Opening soon: The Capital Region’s first Quaker Steak & Lube restaurant is set to open its doors at 3 p.m. Friday at 2706 S. Cabela’s Parkway in Gonzales, the company announced today. The 6,500-square-foot restaurant is also just the second Louisiana location for the Sharon, Pennsylvania-based chain, which has grown to about 55 locations across the country since being founded in 1974. The Gonzales restaurant will have seating for about 200 guests. It is owned and operated by franchise group I-10 Hospitality LLC, whose president and CEO is Geno Iafrate. Quaker Steak also has a location in Sulphur.
Top honors: The American Hospital Association announced today that Mayor Kip Holden’s Healthy BR initiative is one of five programs nationwide that will receive the NOVA award this year for improving community health. Healthy BR, which coordinates community-wide, collaborative efforts to improve health parishwide, includes more than 70 partner organizations from local government, community organizations, faith-based groups, schools, businesses and health care providers, including all five major hospitals in the city-parish. “This award is really honoring a collaborative effort and shows what can be accomplished when health care providers put aside their differences and join forces to work together for the common good of the community,” Holden says in a news release.
Not feeling it anymore: The National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Optimism Index dropped 4.2 points in June to 94.1, well below the prerecession average of 99.5, NFIB reports. State-specific data isn’t available, but Dawn Starns, state director of NFIB/Louisiana, the state’s leading small business association, says in a prepared statement that “what we’re hearing is that small businesses don’t have a lot of confidence in where things are headed.” June’s Small Business Optimism saw the most significant decline since November 2012. The deterioration in earning trends accounted for the largest drop. Weak spending and little GDP growth also had a substantial impact on the optimism rate. NFIB has more details.
