Business is booming in a small Louisiana town as a huge Meta AI data center project brings in thousands of workers

• Meta is building its largest data center to date in northeast Louisiana.
• Over 7,500 workers are expected to be on the construction site at the project's peak.
• Residents are launching businesses to capitalize on the opportunity.

The construction workers building Meta's largest-ever data center are arriving in a tiny Louisiana town with more than specialized skills and manpower. They've also got cash to spend.

It's a fact that local entrepreneurs are leveraging to build new businesses.

"It's been a good opportunity for everybody," David Rodgers, the cofounder of Ice Queen, a local business, told Business Insider. "I tell people, you can't stop it unless you have $50 billion. You might as well get on board and go with the flow."

Meta said the data center, dubbed Hyperion, will span nearly 10 million square feet in rural Holly Ridge and will support more than 7,500 jobs at peak construction.

That's a workforce larger than the population of Aspen, Colorado.

While the influx of workers is straining the local housing market and disrupting aspects of daily life, their presence has also boosted the region's economy.

Spinning straw into gold

Holly Ridge is a very small sliver of the nearly 19,600 residents in Richland Parish, where agriculture has been the main industry for decades. Before Meta arrived, the smattering of towns, villages, and unincorporated areas that make up Richland Parish hadn't seen significant economic growth in years.

Tim Allen, a Richland Parish restaurant owner, lived through that stagnation in the nearby town of Rayville.

"Rayville has been a small community my whole life, and it's been in decline over the last several years. We have a lot of people whose children are moving out, and they usually don't come back," Allen said. "Growing up, downtown Rayville had multiple businesses, hardware stores, and clothing stores. One by one, they shut down until only a couple of stores were left."

When Meta announced its project in 2024, Allen and his family were among those who saw an opportunity to turn things around.

"Since Meta's announcement, we've seen old businesses revitalize and new ones open, including ours," Allen said. Holy Tacos opened in April 2025.

TJ and Kaycie Weed, also based in Rayville, said the new demographic created by Meta's project has boosted their sales. They first opened their café, HeBrews Coffee & Eats, near the end of 2021.

"When we first started, we thought 30 tickets was a good day," TJ said. "Now, we're hitting 30 tickets before the first hour and a half through the drive-thru alone. We're probably hitting 130 tickets now."

The café in Rayville is a brick-and-mortar, but the couple has two franchise locations, including a food truck that opened in 2025 directly across the street from the construction site in Holly Ridge. They said the Holly Ridge location opened specifically because of Meta.

"Holly Ridge does most of the catering. If it's any of the businesses under the umbrella of Meta, I send it to Holly Ridge," TJ said.

The wave of construction workers inspired Rodgers and his former business partner, Linda Edwards, to cofound Ice Queen in 2025. The business sells $3 bags of ice to subcontractors and companies working on the Meta project.

The parish has weathered several heat waves this summer, making ice a necessity for outdoor trade workers. Since July, residents have seen temperatures reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit more than two dozen times. The pair keeps the ice bags in a large tractor-trailer parked near the construction site and has a separate ice truck available to make deliveries.

Ice was only the beginning, though, and soon Ice Queen transformed into a one-stop shop of sorts for the work crews. Coffee machines. Cups. Sugar packets. Fridges. Microwaves. Straws. You name it, Ice Queen tries to supply it.

Robert Cleveland, president and CEO of the local economic development authority, Grow NELA, said the economic growth happening in Richland Parish is undeniable.

Data collected by Grow NELA shows that Richland Parish's annual sales tax revenue jumped from $21 million in 2024 to $39 million in 2025. At the end of 2026, Grow NELA expects the parish will see $92 million in annual sales tax revenue. Richland Parish has gained more annual sales tax revenue in 2025 alone than in the last 20 years combined, Grow NELA says.

"We have a number of small businesses that have propped up and have grown significantly because of the project," Cleveland said.

Supply and demand

Part of the business growth in Richland Parish is supplying construction workers with what they need while they are away from home: lodging, food, and basic necessities.

Angel and Bryan Crawford, for example, chose to address the housing market gap with their rental company, Parish Line Properties. The couple owns a mobile home park called Antley Pines that opened in 2025.

"We added two homes last December, four this May, and our last four in July. All the homes were secured by deposits from Meta workers before we even got them into the park," Angel said.

A fully-furnished four-bedroom, two-bathroom mobile home that's eight miles from the construction site costs an average of $3,000.

The couple previously worked in the nursing field, but decided to dive into real estate and property management after becoming empty nesters.

"In 2024, we started buying older houses that had been on the market for a long time or needed a lot of work. We had a vision to create a mobile home park and already purchased some land when we heard about Meta's data center," Angel said.

The company now owns 18 rental properties, 14 of which the owners have set aside as workforce housing.

"Location is very important to Meta's workers because they work six to seven days a week and 12-plus hours a day. They leave around 4:30 in the morning, and they don't come home until 7 at night," she said.

Those long days can be taxing, making places like HeBrews Coffee & Eats popular with workers.

Shelbie Stephenson, owner of the Holly Ridge location, said they deliver 450 lunch plates to the Meta work site twice a month. Stephenson said they also do breakfast and coffee catering several times a month.

"We have done 900 burritos and 2,500 cups of coffee during safety week," she said.

Stephenson said the crews tend to order breakfast burritos, muffins, and scones in the morning. For lunch, they typically purchase pulled pork nachos, steak bites with peppers over rice, chicken bits over rice, or a sandwich.

Holy Tacos also fulfills lunch catering orders for workers on Meta's project, in addition to serving at its brick-and-mortar location.

"We've been out to the man camps, which are the temporary housing for construction workers, took our mobile setup, and cooked for them," Allen said.

He said the crews will order from catering from Holy Tacos between one and four times a month.

"Catering costs anywhere from $4,000 to $7,000, depending on the size," Allen said. "We have a good local following, but when you add the catering, probably 40% of our monthly business is directly related to Meta."

Staying hydrated is also a must in northeast Louisiana, where a series of heatwaves blanketed the region this summer.

"Pallets of water are where we make most of our money because it's a safety issue out here. The heat and all that," Rodgers, the owner of Ice Queen, said. "I buy truckloads of water and deliver probably 30 to 40 pallets of water a week to these guys."

Ice Queen sells a pallet of water for about $600. Liquid I.V., an electrolyte drink that helps with hydration, costs just over a $1 per pouch and is another notable product.

"The Liquid I.V.'s were one of the most important products because the guys would get so dehydrated," Edwards, a real estate agent with John Rea Realty, said. "They had never, ever encountered the humidity and the heat. It probably got up to 110 degrees out there."

Future plans

In June, a study commissioned by Grow NELA said that consumer spending and capital investments made during the data center's construction period will generate $162.9 million in sales tax revenues at the local and state levels.

While Meta has temporarily transformed Richland Parish into a modern-day boomtown, most of the construction workers will eventually move on to other jobs, taking their spending with them.

It's a reality that business owners in Richland Parish know is on the horizon.

Allen said Holy Tacos would likely continue catering for other businesses in the area and selling out of their restaurant. TJ and Kaycie said HeBrews Coffee & Eats will lean on the clientele it built before Meta arrived. The Crawfords said they are considering either selling the properties or continuing to rent them after construction ends. Ice Queen has diversified and plans to rely on other large-scale clients in the area.

Louisiana Economic Development said Meta is expected to work on the Richland Parish site through 2030.

What happens after that is anyone's guess. For now, though, there's money to be made.