NEW ORLEANS — We are all crossing our fingers for a quiet hurricane season especially after experiencing days and weeks without power following Hurricane Ida. If another storm knocks out power though, several restaurants in New Orleans will be able to stay open, serving food and offering a place to cool off and charge your phone.
The initiative through Feed the Second Line is called 'Get Lit Stay Lit.' Solar panels and Tesla batteries are being installed at restaurants in neighborhoods across the city. That way if and when another hurricane knocks out power, they can serve as a community hub.
Shaka Garel and his wife have been serving Jamaican Creole fusion for seven years.
"My family is from Jamaica and my wife is from Louisiana," Garel said.
Formerly in a food truck that was crushed by a tree in Hurricane Zeta, they opened Afrodisiac NOLA restaurant in Gentilly just over a year ago. The restaurant is one of the first 'Stay Lit' restaurants and may turn into a vital lifeline for its community in the aftermath of a future major hurricane.
"Stay open," Garel said. "Be a hub for the community."
Solar panels and Tesla batteries create a ‘Stay Lit’ micro grid system which will keep power flowing, fridges running, and food served.
"Which is a really big deal for a restaurant and of course having to close because you don't have power," Garel said.
Tinice Williams is Executive Director of Feed the Second Line. She said the group’s founder, Devin DeWulf, came up with the idea after Hurricane Ida when restaurants lost thousands of dollars’ worth of food and more than a weeks’ worth of business.
"You have small minority owned restaurants that are housed in these communities so think about it, if we empower these restaurants and make them a hub so they're a cooling station, a feeding station, somewhere people can just charge their phones," Williams said.
There are four 'Stay Lit' restaurants so far including Afrodisiac NOLA in Gentilly, Queen Trini Lisa in Mid-City, Fritai in Treme, and Grace at the Greenlight, which is an organization that feeds the unhoused.
"The goal is to get eight more installs completed by the end of hurricane season," Williams said.
That would be a total of 12 'Stay Lit' restaurants in the city by November.
Those installs will be funded through recent grants. Each installation costs between $60,000 to $90,000. This month, Feed the Second Line won the $250,000 U.S. Department of Energy's Inclusive Energy Innovation Price. In March, the group was granted $300,000 through a city grant.
"Which will allow us to do more installs," Williams said.
The goal is to eventually have 300 'Stay Lit' restaurants across the city. The timing of that will depend on the grants and funding that comes in to support it.
For more information, visit the 'Stay Lit' page on Feed the Second Line's website, HERE: https://www.feedthesecondline.org/programs/getlitstaylit