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ROUSES.COM
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HURRICANES
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ROUSES HISTORY
really been neglected. We cleaned them
and fixed them up and added 4,000 local
products before we reopened them one and
two at a
time.Wekept every A&P and Sav-
A-Center employee who wanted a job.
Marcy Nathan,
Creative Director
When the doors opened on our first New
Orleans store — Carrollton in Mid City —
I was first in line for the second line. Like
so many New Orleanians, I lost everything
in Katrina. I had been working with
Rouses for three years, and my friends and
colleagues immediately stepped in to help
me. But it wasn’t until Rouses stepped in
to replace Sav-A-Center that that I knew
things would be okay. Rouses kept stores
in neighborhoods that desperately needed
them, and jobs in Louisiana andMississippi.
Jeremy Simmons,
Store Director
I was a store manager for Sav-A-Center
when Rouses took over the stores in
Louisiana and Mississippi. Rouses didn’t
just come in and clean up the stores, they
built up variety, they added staff, they
responded to customer request —you knew
Rouses was local. Customers were excited
that a local company took over; employees
were excited that a local company took over.
I was never so proud to be a local.
Slidell
Donny Rouse
Rouses on Gause Boulevard opened in
November, 2006, fourteen months after
Katrina, less than a year after we opened
the Rouses in Mandeville. It was our fourth
epicurean-style store. Pa helped Slidell
firemen, police and EMT’s raise the flag
in our parking lot in honor of Hurricane
Katrina’s first responders. It was a very
emotional moment for everyone.
HURRICANE GUSTAV
Ali Rouse Royster
Hurricane Gustav came ashore as a category
2 in Cocodrie, a small fishing community
south of Houma, in September, 2008. It was
the first major storm threat since Katrina,
and most of our area evacuated. As soon
as the storm passed, those who stayed
behind started looking for supplies. Most
of our family was still in town, so we did
what Rouses do, we opened our grocery
store. There were enough of us, plus a few
of our team members who were around and
ready towork— includingmy now-husband
Billy, an accountant who came to stock
shelves to pitch in — to open our store on
North Canal in Thibodaux. I took charge
of our cash registers, teaching some of my
family how to ring up groceries for the first
time (my cousin Chris Acosta brought me
his till at the end of the day with crumpled
up money all mixed up). My dad even ran a
register for a while, which was fun for me to
watch. It had probably been 25 years since
he had done that.
Pa was there overseeing it all and was
beaming from ear to ear. He talked about
it for months, and you could tell how proud
he was that we could still run a store with
mostly just family after all those years. He
passed away a little over 6 months later,
and I have no doubt that this was one of
the many, many stories he shared with his
cousin Ciro when they met again.