City Park Claps Back at Morning Call

A beignet feud between Morning Call Coffee Stand and City Park is brewing. Here’s the lowdown.

Morning Call Coffee Stand had been operating a beignet stall in City Park since 2012. City Park began a bidding process for a new ten-year lease for this stall back in May, hoping to raise revenue (City Park receives no tax money from the city.) Three beignet shops submitted bids, including Morning Call itself.

And earlier this month, news broke that Morning Call — which has been in operation since the 1870s — lost its bid for the space. Competitor Café du Monde won the coveted lease. Morning Call’s bid was slightly higher than bids from the other two shops. The problem is, Morning Call missed a meeting that was established as mandatory to the bidding process.

Morning Call owner Bob Hennessey went to the press to air his grievances over how everything went down, telling WWL-TV “It’s just really feeling like we didn’t get a fair deal.”

City Park is not taking this attack lying down. The park tweeted a statement addressing Morning Call’s complaints. City Park explained why they awarded the beignet stand to Café du Monde, and not Morning Call. According to City Park, it all boiled down to the missed meeting.

Morning Call argued that City Park should have paused the meeting to ensure their presence, but City Park argues that to keep the bidding process fair, they couldn’t have changed any of the rules. City Park says they notified Morning Call of the mandatory meeting, and Morning Call says on the day of said meeting, they were en route but running late.

The timeline for the beignet stall switch-out has not yet been announced.