Restaurant Trials and Tribulations...

So, I'm sitting in our lovely newly-opened T. L. Starke's location in Kenner, and we're dead as a doornail. The reason is very simple. We have no liquor license.

The story goes like this: We started the application process for our alcoholic beverage permits over a month ago. In Louisiana, it's a two-stage process. We have to have a permit from the local jurisdiction (in this case the city of Kenner) to sell alcohol at retail. We also need a permit to purchase liquor at wholesale, and that comes from the state. All our paperwork is in order. All the public notices have been filed and the time has run on those notices. What we're waiting on now is one final step, a personal interview with the owners (us) and the Louisiana State Police.

There is a division of the state police that handles the wholesale liquor permits. When all the papers are filed, a Trooper comes out and meets with the owners. He's got a wireless laptop where he pulls up everyone's record and does a series of brief interviews. Thing is, we're going on a month now with no call from the State Police. We've been open a week, unable to sell beer, and payroll is doing us in.

I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason why it's taking this division of the State Police so long to set up a meeting with us. Perhaps they're understaffed. Maybe there are just that many new restaurants and bars in the metro New Orleans area that they're just swamped. Yeah, that's it, post-storm New Orleans is opening all those new places.

So, we're in the classic dilemma. If we complain too loudly about the procedures of a bureaucrat, we risk the wrath of the bureaucrat, which might delay us more. Still, we're having to pump extra capital into the business to cover losses that don't have to be there.

Frustration!