Photo by George Mahe
There’s no easy way for a restaurant owner to shut down a restaurant. Just ask Paul and Samantha Perrigue, who owned Southtown Pub for the past decade.
In most cases, a restaurant closure produces a lot of long faces and worse: Regulars are bound to be upset and employees are out of a job. Several years ago, we wrote about “the best way to close a restaurant”—but, alas, the scenario rarely plays out that way.
A month ago, the beloved Southtown Pub closed without notice. SLM wrote about the closure, cobbling together what few details were available and recapping the highlights: solid barbecue, affordable drinks, warm hospitality. A few days later, the Perrigues wrote on Facebook to sound the official death knell.
The post read, in part, “We were proud to be a part of and have a positive impact on our community. In that endeavor, we took on too much debt for Southtown Pub to handle by trying to expand down the block. We fought the good fight for as long as we could hoping for a different outcome. Unfortunately, we got ourselves in too deep to come back.”
As the post alluded, in 2017, the Perrigues had opened two private event spaces nearby, The Rustic Room (which focused on weddings and wedding receptions) and The Nano Pub (a smaller space that accommodated 50 guests). The venues never attracted enough business to be viable, putting undue pressure on Southtown Pub. "We took care of short-term obligations but fell behind on some others, never recovered, and had to close," Samantha says now.
At this point, some restaurant owners would simply drop off the radar, leaving behind unpaid bills and disgruntled former employees. The Perrigues took a different approach: A week ago, Samantha launched a Facebook fundraiser page. “It is exceptionally humbling to put out a request like this,” she wrote, “but we owe money to both staff and friends for payroll and personal loans and we have no way to pay them back.”
Pamela Parfait, a former manager at Southtown Pub and co-owner of Sister Cities Cajun, was surprised to see the fundraiser. “It was absolutely shocking for me to see Samantha and Paul ask for help," she says. "They treated [Sister Cities Cajun co-owner and Southtown Pub alum] Travis [Parfait] and I well. They are a sweet couple who treated so many people in this industry well."
"They’ve always done everything themselves," Parfait continues. "They thought they could expand down the street, but their timing, in the middle of last winter’s restaurant recession, was just bad. We all lost so much to the cold and snow. It was hard on everyone. But to be in business that long and to walk away empty-handed is heartbreaking."
The Perrigues were recently hired by Bastard Brothers Brewing to help promote their beers. “Paul and I will survive,” Samantha says. “We just feel obligated to take care of the people who have taken such very good care of us.”
