Fleur Delish Food Systems is the company. The $5 million is the capitalization of that food-production plant.

Three layers. Not five Year 1s.

Credit BASE pays the note. The management plan runs the plant. Commercial scale is not repayment.

A credit committee member reading quickly will ask which number is the actual projection. Layer A is the only repayment case. Layer B is one five-year operating forecast. Layer C is platform target. Mixing them is how a strong file looks confused. Credit Household = 6 meals/week. Management Household = 10. Never mix them.

The manufacturing platform

One production asset. Multiple customers for the same cook hours.

The facility is designed to increase domestic prepared-food production as demand develops. Initial one-shift design supports approximately 35,000 meal-equivalents per week. Production can be increased through operating shifts, equipment utilization, and capacity additions as contracted demand develops. The same manufacturing infrastructure can generate revenue across branded DTC, grocery, private label, co-manufacturing, foodservice manufacturing, packaging, and fulfillment. The weekly subscription is one customer channel for this manufacturer.

1. Cook
2. Rapid chill / freeze
3. Portion
4. Package
5. Cold storage
6. Fulfillment
7. Grocery / PL / co-man production

Initial one-shift design: about 35,000 meal-equivalents per week, in 25,000 SF, on 12.70 acres across Old Gentilly Road from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility. Two-shift configuration: about 70,000. That is a production configuration. It is not a claim that the company is a 35,000-meal-per-week company.

Domestic production & the middle of the chain

From ingredients to finished meal, more of the supply chain stays here.

Food processed here. Cooked here. Packaged here. Quality-controlled here. Frozen and stored here. Distributed here. American workers employed here. U.S.-first purchasing where commercially viable — ingredients, packaging, equipment, logistics — with diversified backup sourcing. A 100% origin claim is not credible. This is. Built for regional and national distribution, with international-market capability as volume and qualified demand develop.

1. Ingredients
2. Process
3. Cook
4. Package
5. Freeze
6. Store
7. Distribute

How the factory makes money

Manufacturing is the core business. The channels are how the asset gets used.

Fleur Delish is one customer of this plant. Other companies can be customers of this plant. That is the manufacturer. It is not a subscription company that also co-packs.

The debt is subordinate to the business

Year-5 commercial target is about 19× the $4.5 million principal. Year 1 is already about 2.6×.

Revenue is not cash flow and we do not pretend it is. These ratios show that the requested financing is not proportional to the commercial scale being built. The cash-flow test sits underneath, separately.

The credit argument — contribution, then CFADS

Debt service is about 10.6% of modeled DTC contribution before fixed overhead. DSCR is about 4.32×.

A sophisticated underwriter will say revenue is not repayment. Agreed. The packet already has the unit economics: $11.50 revenue per meal, less $3.68 food, $0.52 packaging, $1.15 freight, about $0.31 processing, $0.18 refunds, $0.05 spoilage = about $5.61 contribution per meal. $3.68 is the underwriting food ceiling (32% of $11.50), not the kettle recipe. Mix-weighted food on hardy 16-oz trays is about $2.12. The extra $1.56 is shrimp-week and yield room. Scenario A does not move.

American jobs — construction, then shifts, then the plant at full

Every meal creates work here. 31 is first shift at the operating base — not how you run a 25,000 SF manufacturer.

This $5 million puts people to work in three lanes, not one number. Construction trades work the tract first. A first production shift then scales with meals: 21 → 31 → 47 → 59. A second production shift on the same walls is how the building approaches ~70,000 meals a week: 46 more floor seats, 105 full-time in the planning table. Production, food safety, QA, packaging, maintenance, warehouse, logistics, administration, management. 31 people is 43% of one-shift design volume. It is not 31 people running this place around the clock.

Construction trades — temporary, named, not a fake FTE

About ten months on the schedule. Then commissioning. Then the plant payroll.

Site / civil $450,000 · 25,000 SF plant $1,450,000 · equipment set inside the $1,650,000 opening line. Those dollars buy crews. They do not buy a number we made up.

• Site / civil — clear, grade, utilities, detention, pave
• Concrete and foundation
• Structure and envelope
• MEP — electrical, process plumbing, gas, hoods
• Refrigeration contractors — boxes and machinery
• Hygienic finishes — food-grade floors, drains, walls
• Millwrights / equipment set — kettles, blast, tray-seal, cartoner
• Controls, fire/life safety, commissioning support

First production shift — scales with meals

The 31 jobs are one crew at the 15,000-meal operating base. Sanitation is on that same daily cycle.

We did hire shifts — on paper, as the plant fills. The DTC underwriting case does not staff a second shift it does not yet need. Overtime is how 25,000 is hit before a second crew. A second shift is how ~70,000 is hit without a second building.

Salaried plant seats (plant manager, QA manager, founder) stay once when the second shift is added. Floor functions duplicate. We do not invent a 128-job FOIA comparable as our census. Lily’s 128 is an existing operator in Denver, not this New Orleans plant.

Production is a configuration, not a company ceiling

The facility is designed to increase domestic prepared-food production as demand develops.

Initial one-shift design is about 35,000 meal-equivalents a week. That is not the size of Fleur Delish Food Systems, and it is not a survival threshold. Production can be increased through operating shifts, equipment utilization, and capacity additions as contracted demand develops. This page does not claim the opening 25,000 SF configuration manufactures Year-5 volume.

What the commercial model itself requires

The production path is the expansion plan. Year 1 fits one shift. Year 5 does not pretend the opening configuration cooks 185,000 meals a week.

Cook-week figures are meal-equivalents implied by the commercial target (DTC + grocery + private-label / co-man conversion). Packaging and storage dollars are not extra trays. This is the model’s production requirement — not an engineering claim that the opening plant produces Year-5 volume.

The market is already enormous. Prepared meals already scaled.

$85.92 million is about 0.0034% of 2025 U.S. food spending. That is not a claim the market hands Fleur the dollars.

The requested revenue scale does not require material national market penetration. USDA ERS (Charts of Note, June 11, 2026): Americans spent $2.51 trillion on food in 2025 (inflation-adjusted 2025 dollars). Food-at-home was about $1.10 trillion; food-away-from-home about $1.41 trillion (56.3%). Against food-at-home, the Year-5 target is about 0.0078%.

The site

12.70 acres. Old Gentilly Road. Expansion land and a real-estate collateral base.

55197 Old Gentilly Road, New Orleans, LA 70129. APN 39W909623. Vacant land, 12.70 acres. The tract sits across Old Gentilly Road from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility. Chef Menteur Highway is an existing food-manufacturing run — Folgers, Reily Foods. Port of New Orleans. I-510 / I-10. The 12.70-acre acquisition provides the project with substantial expansion land and a real-estate collateral base beyond the initial 25,000 SF operating footprint. Remaining acreage is not cash equity and is not an appraisal claim in this file.

SBA FOIA — loan records, not a census of factories

The FOIA file shows limited comparable 7(a) activity for Louisiana NAICS 311412 at this loan size.

FOIA loan records do not prove that no frozen-specialty factory exists in Louisiana. They show what SBA 7(a) actually booked. Source: SBA FOIA 7(a) FY2020–present, as of June 30, 2026 (data.sba.gov). 388,338 approvals in the pull.

Illustrative cases

Click the case. The commercial model is the platform. The 15,000-meal DTC case is an assumption underneath it.

Packet commercial is the revenue story on this page. Initial-plant capacity is what the opening configuration can cook on the modeled shifts. Year-5 cook-week in the commercial model exceeds the initial one-shift design. That production growth is the expansion plan — operating shifts, equipment utilization, and capacity additions as contracted demand develops — not a claim that the opening 25,000 SF manufactures 185,000 meals a week.

The subscription mechanic

Weekly lock, weekly charge. National RTE already bills this way.

Pick a weekly count. Lock by cutoff. The card charges that week. Skip or pause before cutoff and that household’s production is not scheduled. Factor and CookUnity already deliver into New Orleans on a similar loop. They are not manufacturing this city’s recipes in this city. Category validation is not the repayment case.

Category validation — not the company

The cooked-meal category already proved national demand. This plant is built to manufacture Louisiana’s plate here.

Factor and CookUnity are used as category validation — households already pay ~$11–$16 for a cooked meal, including into New Orleans ZIPs. They cook elsewhere. Fleur Delish Food Systems is not underwriting this plant on matching their scale. The five-year commercial target is $85.92 million. Year 1 is $13.31 million. The 2,500-account DTC case is credit support inside that manufacturer — not the size of the company.

Louisiana manufacturing DNA — not an empty market

Louisiana already proved that distinctive food can become scalable manufactured product. The plated meal is the SKU that has not been industrialized.

The argument is not that nobody else makes food in Louisiana. That is not true. Seasonings, sauces, rice mixes, chips, beer, and sausage already travel because a plant made them repeatable. Fleur Delish applies that same manufacturing DNA to the finished frozen meal and builds multiple channels around one production asset. National cooked-meal subscriptions already deliver into New Orleans ZIPs — they just do not cook this city’s food in this city.

On $6.80 wholesale, grocery crosses the ~$8.97 million Year-1 DTC line at about 200 stores × 150 trays/week (~$10.6 million). That is a later illustration, not Year 1.

Louisiana grocery brands — dollars on the record

Where they published money, we print it. Where they did not, we do not invent it.

Louisiana already proved that its flavors can be manufactured and distributed nationally. Seasonings, sauces, rice mixes, chips, beer, sausage. The plated dinner is the SKU that still is not on that shelf. We are not claiming Fleur is the next McCormick. Those published dollars belong to those companies. We print them as proof that manufactured Louisiana food already scales. They are not Fleur revenue. We are the manufacturer: Fleur Delish on this line, and other brands on this line when they contract the hours. Louisiana already has brands. What it does not have is this finished frozen-meal plant.

The historical winners are easy to pack as parts: seasonings → sauces → rice/mixes → chips → beer → sausage. The consumer still has to assemble dinner from those parts. Fleur Delish Food Systems cooks the meal, freezes it, packs it, warehouses it, and ships it as dinner — for its own brand and, on unused capacity, for other brands.

Sources & uses

$5,000,000 sources equal $5,000,000 uses. Defined scope. Competitive bids.

The project has been competitively scoped and will be supported by three contractor bids. The selected scope must deliver the defined manufacturing facility within the established project budget. Working capital stays $650,000 (13% of project), inside the $2,000,000 ITL working-capital cap, and is reserved for food inventory, startup payroll, deposits, insurance, utilities, testing, and ramp — not customer acquisition. The $350,000 eligible-loan-costs line is not a plug.

The packet

Institutional master plan. Source of underwriting detail.

Version 5.5. New Orleans food. Made here. Sent anywhere. Credit party: Phlibert Honore, 100% member. Right operator: demand generation is already his job; the boutique remains a going concern so the transition does not create a shutdown event; specialists run the line; $500,000 cash equity. Apply as the 311412 manufacturer on SBA’s Adversely Affected by Import Competition basis. Support Grocery Guarantee with the grocery sector of that same plant — 100 doors × 100 units/week = $3.54M Year 1. One ITL request — not a blanket manufacturing guarantee, not an award. Credit Household = 6 meals (repayment). Management Household = 10 meals (operating plan). Scenario A coverage is D2C-only so a late buyer cannot break the note. Commercial target $13.31M → $85.92M is not repayment. Credit BASE CFADS ~$2.00M vs ~$462K 25-year debt service. Download the same file this page embeds. If the viewer is blank on a phone, open or download the PDF — it is on this same site.