Jennifer and Erich Weishaupt founded the original Ruby Slipper Café in Mid-City in 2008, serving up comfort to a neighborhood still in the throes of post-Katrina recovery. The New Orleans-inspired breakfast/brunch concept proved popular enough to transform one location into a benedict-and-Bloody-Mary-fueled empire.
Currently, the Ruby Slipper Restaurant Group oversees nearly 650 employees in 11 locations of the Ruby Slipper Café across Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. The group has also opened three Ruby Sunshine restaurants, a sister concept, in Tennessee and Alabama, with four more scheduled to open by the end of May in Tennessee and North Carolina.
In January, the group brought in its first CFO, Jennifer Beougher, to help shepherd Ruby Slipper’s expansion and add a more strategic perspective on finance, accounting and debt management.
“Erich was our finance and accounting person for a long time,” said Jennifer Weishaupt. “He taught himself QuickBooks, and we’re both engineers, so our poor controller always had to undo whatever Erich was trying to do.”
The group made news in January when Ruby Slipper Café locations offered free meals to federal employees affected by the government shutdown. The company served 7,000 meals to furloughed workers and received recognition from federal agencies including the U.S. Coast Guard and the FBI.
“The restaurant was kind of born from the remnants of rebuilding after Katrina,” said Erich Weishaupt, “so that’s kind of our back story and where we came from. We’ve been there.”
October presented a setback when the collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel on Oct. 12 forced the Ruby Slipper location at 1005 Canal Street to close its doors until Nov. 30.
“I don’t think many businesses would have that type of scenario in their emergency response or business continuity plans,” said Jennifer Weishaupt. “I know for sure that we did not.” Management worked to place employees in other Ruby Slipper locations during Canal Street’s closure, an investment the Weishaupts noted made reopening much smoother.
The couple said they are grateful for the path their business has taken.
“This was never our plan,” said Erich Weishaupt. “It just kind of organically grew – the right niche at the right time. We’re lucky to be where we’re at and be able to provide for so many people.”
