Raising Cane’s announced this week it will permanently close its downtown Baton Rouge location at Third Street and Florida Boulevard.
The news comes as the company prepares to open its first restaurant in West Baton Rouge Parish in March amid a national growth push. According to a company news release, Raising Cane’s is planning to hire more than 100 crew members for the new restaurant.
“As much as we loved serving the downtown Baton Rouge community, we were unable to reach an agreement on the lease of our Third Street restaurant,” says founder and CEO Todd Graves in a prepared statement. “All of our downtown crew were offered jobs at our other area locations.”
The downtown restaurant has been closed since early 2020, when dining-in was banned across the state as part of efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. Other Raising Cane’s locations remained open, but the downtown location did not have a drive-thru window. The space was used by Raising Cane’s for some time to sew face masks to help with the shortage of personal protection equipment in 2020. The deal allowed employees to continue working through the shutdowns.
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When COVID-19 restrictions were lifted and dine-in service allowed again, however, the restaurant did not reopen and employees were transferred to other locations.
Raising Cane’s opened its 600th restaurant, in California, earlier this month, and the company says it plans to open more than 100 restaurants this year.
This story originally appeared in a Jan. 26 issue of Daily Report. To keep up with Baton Rouge business and politics, subscribe to the free Daily Report e-newsletter here.