New Orleans chefs are facing a challenging summer as high temperatures and reduced tourism slow business for the city’s renowned culinary scene.
Inside the kitchen at Tana in Old Metairie, Chef Michael Gulotta serves fine Italian cuisine nightly, relying heavily on local support.
“You know, we need our local support, we need our local support,” Gulotta said.
A James Beard-nominated chef, Gulotta has experienced hard times firsthand, having closed two successful restaurants, Mopho and Maypop, just before the slow summer season.
“Yeah, man, that sucks. Yeah. So if I closed two restaurants that I, that I put over a decade of work, and two, so yeah, it’s, it’s pretty frustrating just because pre-pandemic they were both very, very successful,” he said.
Gulotta is not alone in facing these challenges. Other high-profile chefs, including Justin Devillier and Nina Compton, have also closed popular New Orleans spots, while some restaurants have reduced hours or closed for parts of June and July.
The busy season from October to May has slowed, with a loss of tourism and convention business, and fewer people working downtown.
“The busy season from October to end of May has gotten slower. We’ve lost all of that tourism in that convention business, and just the fact that a lot of people don’t work in the city anymore, that all sticks out. They stay out in the suburbs, they don’t work downtown anymore. All of those things have really impacted New Orleans as a whole. So it’s not just the summer, it’s the fact that the entire year is down, and the summer is, it just is slow,” Gulotta said.
With over 1,400 restaurants in New Orleans, competition is fierce, and margins are razor-thin. Chef and hospitality consultant Amy Sins noted that rent, insurance, staffing, and product costs have increased, making reliance on tourism a risky business model.
“I feel like we need to diversify, right? We need tourists. We need locals. We need businesses. We need people with money, we need revenue, and however we can get that, it’s not going to come from just one group of people. It’s going to come from expanding, who our customers are and how we get them in the door,” Sins said.
Chef Brian Landry at Jack Rose, also a James Beard-nominated chef, agrees that the restaurant industry is challenging.
“We have 1,400 in New Orleans. I mean, despite the fact that we are a legendary Food City, it’s still a hard business at times for people to make a large profit? Yeah, it’s hard all the time,” Landry said.
He explained that while other cities experience slow times during winter, New Orleans faces its slow period in the summer due to the heat.
“We have restaurants in Nashville and Louisville. The cycle there is December, January, February — very slow. It’s cold. Not a lot of people eating out in those cities during those months. Those happen to be great months for us here in New Orleans. Summer is our slow time, and it is what it is,” Landry said.
Landry attributes the slow summer business to the heat, which affects dining patterns.
“So lots of times restaurant dinner service starts at 5, but if it’s still 9900 degrees outside, people’s appetites are not going to hit in the same way. So during the summer, we’re not going to get busy at 5 or 6. We’re going to get busy at 8. Which is fine, except we’ve lost an entire turn of business for a dinner service. So instead of flipping the table twice or two and a half times, we’re lucky to get it once,” said Landry.
Landry described the annual cycle for New Orleans restaurateurs.
“I would say the cycle to the year of being a New Orleans restaurateur is the spring. You have to make enough money to survive summer, and then in the fall, that’s your chance to actually make some profit. And if anything happens to one of those two busy seasons, the razor margins are thin, and then they get even thinner,” Landry said.
Events like “Coolinary” and “Tourist in Your Own Home Town” aim to support local businesses, but as the weather heats up, profits cool down.
Some believe changes are necessary for the city’s hospitality industry to thrive.
“To be honest, we’ve got to make New Orleans more hospitable. You know, have people want to move here and raise families here and that, that, you know that, that rising tide. Lift all boats, so they say,” Gulotta said.
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