to November,” Ferrell told the newspaper. “With the reduced amount of foot traffic from the cancellation of these major events and festivals, Black-owned restaurant owners are faced with challenges that other cities don’t experience. New Orleans is a resilient community, so I think the local community support and fellowship has helped some of the restaurants as they try to recover from COVID-19 and this year’s rampant hurricane season.”
Ferrell said local Black eateries have been the beneficiaries of BRW LLC’s Feed the Soul Foundation, which was created in 2020 to provide establishments’ with assistance in expanding their business.
Ferrell said Feed the Soul has provided $250,000 in grants and business-development services to culinary establishments across the country, including Meals from the Heart in New Orleans. She added that 45 percent of restaurants that visited the organization’s Restaurant Business Development Grant Program site listed business expansion as their top need. Expansion includes tasks like adding new locations, creating franchising models and adding merchandising to their business model.
Ferrell said a key to expansion is finding additional revenue streams to support such growth at this critical economic time, adding that New Orleans features several success stories in that regard. She said We Dat has been able to expand its line of seasoning products and scored product placement in major retail chains like H-E-B, Rouses and Walmart, while Peewee’s Crab Cakes has opened multiple locations.
“I think providing businesses with the tools and resources to grow their business is key to sustainable futures,” Ferrell said.
She added that BRW LLC works to create local partnerships with corporate entities and with non-profit and grassroots organizations dedicated to supporting the Black community. In New Orleans, she said, Black Restaurant Week has partnered with the Urban League of Louisiana and with Pepsi’s Dig In campaign, in which PepsiCo has committed to providing $50 million over five years to help Black restaurateurs established their businesses and to assist such culinary establishments with creating awareness of their offerings and their professions.
“With these partnerships, we can provide business opportunities and awareness throughout the year, not just during the campaign week,” Ferrell said.
“That is the beauty of the Black Restaurant Week model,” she added. “We are able to have localized promotions as well as tap into our national platform to increase awareness for the businesses and culinary professionals on a larger scale. This dual model will only continue to strengthen the brand and our impact on the culinary industry.”
This article originally published in the October 4, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
