NEW ORLEANS -- Morning Call recently gave up its longtime home in Metairie, and on Thursday City Park gave it the boot from its newer home there, leaving the future of the nearly 150-year-old coffee and beignet stand in question.
The park’s board voted unanimously June 1 to award a 10-year lease for Morning Call’s space in the casino building to rival beignet and coffee stand Café du Monde. The park announced the decision Thursday.
While Morning Call was able to submit a bid for the lease on May 9, a key reason it lost out was that Morning Call’s operators missed a mandatory pre-bid conference on April 27, said John Hopper, the park’s spokesman.
“It was a mandatory meeting,” Hopper said. “It’s all about the bid documents and being responsive to the bid documents. It has nothing to do with the personalities or flavors of the coffee.”
A message left with Morning Call’s owners was not immediately returned Thursday evening.
Also seeking the lease was Cafe Beignet, a relative newcomer to the beignet scene.
Details about Café du Monde’s lease were not immediately available Thursday evening, but bid documents specified a monthly rent of at least $10,000 with a cut of the businesses’ revenue.
Jay Roman, a manager of Café du Monde, said his company planned renovations to overhaul the space to make it look like its other locations, The New Orleans Advocate reported. It will serve its traditional menu of beignets and coffee.
Hopper said the transition from Morning Call to Café du Monde would happen “over the next couple of months,” but noted that a definite timeline had not yet been set.
Morning Call had been operating in the park on a month-to-month basis when its owners announced they would leave their Fat City home of 40 years in favor of the City Park location.
They said the space in the park, which opened in 2012, was more profitable than the Jefferson Parish location, where business slowed in recent years as competition from other coffee shops increased.
The operators also said they were looking at other locations where they might open but have not announced any.
Café du Monde opened in the French Market in 1862. Since then it has opened several store across southeast Louisiana as well as licensing a location in Japan for 25 years.
