By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services

If you enjoy dining at Cypress by the Revenir, or have been wanting to dine at the Shreveport restaurant, you better hurry.

Saturday will be Cypress by the Revenir’s last day in business.

Thursday afternoon, the Line Avenue restaurant, which was featured in a September 2023 Journal review, announced it will close its doors after serving the March 9th dinner crowd.

The message, posted to the restaurant’s Facebook and Instagram pages, referenced a familiar theme as to why Cypress by the Revenir is closing.

“We commend everyone in this industry who is pushing through rising food costs and labor shortages . . . . It’s a challenging business, so I would encourage the community to continue to give grace and support the incredible restaurant community that we are blessed to have here in Shreveport.”

Cypress by the Revenir opened in late 2022.

Jason McKinney, President of the Northwest Louisiana chapter of the Louisiana Restaurant Association, told the Shreveport-Bossier Journal that because a restaurant looks busy when you’re there, doesn’t always mean the restaurant is profitable.

“(People) see those times when (a restaurant is) busy, those are hours when all restaurants are busy. It’s the other times, 4-6:30pm during the week, or after nine o’clock, that people don’t really see how empty the restaurants are.”

Cypress by the Revenir is one of many local restaurants which have closed in recent years. In addition to rising food costs following Covid, labor costs are a big reason restaurants haven’t survived.

“Some of the applicants we get, the amount they ask us to pay them, it’s just tough, McKinney said. “The average restaurant makes 10 cents on a dollar in sales. People are coming in asking for $15 an hour. It’s just really hard to be able to accommodate that.”

And when a restaurant closes, the number of unemployed people increases.

“When restaurants are closing, that means there are jobs that we can’t fulfill.”

Contact Tony at SBJTonyT@gmail.com.