66a helping handLSU Honors alumnus Jacob Landry found aninteresting way to supplement his company’sincome during the height of the pandemic.Landry is the founder of Urban South, the largest craftbrewery in New Orleans. With the closure of restaurants andtaprooms in New Orleans, Landry needed to find a way tocontinue to pay his staff.“About 45% of the beer we were sending out were goingout in kegs, what we call on-premise,” Landry said. “Whenthey shut down, immediately that 45% of the beer we madewas completely shut off.”Those losses were exacerbated by the closing oftaprooms with COVID-19 restrictions, which accounted foran additional 30% of Urban South’s revenue. With over 75%of revenue being cut off, Landry’s top concern became hisemployees.“It was a pretty scary moment particularly because weemploy close to 40 people, and so my number one concernwas ‘How do we ensure that these people’s livelihoods arenot impacted, and how do we keep our really great teamtogether and not lose people?’” Landry said.That opportunity arose shortly after the shutdown oftaprooms and restaurants in New Orleans when Landry’sstate representative forwarded him the information aboutthe bid. “I think it was maybe a week or two after theshutdown happened that the opportunity for the state bidon hand sanitizer came through,” Landry said. “My state rep.forwarded a letter to me and I said ‘Hey we’ve never donethis before, but we certainly know how to put liquid intobottles.’ So I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations onwhat it would cost to do that, and what kind of bid we couldput in.”Employees of Urban South also benefited, as manyoutside of the production staff had no work.“It was huge for us because we have a pretty big staff thatwas slowed down a lot on beer production,” Landry said.“We had no taproom visitors, so we had bartender staff thatdidn’t have any work. It was a good opportunity for us torepurpose some people and keep them employed.”Landry said his time in the Ogden Honors Collegeprepared him for the challenges not only of COVID-19, but ofrunning a business.“I’d say first and foremost that the challenge of theHonors College was really valuable,” Landry said. “Froma personal working perspective, that was certainlyhelpful in my development. I think more broadly thatliberal arts foundation coupled particularly with the masscommunication focus on really being able to communicateclearly and effectively has been incredibly valuable.”Though the project helped to keep Urban South inbusiness through the pandemic, Landry expects to return tosolely beer production in the near future as restrictions arelifted.
It seems that your browser's pop-up blocker has prevented us from opening a new window/tab. Please click the button below to open the link manually.
