The owner of the reopened Circle Food Store in New Orleans has cut what he hopes is last strip of red tape blocking his business.
Dwayne Boudreaux says he now has permission to accept food vouchers from the federal Women, Infants and Children’s program.
“It’s great news for me. This has been another one of my long, hard battles. We’ve had a few customers come in already this month — there were at least two or three customers that came in with the vouchers and we were unable to accept them," he said. "So, right now we’re just trying to get back into a normal operation. That was the last thing that was really pending.”
Boudreaux asked Senator Mary Landrieu for help. She told the Department of Agriculture that the store flooded in Hurricane Katrina served a neighborhood with a poverty level nearly 150 percent above the state average.
Circle Food Store reopened earlier this year. It had been closed since the storm.
