Delta Diamond Chef Awards: The Great Reset

Feature image: Meaghan and Donnie Ferneau, former owners of the now-closed Cathead’s Diner in Little Rock, are co-chairs of the 2025 Delta Diamond Chef Awards Gala and Competition in Pine Bluff. Photos by Jamie Lee.

When longtime Little Rock chef and entrepreneur Donnie Ferneau talks about COVID-19 as an existential threat in the food business, he is not speaking anecdotally. Ferneau’s last venture — Cathead’s Diner in Little Rock, a celebrated showpiece of Southern cuisine — was among many restaurants that bit the dust due to the pandemic, giving the veteran restauranteur a reminder of the fragile nature of the business.

Now, with COVID-19 four years in the rearview, Ferneau and his wife, Meaghan, are still a step back from the industry they had been major players in for so long, she working in tech marketing and he at food distributor Sysco. They still dabble in private dinners and special events, but for now, the chef’s life has largely given way to a focus on farm and family life.

“When we closed our restaurant in 2020, I can tell you this: I didn’t know another life besides being a chef, working 60, 70 hours a week, working every weekend, every night,” Donnie said. “I’m glad that God didn’t answer my prayers then but instead gave me time with a beautiful wife and a daughter who loves eating my food. It was the life I had always worked for; I just didn’t know it was possible until COVID happened.”

Domestic bliss aside, the duo still appreciates good food — as well as the people and places that serve it — of which Arkansas has more than its share.

“When you look at the food scene and what Arkansas does have to offer, it’s all about these hidden gems, you know?” Donnie said. “You’ve got all these little quaint towns, little quaint restaurants, and there’s a lot of charm. That’s one thing I love about it.

“We travel all the time, and whenever we come back to Little Rock, it’s just a small town with big buildings where you just feel right at home. We love it. We were in New Orleans for two weeks one time, where we ate every meal out. We came home, went right to The Faded Rose [in Little Rock], and it was the favorite ‘New Orleans’ meal we’d eaten.”

Photo by Jamie Lee.

Meaghan said such experiences do not just happen but occur at the confluence of several factors that combine to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. Arkansas, she said, is a prime example, bringing together all the elements for a great dining experience regardless of category or concept.

“The entire state of Arkansas has some really great restaurants that need to be celebrated,” she said. “Great restaurants start with great ingredients, and as a big agricultural state, our homegrown ingredients are really something worth promoting.

“Then you add to that the drive and passion of chefs, and it’s really something special, even among younger chefs. The younger generation now, they’re just not happy unless they’re loving what they do. A lot of that involves hospitality and food, and so it is exciting to see the passion that exists as they’re starting to come up in the food scene.”

Arkansas’ restaurant community is a microcosm of the optimism many are feeling these days, the kind that has industry experts cautiously predicting a renaissance in dining nationwide. In its annual State of the Restaurant Industry report for 2025, the National Restaurant Association paints a bullish picture of trends within the industry that may be signaling the traumatic experience of the pandemic and its ripple effects are finally dissipating.

After a sobering 2024 in which nearly 1 in 4 operators said their restaurants were not profitable due to food and personnel costs 30 percent higher than 2019 levels and a 61 percent decline in customer traffic, the tables appear to be turning. The industry is expected to reach $1.53 trillion in sales this year, an increase of 4.1 percent over 2024’s $1.47 trillion nationwide. The bump is widespread; 41 percent of restaurant operators expect sales to be higher this year, while another 41 percent expect sales to be at least on par with 2024 receipts. The renewed confidence is also reflected in people entering the industry. Almost half of current operators expect greater competition for diners’ dollars in 2025, the report states.

At the heart of this comeback is pent-up demand by consumers. More than 40 percent of U.S. adults overall stated they would increase eating at sit-down restaurants and a comparable percentage would increase ordering delivery in 2025. Broken down by demographic, millennials led Gen Z, Gen X and baby boomers on these spending measurements at nearly 9 out of 10 saying they would increase their patronage as their budget allows.

Even finding sufficient labor is trending in the right direction at 68 percent of operators reporting having enough employees to meet customer demand, up from just 22 percent who did in 2021. The report also projected the industry will add about 200,000 jobs in 2025, growing to 15.9 million workers, the highest headcount in a decade.

However, some positions are harder to fill than others, including chefs, cooks and kitchen support, which nearly 6 out of 10 operators said were hardest to come by, particularly at full-service restaurants.

One group looking to address the issue head-on in Arkansas is the Arkansas Delta Chefs Association. The group’s two-to-five-year plan calls for more culinary training in the form of a multifaceted physical space to be built in the heart of downtown Pine Bluff. The project is envisioned to include a guest chef restaurant and a community education center with kitchens, labs, and an area for audience and entertaining that will serve home cooks, chefs, food scientists and entrepreneurs.

Photo by Jamie Lee.

“What I admire about the new facility is that it will teach every aspect of culinary life,” Donnie said. “It will not only teach skills but also the numbers. No matter what type of business it is, there’s always a formula, right? You have to know profit and loss, how to manage your kitchen properly, track inventory — all of those things. You have to make sure the IRS is taken care of and handle labor and payroll.

“There’s a lot more to it than just cooking a great meal. If you want to have a restaurant that goes under, just put somebody at the helm that can make a great dish one at a time at home.”

The space has its own signature event, the Delta Diamond Chef Awards Gala and Competition, for which AY Media Group is the media sponsor. The event is designed to raise money for programs and drum up exposure for the culinary center itself. Now in its second iteration, the event pits five accomplished chefs in preliminary competition with the winner taking on 2024/2025’s inaugural champion, Chef Payne Harding, owner of Cache Restaurant in Little Rock, in the finals early next year.

The Ferneaus, who are this year’s co-chairs of Delta Diamond Chef, see the event as an entertaining way to bring an important culinary resource to Arkansas.

“We’ve been pretty deeply rooted in the culinary community since 2001 in central Arkansas,” Donnie said. “One of the biggest visions we both have is we want to start to see the hospitality industry move back in the direction of where it was pre-COVID and just flourish from there.”

The couple said the new education center will bring more people into the industry, capitalizing on the popularity of being in food service by investing workers with the culinary and business skills needed to be successful.

“The Food Network has really changed the way our entire country looks at the restaurant scene, the hospitality industry — all of that,” Meaghan said. “Nowadays, kids are growing up seeing chefs like Gordon Ramsay on TV, and they’re saying, ‘Well, that’s what I want to be.’ You’ve got people who are starting at such an early age getting the actual skills down. I think that what the institute can do is capitalize on the success of the industry as a whole and just drive that passion.

“Like Donnie says, you can’t run a successful restaurant off hopes and dreams alone. You have to have the drive to keep your heart in it when it gets really hard. There is so much hardship in this industry; I’ve been through three, four restaurant closings, and it is not easy. Anyone who wants to be successful in this industry has to have a passion to do it.”