Local restaurant owners react

As the coronavirus continues taking its toll, local restaurants are among the businesses suffering. They have been told to close their dining rooms to help prevent the spread of the virus. Even though they cannot open their dining rooms, most are still available for take-out and/or delivery.
Eddie Mashni, owner of Main Street Pub & Grill, said the situation is “very bad.” He is worried about his staff. “We don’t want to get rid of our staff because it’s not their fault. We’re barely making it. I don’t want my staff to be out of jobs. It’s forcing us to pay money out of our pockets to pay for staff.” He said closing the dining room is cutting into his profits because they make more from diners than to-go orders. “It’s affecting more than half of my sales. I’m so stressed I don’t want to be near the restaurant. You’re just sitting there all day talking to yourself. The mom and pop restaurants, the locals trying to survive, we’re burnt.” They are keeping their regular hours, for lunch deliveries and orders to-go, but Mashni said they will not deliver at night because of the high crime rate in the city. “We’re not going to risk out lives to deliver at night.” When asked if there is anything he would ask of the community, Mashni said, “Pray for us.”
Jay Gielow, owner of Cafe Evangeline, said they have closed their dining room, but they do offer carry-out, curve-side pick up, and they might start offering deliveries. Their menu is on Facebook or they can send the menu to anyone who asks. “We are trying to accommodate everything we can and not have this cripple us too bad,” he said. “Now is the time for everyone in the community to make sure their money stays in the community. Not all of us are going to be able to bear this without loyalty from the community.”
Darlene Bolfa, owner of Cafe’ de LaSalle said they are reaching out to the public with curb-side pickup, deliveries, and Cajun TV dinners in a foil pan ready to go. She said of the restrictions, “It is drastically going to hurt us, especially with the dining room closing, and the wait staff live off of tips. They get paid a lesser wage plus tips. We have people without incomes now. Three quarters of my income is already gone. If you don’t have a couple of thousand in savings already, I don’t know what people are going to do. It’s going to hurt us all. It is already hurting us all.”
John Deville, owner of Cajun Catfish Steakhouse and Buffet said, “There won’t be enough profits to do just pick-ups. The only places that will work is your large franchises, McDonalds, Burger King, etc. But for us, we would have to have enough numbers, enough large volume for us to survive. We’re closing down until further notice. We’re going to have to start over again. If it’s going to be more than two weeks, it’ll be like starting over again. The economy is going to hurt. Not everyone is going to have the money to go back to normal. It will take months to get back to normal. I’m afraid a lot of places may not be able to reopen or even survive once they reopen.”
Kelly Soileau, owner of the Crawfish Barn, said they are doing to-go orders only. “We’re going to take it on a day-to-day basis. We want to do what’s best for the community.”
Krazy Cajun owner Don Secia said, “It’s affected us majorly. I don’t know how we’re going to pay our bills at the end of the month.” He and his wife, Judy, have had to let their employees go until further notice and are only doing take-out orders. They had deliveries every day for lunches but that’s been shut down for at least two months. “I hope that people will really support their local businesses that are open. This is the one time we really depend on them. If people still support us a little bit, we’ll be open. 30 days is scary, but 60 days is really scary. We’re just taking one day at a time, literally, hoping we can pay the bills. This is our only income. What’s crazy about it is our fear should be the virus but it’s the bills.”