NEW ORLEANS – The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) and Fortune Magazine announced The Ruby Slipper Café has been selected for the prestigious 2016 Inner City 100 list.
ICIC’s Inner City 100 is an annually compiled and released list featuring high-power, high-potential businesses from around the country with headquarters in inner cities. Each company is selected by ICIC with help from a national network of nominating partners who seek to identify, spotlight and further enable the named companies’ innovative urban entrepreneurship. Ranked by revenue growth, the recipients go on to have their names published in Fortune Magazine.
The Ruby Slipper Café ranked 46 overall on the list of 100.
The Ruby Slipper Café, a family-owned and operated business that brings New Orleans flair to southern breakfast standards, brunch classics and fresh lunch dishes, has grown to 6 locations since opening in 2008 – 5 of which are in urban neighborhoods. Café reps reported 2015 revenues of $9.62 million and a five-year growth rate of 273% percent from 2011-2015.
The full ICIC’s Inner City 100 list can be viewed on the Fortune website here.
In addition to announcing the list, company CEOs were invited to gather for a full-day event featuring thought-provoking sessions, insightful leadership advice, and robust networking opportunities. Past winners have reported meeting future multi-million dollar investors as a result of appearing on the Inner City 100 list and attending the accompanying colloquium.
The rankings for each company were announced at the Inner City 100 Conference and Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, September 14, 2016, at the Aloft Hotel in Boston, MA. Before the awards celebration, winners gathered for a full-day business symposium featuring management case studies from Harvard Business School professors and interactive sessions with top CEOs. Keynote speakers at this year’s event included Interim CEO of Staples Shira Goodman, Chairman and CEO of Pinnacle Group and Inner City 100 alumnus Nina Vaca, and Harvard Business School Professor and ICIC Founder and Chairman Michael E. Porter. Other speakers included Corey Thomas, CEO of Rapid 7, Loren Feldman of Forbes, Lynda Applegate and Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School, John Stuart of PTC, Robert Wallace, CEO of Bithenergy, and Brook Colangelo of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
“We are extraordinarily proud of these pioneering entrepreneurs who lead the way in economic revitalization in America’s inner cities,” Steve Grossman, CEO of ICIC, said of the list of 100.
The Inner City 100 program recognizes and supports successful inner city business leaders, and celebrates their role in providing innovation and job creation in America’s cities. These companies strengthen local American economies, provide job opportunities for underrepresented communities, and drive forward economic and social development.
Boasting an average five-year growth rate of 458 percent between 2011 and 2015, the 2016 Inner City 100 winners represent a wide span of geography, hailing from 42 cities and 25 states. Collectively, the winners employed 7,324 people in 2015, and on average over a third of their employees live in the same neighborhood as the company.
Highlights of the 2016 Inner City 100 include:
• Employ 7,324 workers total in 2015.
• Created 4,696 new jobs in the last five years.
• On average, 34% of employees live in same neighborhood as the company.
• Average company age is 16 years.
• Average 2015 revenue is $12.2 million.
• 34% are women-owned.
• 37% are minority-owned.
• 6% of the winners are certified B-Corps.
• 26 industries represented in the top 100.
The Ruby Slipper Café is open to serve diners 363 days a year at four New Orleans locations (Marigny, Mid-City, Magazine St. and Canal St.), one in Pensacola, Fla., and its newest Orange Beach, Ala. location. The Ruby Slipper Café was inspired by a powerful sense of homecoming when returning to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and has expanded across the Southern Gulf Region since opening in 2008.
