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When Augie’s Restaurant in Harahan shut down previously this month, it took clients, which include individuals that experienced pre-paid out for forthcoming occasions, by shock.
Now, operator and longtime New Orleans restauranteur Augie Lopez is vowing to make his customers whole.
“They are all heading to be taken care of,” mentioned Lopez in a telephone job interview on Monday. “They have to be client but I’m doing the job on every thing.”
Pre-payments
Lopez has been in the local restaurant enterprise for 48 decades. Prior to working Augie’s on Jefferson Freeway, he owned the Windjammer on the West Conclude, Augie’s Glass Yard in Metairie and Augie’s on the West Lender.
The abrupt shutdown isn’t really the very first time Lopez has confronted monetary issues.
Courtroom records present Augie’s has periodically had difficulties paying its payments over the a long time. The cafe racked up far more than $15,000 in liens for falling behind on its Louisiana state taxes from 2016-2018.
The cafe had a $6,000 judgment rendered against it in late 2018 for failing to pay out Reinhart Foodstuff Services for food items and supplies. Far more not long ago, Metairie Bank sued the restaurant in April for overdrawing its checking account by far more than $2,600.
Lopez explained he has compensated the previous liens and tax payments. But now it appears he owes customers who pre-paid for events, which includes Rielly Smith, who was setting up to have her mid-September wedding ceremony reception at the cafe.
Smith stated her spouse and children is out their $2,200 deposit and she is scrambling to discover a location that can accommodate 60 company three months in advance of the massive day.
“It was a 50% deposit,” Smith reported. “So, we have a lot fewer dollars to devote now. That was a huge chunk of it.”
Pandemic, Ida
In some of his to start with general public comments given that the cafe shuttered, Lopez said that like quite a few restaurant homeowners, he was strike difficult by the pandemic.
Then, throughout Hurricane Ida, the roof was partially ripped off of the Jefferson Highway strip shopping mall that was house to the cafe.
Even though Augie’s did not sustain any injury, other tenants in the strip center did and have been forced to near. They have however to reopen. Not only did the lack of foot traffic at the middle harm his business enterprise, but Lopez stated the broken exterior held some consumers from scheduling activities.
Design fencing fronts Augie’s Cafe and Situations on Jefferson Freeway, which shut abruptly in June 2023. (Employees image by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Instances-Picayune)
“We just didn’t have sufficient business enterprise,” Lopez explained. “Having destruction from the storm genuinely damage the way the spot seemed and people did not like it.”
Adam Ackel, whose household business The Ackel Group, is the majority proprietor of the strip middle, states the house sustained more than $2 million really worth of damage in the 2021 hurricane and that repairs, even though approximately entire now, have taken longer than they had hoped.
Ackel declined to remark on the group’s negotiations with Lopez precisely. But he explained the owners taken care of Augie’s “as rather as we could. Regrettably, we could not discover a resolution and a middle ground that built sense. That is why he is no lengthier a element of the heart.”
Lopez mentioned just after he sorts out his finances, he hopes to reopen a different cafe, probably someplace in Metairie.
“I’m not prepared to retire still,” he said.
Smith has not read from Lopez or everyone with the restaurant’s employees, but claimed she’s hopeful that a new system for the wedding day is going to appear together.
“Other cafe house owners in Harahan have stepped up and supplied to perform with us,” she mentioned. “we genuinely value the group coming with each other to aid us.”
