NEW ORLEANS – The Ruby Slipper Café was honored by Fortune and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) as part of its 2017 Inner City 100 List.
The café ranked 25 out of 100, up 21 spots from 2016 when it ranked 46. This recognition places The Ruby Slipper Café in an exemplary lineage of fast-growing and innovative inner city businesses, company reps said.
“We are honored to be part of such an amazing group of businesses and organizations that are working to make our cities more vibrant places to live and work,” Ruby Slipper Café co-owner Jennifer Weishaupt said. “And we’re so pleased by the number of New Orleans-based organizations that made the list. Today, we’re especially proud to call NOLA home.”
The Ruby Slipper Café’s five-year growth rate is 307 percent, with 2016 revenues at more than $13 million.
Proprietors Jennifer and Erich Weishaupt were inspired to open the café when they returned to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. A powerful sense of homecoming pushed them forward through their journey to create what is now a New Orleans breakfast staple, with locations from the Crescent City and Baton Rouge, to Orange Beach, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida. Their next urban location is slated to open in downtown Mobile, Alabama in Spring 2018.
According to Fortune’s article, “[Owners Jennifer and Erich Weishaupt] took an engineering project management-style approach to build their venture, and they have integrated a high level of technology to improve their customers’ and employees’ experience. Their approach paid off, and today the Ruby Slipper Café has eight locations, seven of which are in urban neighborhoods.”
ICIC’s Inner City 100 features 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 esteemed recipients go on to have their names published in Fortune. This year, five other New Orleans-based companies were honored as part of this group including Scott, Vicknair, Hair & Checki; Spears Group; Uncorked; K-Belle Consultants and Lake Pontchartrain Properties.
The Ruby Slipper Café’s owners are about to begin renovations on a space in the historic Staples Pake building in downtown Mobile, Alabama and plan to open in the Spring of 2018, per permit approvals. This restaurant will mark The Ruby Slipper Café’s ninth restaurant in total and its second in Alabama.
“Our Ruby Slipper family has been itching to continue to grow here in Alabama,” said Jennifer. “We are excited to continue to share our brand of Southern charm with the Mobile community.”
Staples Pake has recently been renovated and returned to its original 1850’s glory, with all the amenities of modern day, reps said. The Café will occupy the corner section of the three-story brick building that has served as a business center of Mobile since the nineteenth century. NOLA Revival, a subsidiary of BEC Development, is responsible for the renovation.
Once open, patrons can expect The Slipper’s classic menu featuring its signature twists on old Southern favorites, like the award-winning BBQ shrimp & grits, eggs cochon benedict and bananas foster pain perdu. These dishes, as well as The Slipper’s eye-opening cocktails are some of the many reasons The Ruby Slipper Café continues to be included on “best of” lists across the Gulf South, company reps said.
“The Café is already a destination in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast,” said Jennifer. “We hope to continue to spread our flavors and sense of homecoming to our new neighbors in Mobile.”
The Ruby Slipper Café is a family-owned and operated business and open to serve diners 363 days a year at five New Orleans locations (Marigny, Mid-City, Canal St., CBD on Magazine Street and Uptown on Magazine Street), as well as locations in Baton Rouge, Pensacola, Florida, Orange Beach, Alabama and soon, Mobile, Alabama.
