SCHOOL BENEFITS ENTIRE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

The booming hospitality industry in New Orleans has a gaping employment hole that desperately needs filling in the restaurant sector. 
It took more than 10 years for the industry to recover from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the growing restaurant scene is in desperate need of culinary talent.
Before the massive hurricane struck in 2005, the city had 800 restaurants. Fast forward to 2017, and New Orleans is home to 1,400 eateries (fast food not included) and there aren’t enough workers to keep up with the demand.
“The growth of restaurants in New Orleans since Katrina is remarkable,” said Kristian Sonnier, vice president of communications and public relations for the Convention and Visitors Bureau in New Orleans.
To fill the void, the New Orleans Convention Center Authority and New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute (NOCHI) joined forces to create a new culinary and hospitality training and education center in the city.
The convention center authority, which is the governing body of the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, purchased a 93,000-square-foot building for $12 million mirrored with a cooperative partnership with NOCHI that includes a 40-year lease agreement.
A chunk of those funds are for the building purchase and for renovations that are estimated to total $32 million before the secondary education culinary school opens in spring of 2018.
Once completed, the facility will be equipped with two culinary teaching labs, two baking and pastry labs, a restaurant lab, a wine and spirits lab, a large event center, a banquet kitchen, classrooms, office spaces and a public café.
“The need is that we’re a hospitality city, and one of the workforces is restaurants,” said NOCHI Executive Director Carol Markowitz. “The industry is struggling to find enough people to staff the 1,400 restaurants and our hotels. (The partnership) really came from this dire need of workforce. We really do need a world class hospitality school in New Orleans.” 
NOCHI was formed by some of the city’s most famous restaurant owners, including George Brower, Ti Martin and Dickie Brennan, all of whom felt the shortage of culinary staff first hand, Markowitz said.
NOCHI is a not-for-profit organization that aims to provide “economic, social and cultural benefits” to the local and global service industry, stated a press release on the culinary institute.
The school will offer two 650-hour certificate programs under the Culinary Institute of America. “In addition to career training programs, NOCHI will also offer community engagement programs and support research and scholarship initiatives that benefit the hospitality industry,” stated the release.
To quantify the need, Sonnier outlined that prior to Hurricane Katrina, visitor spending in New Orleans reached $4.9 billion in 2004. The Convention and Visitors Bureau calculated that in 2015 (the latest record, as 2016 figures won’t come out until March), visitor spending reached a record $7.05 billion.
“It speaks to the demand that the visitors want,” Sonnier said.
The contrast of spending over the years also is extraordinary, considering that in 2004, there were 10.1 million visitors to New Orleans. In 2015, there were 9.9 million visitors, and the reason the spending jumped had to do with the type of visitors.
The visitors’ bureau found that although the visitor numbers are down, visitors are spending more when they come to town, and there’s a huge influx of international visitors who stay longer than those who live stateside.
The 2015 survey also outlined that overnight visitors in New Orleans who stayed in hotels spend on average of $1,011 per person per trip and stayed an average of 4 nights, spending roughly $238 per person, per day.
NOCHI’s plans for a culinary/hospitality institute didn’t come to fruition without snags in the process, Markowitz said.
Initially, NOCHI partnered with the local community college to open the secondary education facility. “Originally, it was supposed to be a joint announcement with our community college,” she said, noting that state budget issues forced the community college to pull out of the agreement.
“As a result, we formed a high level of support across the industry that enabled us to have these conversations with the convention center.”
After NOCHI’s board of directors reconvened, they opted to bring in the New Orleans Convention Center Authority to pick up the deal.
“The convention center authority recognizes that how we serve our visitors is critical to our success. NOCHI will help bring our already excellent local restaurant and hospitality service levels up to new heights by providing for the long-term, sustainable plan for development of our hospitality workforce,” Melvin Rodrigue, chairman of the authority said in a statement. “Given New Orleans’ standing as a world class convention and culinary destination, having a culinary and hospitality institute is long overdue. We are proud to partner with and commend the leadership of NOCHI for their dedication to this effort.”
City, state and industry professionals all have the same goal — to continue to drive growth and tourism to the region, Markowitz said.
The building that will house the culinary institute sits on the corner of a city block and has a mixture of old and new construction. “It’s an interesting mix with an industrial look inside,” Markowitz noted
“It’s a tuition based program that will look to compete with other certificate programs,” she said. “It’s geared to get people into middle skills positions, such as line cooks and above.”
The goal also is to get unemployed residents of New Orleans into the hospitality field. “It’s going to be a range from entry level to higher skills jobs. Our mission was not to re-create programs, but to look for opportunities to lay career paths in the industry,” Markowitz said.
It seems everyone, and every association, is rooting for the culinary school.
The Kitchen Equipment Association is donating all the kitchen equipment for the institute.
In the state of Louisiana, hospitality is a top industry next to government, education, health care and trade, Markowitz said.
“We’re leveraging the strength of a key industry in our state to build a resource that will create greater access and opportunity for the community,” Louisiana Governor Bel Edwards said in a statement.