For two decades, August Moon has served Vietnamese and Chinese comfort food to the Uptown New Orleans neighborhood surrounding Prytania Street, feeding hospital workers and residents through hurricane after hurricane. Now the family-run restaurant says it may not survive the current economic storm, with owners describing extremely slow business over the past year or two and profits at an all-time low.
Cindy Dao, whose family runs the restaurant, told WDSU that her immigrant parents came to the United States with nothing and built August Moon from the ground up. She said her father does not want to give up the business, even as the numbers turn increasingly grim. The restaurant sits next to LCMC and near residential blocks, a location that has long relied on neighborhood residents and nearby medical personnel, according to nomenu.com.
Food Costs Keep Climbing
The restaurant now faces high food costs across its menu, with chicken and shrimp running 15% higher than they did three years earlier and beef up 20% over the same span, per the station's reporting. Those increases echo a broader statewide trend: Louisiana restaurant menu prices climbed an average of 27.2% between February 2020 and late 2024 as operators absorbed rising insurance premiums alongside food and labor inflation, according to the Louisiana Restaurant Association. National Restaurant Association data cited by the same trade group shows food costs jumped 29% and labor expenses grew 31% over a four-year period ending in 2024, with those two categories alone consuming 66% of a typical restaurant's revenue.
Louisiana Restaurant Association President and CEO Stan Harris said in June 2025 that mounting overhead — insurance, utilities, rent, and card processing fees — was forcing state operators to shutter secondary locations or change business models just to survive the slow summer season. Property and casualty insurers in Louisiana, meanwhile, reported a 91% profit increase over the same period that squeezed restaurant margins, per the same trade association's data.
A Legacy of Feeding the Neighborhood During Disasters
August Moon's story is tangled up with the city's history of disaster response. The Dao family has donated meals after every storm since Hurricane Katrina, including dozens of meals given away after Hurricane Ida, serving neighbors and workers when the neighborhood needed it most. That legacy is part of what makes the restaurant's potential closure sting for longtime customers, even as the family weighs whether the business can keep going.
WDSU has reported at least a dozen New Orleans-area restaurant closures since January, a wave that has hit Uptown particularly hard. Chef Eric Cook's Gris-Gris on Magazine Street closed in July after an eight-year run, as Hoodline reported. Garden District fine-dining staple Coquette shut down in June after nearly 18 years, and Mid-City's Wakin' Bakin' closed its Banks Street flagship the same month after 15 years, consolidating into its French Quarter location.
City Programs Aim to Help, But Questions Remain
The New Orleans Office of Nighttime Economy has rolled out resources for nightlife and hospitality businesses in 2026, including discounted parking for industry workers and a tune-up grant program, alongside its Districts After Dark initiative. Department officials have said businesses nationwide are struggling with higher insurance costs and inflation, a pattern reflected in the office's citywide outreach.
Michael Ince, acting director of the Office of Nighttime Economy, said that without small businesses, the entire local economy struggles. The office released its inaugural Nighttime Economy Strategic Plan in October 2025, building a framework focused on small business visibility, workforce support, and cultural space sustainability, and it was later named a global finalist for the Music Cities Awards in April for that plan and its Tune-Up Grant Program.
Even as August Moon's Uptown storefront struggles, the Dao family broke ground in June on AM Plaza, a $4.4 million redevelopment on the West Bank in Gretna that will include a new 12,000-square-foot August Moon location with expanded kitchen capacity and banquet seating for more than 200 guests. Whether the original Uptown restaurant can hang on long enough to see that project through remains an open question for a family that has spent two decades feeding its neighbors through crisis after crisis.
