Out of an abundance of caution and concern for all of our guests, vintners, chefs and sponsors, both traveling from outside of Louisiana and those who reside here, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the New Orleans Wine & Food Experience, originally scheduled to start March 18. We recognize that our stakeholders may be feeling constrained by the COVID-19 outbreak, and we hope this decision lifts some burden on resources and uncertainty. As a non-profit entity, we rely on our event proceeds to fulfill our mission in continuing culinary education throughout the region, therefore we are deep in planning for our rescheduled event at a later date in 2020, and look forward to sharing that information soon. Purchased tickets will be honored for our new 2020 dates or for our 2021, or 2022 event. In the meantime, we urge our local audience to support our restaurants, hotels and vendors affected by this situation, as well as our beneficiaries for the 2020 event—New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute (NOCHI) and Café Reconcile.