New Businesses BREWing in Baton Rouge
Almost 5,000 new businesses have opened in East Baton Rouge since January 2020; supporting the region's entrepreneurs could ensure that number continues to grow.
Baton Rouge has been one of the most entrepreneurially minded metros in the country over the past few years, and East Baton Rouge Parish has been an important piece of that trend. EBR residents averaged 7,475 business applications per year between 2016 and 2019. That figure jumped to 12,153 applications per year between 2020 and 2021. Undoubtedly the pandemic, while disrupting people’s lives in numerous ways, also encouraged the entrepreneurial spirit as a path toward achieving greater financial autonomy.
Local entrepreneurs have seen some success translating these applications into registered businesses, but new business growth has been slower so far in the 2020s than it was in the 2010s. The gap between entrepreneurs taking the initial step (filing a business application) and beginning business operations (registering the business with the parish) is widening, and this hits home the importance of supporting our local entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs are critical to our local economy because they willingly take risks, explore new ideas, create jobs, and, for those who export their services or products elsewhere, bring in money to the region. Baton Rouge Entrepreneur Week (BREW), a celebration of the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation in Baton Rouge, kicks off next week and runs from May 1 – 6. In recognition of BREW and our local entrepreneurs, we thought this a good time to explore the new businesses that have popped up across the parish over the last three and a half years and, in the process, highlight the value in cultivating local entrepreneurs.
Net business growth is up despite fewer businesses opening
There have been 1,631 businesses that have registered in East Baton Rouge Parish since the beginning of 2022, and 4,883 since the beginning of 2020. Of those businesses that have registered since 2020, 84% of them are still open.
The number of businesses opening across EBR has trended down since 2010, but net business growth is up thanks to fewer businesses closing their doors. This is worth highlighting: despite COVID-related temporary business closures, labor force shortages, inflation-related struggles, and the work-from-home revolution, fewer businesses in East Baton Rouge have closed post-2020, and this is a testament to the region’s entrepreneurs. Between 2020 and 2022, 4,506 businesses opened their doors while just 755 closed, netting the parish more than 3,700 new businesses in just three years. This leads us to where we are today: one in every four East Baton Rouge businesses currently open has opened since the beginning of 2020, showing how quickly local entrepreneurs have remade the local economy in just a few short years.
The last year and a half have seen lots of new restaurants, retailers, and home-based businesses
Zooming in and looking at new businesses that have formed since 2022 (and are still open), we find that unique service providers and restaurants/bars have grown the most in numbers. There are more than 230 new businesses providing “miscellaneous services,” a catchall that includes pest control, parking lots, boutique consulting firms, car washes, and more.
Many of these businesses don’t have a physical storefront – 28% of businesses registered since the beginning of 2022 are “home-based,” including 31% of the 494 new retailers found across EBR. Opening a home-based business is an increasingly attractive option for entrepreneurs: 20% of new EBR businesses in 2014 were home-based compared to 29% in 2022. In an increasingly virtual world, home-based businesses provide entrepreneurs with valuable flexibility.
Celebrating and supporting our entrepreneurs
Net business growth is up, and local entrepreneurs have opened thousands of new businesses since 2020. These stats are worth celebrating, but the declining ratio of business applications that are turned into registered businesses emphasizes the importance of supporting our local entrepreneurs. And, while business growth can be seen across EBR, newer businesses are trending towards the parish’s southern end (a screenshot of one industry is available below, but BRAC’s interactive Tableau map showing all businesses registered in EBR since 2022 can be found here).
Starting a business is notoriously difficult and entrepreneurs need support ranging from strategic advice to capital infusions depending on their stage of business development. These topics, along with so many others, line the jam-packed schedule of events for Baton Rouge Entrepreneurship Week. Speakers have been tapped to discuss everything from micro-lending solutions to employee management to turning passions into profits. One of those speakers is Chris Spalatin, BRAC’s Manager of Small Business Services. Chris connects the ecosystem of services and programs in the Capital Region to local small businesses and is one of the many experts local entrepreneurs can utilize. You can see Chris and plenty of other folks supporting local entrepreneurs from May 1 – 6 at BREW, taking place at various venues around Downtown Baton Rouge.