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.
“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,” says Jennifer Weishaupt. “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 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, LA to Orange Beach, AL and Pensacola, FL.
Their next urban location is slated to open in Downtown Mobile, AL 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.
