E-mail questionnaire
Some information for this presentation was gathered via the e-mail questionnaire below, sent to contacts in the New Orleans restaurant and hospitlaity industry. We'd love to be able to expand the information on our site, so if you have a New Orleans restaurant story to tell you are invited to send us an e-mail with the answers to the questions below.
Questions for Chefs
Name of restaurant? Address? Years in business?
Number of employees pre-katrina? How many in the front of house? Back
of house?
Number of employees post Katrina? Front? Back?
When did you decide to shut down for Katrina? Did you evacuate? If yes,
to where?
If ever, when did you finally re-open?
How many days did you plan on being closed?
Immediately following Katrina, what did you think happened to your establishment?
At what point, and from whom, did you get accurate information on what
really happened?
How did the part of town where you restaurant was located fare?
What was your reaction when you first saw your restaurant post-Katrina?
What was the loss?
How much inventory did you lose? What about wine?
Was the inventory and/or loss of revenue covered by insurance? What about
payroll?
Did you keep in touch with your employees while you were closed?
How many employees returned to their previous positions?
How many returned to a new position?
Did you financially help or pay employees for lost time?
Was there incentive to return to their previous job?
Did you hire people, based on experience, that you would not have hired
prior to Katrina?
Did you re-open with the same menu that was previously offered?
If not, how did it change? Where the prices the same?
Were the purveyors delivering regularly?
Was it hard/expensive to receive certain items?
Were the utilities reliable when you reopened?
What is business like now?
What do you predict it will be like a year from now?
Questions for Waiters
Were did you work?
How long were you employed there?
What was your position/job title?
When was your last day of work before Katrina?
How long did you think that you would be out of work?
When you realized it was going to be longer, were you in contact with your
employer?
Did you return to New Orleans?
If yes, did you return to your previous job? Did you seek out another job?
If no, did you stay in the restaurant industry?
Did your employer help you out financially while you were out of work?
Was your job available to you upon you return?
What were the conditions like when you returned to work?
Was the menu the same?
Was the service the same?
Were the prices the same?
Were you working the same amount of hours?
Was the pay the same?
In you opinion, do you feel that people got hired who were not qualified
for the job?