Today, power couples are more often found on smaller screens, not in a seductive embrace but wielding power tools while knocking down interior walls or building decks. I’m thinking of course of the husband and wife teams on popular home decor and renovation shows, couples like Dave and Jenny Marrs of “Fixer to Fabulous,” and Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson of “Married to Real Estate.”

You might not have ever heard of Don and Susan Charlet, co-owners of the home decor and furniture gallery The Corbel, but you can be sure that in social circles from Zachary to St. Francisville, Don and Susan are a local power couple. 

Don Charlet is no stranger to entrepreneurship—he worked in the family funeral home business for the first decade of his career.  Then in 2000, with his brother, Don launched Charlet Brothers Construction, a custom residential homebuilder and remodeler responsible for some of the first homes built in the Copper Mill neighborhood.

In 2003, Don and Susan opened The Corbel on Highway 61 between Zachary and St. Francisville. Then, after 20 years of business, they relocated The Corbel to downtown St. Francisville where the curated home goods and antique furniture shop became the anchor store for a multi-business redevelopment project called North Commerce. 

Today, North Commerce includes The Corbel, boutiques Barlow and Deyo, the eight-room Hotel Toussaint, event venue Mallory, a pizza restaurant and a microbrewery.

Starting a business is stressful and challenging under most circumstances. What often determines whether a business succeeds or fails is the commitment and perseverance of the business partners. With 5 successful businesses and a lifetime of memories in marriage, it’s safe to say Don & Susan  have struck the right balance for success.    

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo & Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Norisha Kirts Glover has a degree in mass communication and an MPA. She spent years in nonprofit fundraising in Washington, D.C. and California. In 2015 she walked through a door marked “commercial construction” — an industry where women and people of color were barely present — and decided that was exactly where she needed to be.

Norisha is originally from the Alexandria area. She came to LSU for college and stayed. In 2015, an opportunity came along to enter commercial construction. She researched it, noticed that women and people of color were dramatically underrepresented, and decided to launch NRK Construction anyway — or maybe because of that. The firm picked up early traction after the 2016 floods, working through extensive residential renovation before moving deeper into commercial work.

NRK is intentionally small — three to four employees, about $3 million in annual revenue, with two major projects at a time. Norisha says that’s not a limitation; it’s a choice. Her superintendent is on every job site and every client meeting comes with an agenda. Norisha’s aiming next at healthcare, education and federal contracting.

Ralph Whalen grew up in New Orleans, studied English at Dartmouth, and has tried to leave Louisiana several times. Chicago, New Hampshire. He keeps coming back.

Ralph started his career implementing Epic — the electronic health records platform that runs inside most major hospitals — and worked his way up to Senior Vice President at a healthcare IT firm called Divurgent. In September 2020, he launched Benzait, a consulting firm that helps hospitals and health systems figure out how to adopt artificial intelligence responsibly.

Benzait works with medium to large health systems, building the governance frameworks and technical infrastructure that AI actually requires before it goes anywhere near a patient. Ralph says the biggest problem in healthcare AI right now isn’t a lack of technology — it’s organizations rushing to adopt it before they’ve figured out what problem they’re trying to solve. His job, a lot of the time, is to slow people down just enough to get it right.

Ralph and Norisha both entered rooms where the conventional wisdom said they didn’t quite belong — a woman in commercial construction, an English major in healthcare tech — and found that being the unexpected person in the room turned out to be an advantage.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s a decent chance that if you live in Louisiana, you’ve also used a phone to do that. That digital driver’s license on your phone — that was built right here, in Baton Rouge, by a company called Envoc. Calvin Fabre built it. 

Calvin is a long-time friend of Out to Lunch: he's made multiple appearances on this show over the years as he's developed his company, and some of Louisiana's most advanced tech. He's been writing code since he was 12 years old — 1978, give or take — when he got an Atari 800 and discovered that he could make a computer do exactly what he told it to do. He has essentially been doing that ever since.

Calvin studied computer science at Southeastern Louisiana University and built Envoc into a software firm that now works on some of the most consequential identity technology in the country. You may know Envoc best as the company behind LA Wallet — Louisiana’s digital driver’s license. Calvin divested the IP on that about a year ago, but the work continues: he’s now sitting at international standards meetings with Apple, Samsung, Google, and representatives from Hong Kong, New Zealand and Canada, working out what digital identity should look like everywhere.

He’s also thinking carefully about who gets left behind when identity goes digital — seniors, low-income users, people who don’t trust the technology or can’t easily access it. For Calvin, that’s not an afterthought. It’s the whole point.

Samantha Morgan started her career as a journalist — arts writing, then Hurricane Katrina turned it into hard news overnight, then broadcast, then the BP oil spill, then digital. Eventually she stopped working for other people’s newsrooms and started her own production company - Quick Flip Media. She says she named it after a phrase she repeated every day for twenty years in television: flip it quick.

Samantha is a Baton Rouge native — Old Goodwood, specifically — who has tried to leave more than once. She jokes that the natural disasters keep pulling her back.

Calvin and Samantha have both ended up running their own business after years of building something for someone else. And in both cases, the reason seems to be the same: the problem was too interesting to leave to other people.

Calvin has been at this long enough that he was building software before most of the people who use it were born. Samantha has covered enough Louisiana history that she has a personal archive most newsrooms would envy. Not surprisingly, neither one of them are done. Because, after all, tech never sleeps.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

These days, there’s a website that tries to do that systematically. You’ve probably heard of it. Rate My Professor. And if you’ve ever spent time on it, you might have noticed it’s also a place where students settle scores, write reviews about a professor’s appearance, and occasionally make things up entirely.

My lunch guest, Nash Mahmoud, noticed the same thing. He happens to be a professor. He also happens to be a software engineer. So he built something better.

Nash came to the United States from Jordan in 2008 to pursue a graduate degree at Mississippi State. He got his master’s, then his PhD, then a tenure-track faculty offer at LSU — and somewhere along the way between learning his way around campus, walking to football games, and dining at local spots around town, Baton Rouge became home.

He’s been teaching software engineering at LSU for the better part of a decade. A few years ago, while advising nearly 40 students at once, he started paying close attention to how they were using Rate My Professor to make decisions about their education. What he saw bothered him: anonymous reviews, no way to verify whether the reviewer was even a real student, bias against female faculty, and a single bad comment that could follow a professor for years.

Nash spent a couple of years researching the problem. Then he started coding. On March 14th, 2024 — Pi Day  — Nash launched Professor Index, a verified, AI-powered professor review platform designed to reduce misinformation and bias. It’s now live at 20 universities and has more than 3,500 downloads. Professor Index has become so popular that students are sending in requests to add more campuses faster than he can keep up.

My other lunch guest, Courtney Sparkman, taught himself to code because a problem at his job was driving him crazy and he couldn’t find anyone else to fix it. He was running security companies, then. Now he runs a software company that serves 700 of them.

Courtney is from Chicago and moved to Baton Rouge when his wife — his fiancée at the time — got a job here after pharmacy school. He says the thing that surprised him most about Baton Rouge was how welcoming the city is to newcomers.

Courtney is a self-described serial entrepreneur. Before coming to Baton Rouge, he helped his father build a security guard company from the ground up — zero employees to about 300, and several million dollars in revenue — before they sold it. Then he went to work for a larger security firm and immediately recognized every problem he thought he’d left behind: guards showing up late, incident reports written hours after the fact, supervisors with no real-time visibility into what was happening in the field.

Courtney taught himself to code and built the solution himself. It’s called OfficerApps. 

OfficerApps launched in 2013.  Today, OfficerApps serves about 700 security companies, from five-person operations to firms with thousands of officers in the field.

Nash and Courtney have both figured out — the hard way, mostly — that building the thing is only the beginning. Getting people to use it, trust it, and tell someone else about it: that’s the actual work. 

Nash launched his Professor Index app on Pi Day and is now traveling to college campuses to make the case in person. And in Courtney's case, besides being the software developer he also answers OfficerApps support calls himself so customers know somebody’s there.

Neither of these fathers of apps born in Baton Rouge planned it quite the way it happened. That turns out to be a pretty common feature of good ideas.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most of the time, we don’t give a lot of credit to the people who set that stage. The campground owner who keeps a shuttle running at midnight so you can get back safely from the French Quarter. The art curator who figured out that if he put a show up in a doctor’s office, more people would see it than in any gallery. These are the people who decide, quietly and without much fanfare, what kind of place a city is going to be.

Camping

Mike Dunn did not grow up dreaming of owning a campground. He grew up on a dairy farm in Maryland, spent his career running cranes and heavy equipment, and took a wrong turn somewhere around 2011 that led him to a night attendant job at the New Orleans KOA — which, as wrong turns go, turned out pretty well.

Within six months, KOA had promoted him to run the park. A few years after that, he and his wife Deborah bought it. They are now in their third year as owners of the New Orleans KOA Holiday in River Ridge — 100 RV sites, three deluxe lodges, 12 full-time employees, shuttle service to the French Quarter and the Superdome, a souvenir shop, a dog park, and a recreation hall.

For most of its history the park’s guests were 60% international. Canadians, Europeans, Australians. In the last year or so that has flipped to 90% domestic. Mike and Deborah are figuring out what that means for a business built around introducing the world to New Orleans.

If you're wondering what a person with a business in New Orleans is doing on a show about Baton Rouge business - well, people who stay in an RV park are generally not people who live in the same city as the RV park. So I thought it might be useful for those of us here in Baton Rouge who visit New Orleans to know about it.

Art

Keidrick Alford grew up in Zachary, Louisiana. His parents let him draw on the walls. That tells you most of what you need to know.

He went to college, spent time in real estate, then nearly a decade in hospitality — long hours, demanding work, not a lot left over at the end of the day. The whole time, he was watching something on the side: Baton Rouge was turning out artists from LSU who had no idea what to do with themselves once they left. The business side of being an artist — contracts, galleries, marketing, pricing — nobody was helping them with any of that.

In 2018, Keidrick started Ellemnop to fill that gap. Since then, he’s curated nearly 90 exhibitions — in galleries, in medical offices, in whatever space made sense. Today he’s a managing partner in The Pearl, a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Old South Baton Rouge that will house gallery space, artist residencies, and apprenticeship programs in bodyshop work, barbering, and welding. Yes, all in the same building. 

There’s a word that comes up a lot when you talk to Mike and Keidrick, and that word is “guests.” Mike uses it for the people who pull into his campground, and Keidrick uses it for the people who walk into his exhibitions. They both mean the same thing by it: these are people who trusted you with their time, and you don’t waste it.

Mike went to New Orleans planning to stay a little while. Keidrick has been in Baton Rouge his whole life, looking for ways to make it worth staying. Different journeys, same destination.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Both guests grew up in Louisiana, both left, both came back or stayed — and both are doing work that most people wouldn’t expect to find anchored in the Capital Region. The through-line is this: the future doesn’t always happen in Silicon Valley or New York. Sometimes it’s being built from a studio off Perkins Road and a home office in Baton Rouge. Today we’re talking about what it looks like when Louisiana shows up on the cutting edge.

Cody Louviere grew up in Lake Charles dreaming about video games and ended up building simulations for the U.S. Air Force and ExxonMobil. He’s the founder of King Crow Studios, a Baton Rouge company that uses virtual reality, augmented reality and AI to train people on equipment worth tens of millions of dollars — without anyone ever touching the real thing. 

Cody came to Baton Rouge when his ex-wife enrolled at LSU, and the city kept him. More than 50 simulations later, King Crow is quietly doing some of the most sophisticated technical work happening anywhere in the South.

Danielle Brown is a Baton Rouge High graduate who interned at Google as a college student and never really left — except that she did come back, during the pandemic, and helped rewrite Google’s remote work policies so she could stay. 

Today Danielle leads global marketing for NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV, overseeing a 15-person team, co-marketing partnerships with the NFL itself, and subscriber strategy for one of the most-watched sports products in the world. Eighteen million people watched a recent international NFL game on the platform she helps run. She is doing that work from Baton Rouge, Louisiana — and she seems to think that’s exactly right.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, women make up nearly half of the total U.S. labor force. And if, like me, you grew up with a mother who owned a small business, then you won’t be surprised at all that women make up nearly 45% of all businesses in the U.S., employing over 10.5 million workers and generating over $3.3 trillion in revenue. As an ad from the Sixties used to say, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Sidney Coffee became a small business owner after decades of public service. Originally from Texas, Sidney came to Baton Rouge to attend college at LSU. She began her career in journalism at The Advocate, working on special sections, then moved to WBRZ Channel 2 as a news producer, creating morning and evening broadcasts. 

Sidney then pivoted to positions in public communications—first as Gov. Buddy Roemer’s press secretary, which then led to a position with the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission, chaired at the time by then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Recognizing her work in coastal policy, Govs. Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco each tapped Sidney for positions during their administrations.

For the last decade, Sidney has been the owner and operator of The Guru, an art gallery, spiritual retreat, and event venue, set inside a restored 1920s mechanic’s garage on Government Street.

When we think about the factors that drive consumer purchases, convenience often tops the list, with 77% to 83% of consumers citing it as a key factor that influences, or sometimes dictates, their buying decisions. From fast food to five-minute oil changes, our modern lifestyles demand ease and immediacy. 

Anna Beth Guillory, has developed an app for busy professional women to book appointments directly with beauty professionals. It's called BeautyFindr. 

After nearly a decade of co-owning a blowout bar in Lake Charles, Anna Beth identified a persistent problem: connecting clients to available beauty professionals in real time. Working with a developer, Anna Beth spent 11 months building the BeautyFindr app, which launched in 2024.  

Today, BeautyFindr operates in 19 states and is quickly evolving into a business-development hub for beauty professionals, and, as well as scheduling, offers peer networking, social sharing and business-growth tools. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's Out to Lunch we turn the mics on our production crew. 

J T O’Neal got into audio engineering by recording his own music as a teenager. He started by making beats and recording instruments, which naturally led him to learn how to record live drums and bands.

J T got his big break when, while working as a barback at Spanish Moon, he took over for the house sound engineer who was going on tour. He was such a success that J T became the full-time sound engineer there in 2013.

J T is now a full-time freelance audio engineer, working at such diverse locations as Chelsea’s Live, Varsity Theatre, Bethany Church, and touring with Small Pools and Marc Broussard. 

Miranda Albarez and Ian Ledo met while studying at LSU and working in marketing at LSU UREC. Both had creative backgrounds—Miranda in digital art, communications, and music, and Ian in photography, videography, and screen arts.

It was while they were dating that they realized how well they work together. So, they decided to launch Albaledo Media while still full-time students. Now, after just a few years in business, Albaledo Media has completed more than 40 projects, ranging from small-business branding and websites to large-scale creative work for Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Tulane University and LSU Opera.

JT, Ian and Miranda are vital contributors to the production Out to Lunch. In the future when you hear their credits at the end of the show you'll have an appreciation of what their professional lives entail.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Filmed in 1977, Saturday Night Fever was a critical and commercial success, helping to popularize disco around the world. The soundtrack, featuring songs from the Bee Gees, has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums and the second-biggest-selling soundtrack of all time.

I don’t know about you but I still like dancing to Stayin’ Alive, Jive Talkin, and More than a Woman. By all accounts, so does my lunch guest Alyssa Lundy, Founder & CEO of 5 to 9 Dance Club, a sober, early-evening dance club for women only. 

Turning coffee shops into Miami-themed dance floors, 5 to 9 Dance Club transforms each venue into a full, nightclub experience with lighting, screens, DJ production, and beach décor.  Every event also includes access to mental health professionals, business resources, and women-focused non-profits, as well as a welcome committee to ensure no one feels excluded.

The most famous dinosaur, Barney, an anthropomorphic purple Tyrannosaurus rex, didn’t come onto the scene until 1992 but was as ubiquitous on television and in toy stores for three decades as the disco ball was on dance floors in the Seventies and Eighties. Beloved by school children, Barney, of Barney & Friends, conveyed educational messages through songs and small dance routines with a friendly, huggable and optimistic attitude.  

Dinosaurs dominated Earth for over 165 million years, and still dominate the imagination of scientists and children alike today. Martin Wilmott, owner of The Dinosaur Experience, has seen for himself both the wonder and delight children have for dinosaurs. 

A Londoner, Martin first came to Louisiana in 2009 for a Saints game. In 2013, he moved to Baton Rouge after marrying his wife, a Louisiana native. 

Martin began noticing children’s love for dinosaur themes while hosting water-slide and bounce house parties. Armed with his first dinosaur costume purchased from a specialty store in England, Martin began performing. The business exploded during COVID when he and his wife created a drive-around dinosaur show to cheer up children, growing his Facebook page from 400 followers to 10,000 in one month.

Today, Martin is one of only a handful of dinosaur entertainers in the U.S., and the only one in Louisiana. He performs at birthday parties, school events, corporate events, and museums. He’s especially popular at libraries across multiple states. 

What’s striking about both of Alyssa and Martin is neither of them set out to “disrupt an industry.” They weren’t trying to invent trends. They were trying to solve human problems—loneliness, disconnection, stress, isolation—with experiences that feel safe, playful, and immersive.

Alyssa has built a space where women don’t have to be impressive—they just have to show up. Martin has built a world where adults remember what it feels like to be amazed. And what I think they both remind us is that joy isn’t decorative. It’s functional. It heals. It rebuilds. It gives people permission to breathe.

So whether it’s through dancing or dinosaurs, what Martin and Alyssa are really offering is the same thing: a moment where people feel seen, lighter, and less alone. And in today’s world, that’s not entertainment—that’s infrastructure.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take my favorite Louisiana dish, gumbo, for instance. There are certain ingredients, flavors, and texture to be expected in every delicious spoonful of gumbo. Yet, everyone’s idea of a perfect gumbo is different, depending often on family recipes and traditions for making gumbo. Here, at the award-winning Mansurs on the Boulevard, gumbo is made with chicken, duck, and andouille sausage, making for a rich and flavorful stew. 

Arguably, it's both the ingredients and care that go into making gumbo that makes it special. Most Louisianans would argue that making gumbo is an art. 

Much like a chef making gumbo, my lunch guests, Veni Harlan and Madeline Johnson, are creative entrepreneurs combining and utilizing multiple disciplines to build thriving businesses in the Baton Rouge community. 

A multidisciplinary creative, Veni Harlan of Veni Harlan Creative, has enjoyed a varied career as a graphic designer, photographer, art director, and writer. As a communications specialist, Veni uses these creative disciplines to solve communication problems for clients—everything from bank reports and toys to packaging, billboards, food shoots and location work. 

Veni’s work often intersects with Louisiana culture and environment, for instance when she helped brand the Louisiana Shrimp Coalition, rebranded the Louisiana Black Bear Coalition, or co-founded Marsh Dog, a nutria-based dog treat company, as a way to address coastal erosion and combat invasive nutria, while building a business.

Madeline Johnson, owner of Miss Madeline’s, holds two licenses that rarely go together: speech-language pathologist and licensed barber. Like a contestant on the reality shows Cooked or Guy’s Grocery Games, Madeline has taken two seemingly unrelated professions to start a business that provides an essential but overlooked service for people with special needs.

During and after the pandemic, Madeline began a barber apprenticeship while working in speech therapy at Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital. She passed the barber board just weeks after finishing her master’s degree. 

In January 2025, Madeline decided to combine her two fields and launched Miss Madeline’s, an atypical hair salon that looks and feels more like a therapy room. Unlike other salons, Miss Madeline’s offers minimal decor in neutral tones and sensory tools like Pop-Its, a weighted lion, and textured toys. The hour-long hair appointments take into consideration the full sensory system — visual, auditory, tactile, smell and movement — because a typical salon experience can be overstimulating for Madeline’s roster of 150 clients, all of whom are kids or adults with sensory differences.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, American ingenuity has resulted in a host of innovations and inventions that most of us now take for granted. I’m thinking of course of modern electricity and personal computers but also smartphones and, let’s face it, Artificial Intelligence.  

Our healthcare system has benefitted from American ingenuity too. In the last 50 years, medical advances in diagnostics and imaging, and biotechnology and genetics, have revolutionized healthcare, leading to improved treatments, enhanced patient experience,  better public health, and greater efficiency and cost savings. 

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of American ingenuity in healthcare is that Americans — and people living around the globe — are just living longer, healthier lives.

Amy's lunch guests, Dr. Blake Williamson and Dr. Lawrence Salone, are both contributing to this universal progress with their individual insight and innovation. 

Dr. Blake Williamson is the President and Managing Partner of Williamson Eye Center, a vertically integrated ophthalmology practice, combining optometry and ophthalmology to provide comprehensive eye care—from pediatrics to retirement age.

Founded more than 80 years ago by Blake’s grandfather, Williamson Eye Center has grown significantly over the past decade, operating one of the highest-volume eye surgery centers in Louisiana. The center is often among the first practices in the world to access new eye-care technologies. For instance, Dr. Williamson was the first surgeon in the world to implant the Odyssey lens, a breakthrough cataract implant.

After serving in the military, including a deployment in Iraq, Dr. Lawrence Salone returned to Baton Rouge where he became acutely aware of the lack of accessible mental health services and the high rates of suicide among service members.

In 2012, Dr. Salone launched Post Trauma Institute, a Louisiana-based mental health organization offering integrated psychiatric services under one umbrella, including medication management, psychological testing, therapy, and substance abuse treatment.

An early adopter of virtual mental health care, PTI has been offering telehealth services since 2014, well before telehealth became mainstream.

Today, PTI employs five prescribers and seven therapists, offering services to veterans, National Guard members, and reservists, as well as a growing roster of employers concerned about absenteeism, burnout, and productivity.

 the U.S. healthcare system is rapidly changing, driven by escalating costs, technological integration, and evolving policies affecting insurance. Despite these challenges, your approach to innovation will ensure your respective practices continue to provide affordable and accessible healthcare to our Baton Rouge community.  

For a mid size city in the south, the presence of PTI and the Williamson Eye Center are two of the reasons we're punching way above our weight in healthcare here in Baton Rouge.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the major costs of any wedding is photography.

In an image-driven society where pics of the most mundane activities are posted online for public consumption, capturing the biggest day of many women’s lives in pictures is often complicated. Along with conflicting emotions about body image, and the stress of a major financial investment, unlike the informal pictures of a birthday or a vacation, wedding photos capture a rite of passage and who doesn’t want to look their best for posterity?   

Wedding photographer Katelyn Craven of Butterflies of Hope Photography knows how to ensure that the money is well spent. 

Butterflies of Hope Photography is a family-owned photography studio founded by Katelyn’s mother, Heather Banker. Working out of their Prairieville studio, Katelyn leads all wedding photography under her own brand, Butterflies of Hope by Katelyn, and frequently travels across South Louisiana— from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, Lafayette and St. Francisville—for weddings and engagements.

During the pandemic, many brides were either postponing big-ticket weddings or opting for smaller backyard unions at home. As a result, couples have become more aware of the environmental impact of their special day. Invitation cards, welcome bags, and other plastic props and tchotchkes that were once trendy but too often discarded are now passe for the environmentally-friendly couple.

Wedding bouquets and flowers aren’t immune to the trend either, with planners noting fewer boutonnieres and more pocket squares for the groom and groomsmen. But what of the bride and her maids?

Inspired by her own disappointing experience with a wedding florist, Lauren Bercier co-founded Something Borrowed Blooms, a rental service featuring premium silk floral collections that couples can rent for about 70% less than fresh flowers. 

What started with a dozen weddings a month has grown to more than 2,000 weddings per month during peak season, with over 55,000 weddings fulfilled to date.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Making new friends is hard in any city but especially so in small towns and cities where friends have known each other since grade school, raised children together, or gone to the same church for decades. In communities like Baton Rouge, friends are built-in to a rich life often centered around family.

Making friends is further complicated by our obsession with our digital devices. Go to most any place, including a restaurant or bar where you might expect to meet someone, and you’ll notice people’s heads bent towards their phones, scrolling past social media posts and videos. Today, “friends” are often people you’ve never met IRL. 

Still, there are reasons and even places where a newcomer can meet friends with whom to have an in-person conversation. Stephanie Hansen of Les Amis Bake Shoppe and James Hyfield of Red Stick Reads own two such businesses in Baton Rouge.  

Following in the footsteps of her aunt and grandmother and using family recipes, Stephanie Hansen opened Les Amis Bake Shoppe in August 2013 with the help and support of her mom. What started as a weekend operation baking and selling cupcakes has grown over the last ten years into a retail shop and a commercial supplier specializing in French macarons and made-to-order cakes, selling wholesale to restaurants, hotels and venues like L’Auberge Casino. 

Les Amis, which is French for "the friends" increases its own circle of friends and customers with a move from Coursey Boulevard to Downtown Baton Rouge where it welcomes locals, newcomers, and tourists alike with their slogan "Where Good Friends Meet."

If, by no fault of your own, you find yourself downtown at Les Amis without company but in need of companionship, then what goes better with a slice of cake than a good book?

After years of working in management in food service at Whole Foods, James Hyfield yearned for a different career. He had always enjoyed reading, so with his wife Tere, James started small with a pop-up at the Mid City Makers Market that combined his love for books and his experience in food service. Prior to Covid, James and Tere ran eight to nine pop-ups around the city before in 2019 they opened their Red Stick Reads brick and mortar store on Eugene St., now located in a renovated warehouse off Government Street, near the Baton Rouge Music Studios. 

Today, Red Stick Reads bills itself as a gift shop designed as a bookstore where you can meet book-loving friends at weekly storytime events, author talks, and poetry readings. 

Some of our most vivid childhood memories are of birthday parties with multi-tiered, frosted cake with candles, small gifts wrapped in bright paper, and a gaggle of our closest friends. If we’re lucky, those same friends have celebrated other, equally memorable milestones with us over many years. But, if not, businesses like Les Amis Bake Shoppe, Red Stick Reads, and even Out to Lunch offer opportunities to make new friends and create lasting memories.    

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But as AI is introduced into nearly every facet of the workplace, college admission managers and HR directors are increasingly pointing to the importance of soft skills, the personal attributes and interpersonal abilities that define how you interact with others in the workplace. In the workplace of the future, they say, employers will seek out employees who demonstrate superb communication, teamwork, and problem-solving abilities. 

Yet, our nation’s best colleges and universities don’t offer degrees in active listening or collaboration, do they?  So what is an incoming freshman to do? 

My two lunch guests,Travis Noote of Boomerang Comedy Club, and Terence Delaine of NO Show Comedy, would say take a class in improv. Or explore stand up.

Travis Noote fell in love with comedy in 2013 and became a devotee to improv, a form of live theatre in which the plot, characters, and dialogue are made up spontaneously by the performers at the moment of performance. 

Travis took improv classes in South Carolina, Atlanta, and Savannah before moving to Baton Rouge to be closer to family. As he’d done in other cities, Travis signed up for and was taking classes at the Latco theatre, which he learned was going to dissolve soon. So, acting a bit on a whim and with a good deal of spontaneity, in 2022 Travis took the reins of the Latco venue and founded The  Boomerang Comedy Theater, effectively turning a hobby into a 9-5 job. 

If you are further in your comedic studies and perhaps pine for larger audiences on the West Coast, then Terence Delaine of NO Show Comedy is your man. No Show is a live production company operating in Los Angeles and Louisiana, hosting a monthly show at Squeaky Pete's in downtown Baton Rouge, as well as frequent shows at The Station.

A native of Lake Charles, Terence has degrees in political science and public administration and a full-time job at the United Way. He's been working as a stand up comic for more than a decade. Terence recorded a comedy special album that will soon be released on all streaming sites, including YouTube.  

Living in Louisiana, when it comes to entertainment we often think of Baton Rouge as playing second fiddle to New Orleans. Well, that's the role people put Chicago in for years, in relation to New York City. But it might be worth pointing out that some of the nation's most famous and memorable comics, like Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Steve Carell, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Bill Murray, Catherine O’Hara, and Joan Rivers got their start at Chicago’s Second City, which recently celebrated 65 years of business. It will be interesting to see who comes out of the Baton Rouge comedy scene in the next 5 or 6 years.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yes, Americans certainly are generous with their money. In 2023, individuals gave $374 billion dollars, representing 67% of total giving, according to Giving USA.

Americans gave to organizations and grantmaking foundations working in human services, health, education, environment, and the arts, financially supporting an array of causes and programs essential to the social fabric of our communities.

But by far, Americans gave to religious institutions and organizations: the churches, synagogues, and mosques that offer spiritual guidance and solace – a community of the faithful.  

Chris Spencer knows something about the importance of supporting your parish church. As CEO and President of the United Methodist Foundation of Louisiana, Chris manages nearly $250 million on behalf of churches and philanthropists in the state, using his background in banking to help Methodist churches manage their investments and help donors with planned and legacy giving.

The spiritual can be found in nature, too, and in different art movements, including Surrealism, Symbolism, and Spiritualism, a 19th-century movement that directly influenced modern art. 

Cana Brumfield began her exploration of art at a young age. Inspired by her mother, an art therapist and teacher, Cana grew up taking art classes and going to art camps.

In 2024, Cana began selling her art to the public under the brand name Luna Leaf Studio. Incorporating upcycled materials, Cana’s art evokes a childlike love and wonder for nature and the environment by incorporating whimsical aspects of design. Her work can be found at local art markets, including Brickyard South and The Magical Spring market at the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge.

Art and religion have long shared an inseparable bond. From ancient cave paintings and illuminated medieval manuscripts to grand cathedrals and temple sculptures, art has historically functioned as a visual language of faith. And, all along, but perhaps today more than ever, art and religion both rely to some extent on a foundation of finance. Which is what brings Chris and Cana together over lunch on a show about business in Baton Rouge!

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, the only reason you're able to hear this conversation on Out to Lunch is because of the the actions of good corporate citizens who have stepped up to ensure that community conversations continue. One of those good corporate citizens here in Baton Rouge is a company called LUBA Workers Comp.

LUBA Workers' Comp is a regional casualty insurance company providing workers compensation coverage in 1/4 of the United states. That is significant market penetration for a company that was founded and continues to be headquartered right here in Baton Rouge.

Seeing LUBA Workers' Comp is a sponsor of Out to Lunch we're taking advantage of that relationship to invite an Executive Vice President of the company, Kelli Bondy Troutman, to talk about safety in the workplace.

Most of us have heard of OSHA, the federal agency responsible for workplace safety and health. The agency that sets and enforces standards and provides training and assistance to ensure safe working conditions. But how many of us have ever studied the poster issued by OSHA that typically hangs in nearly every workplace cafeteria? Or who among us really studies the section about safety in the employee handbook? Probably very few of us.

The reason is the same one most of us don’t pay any attention to the pre-flight safety announcement when we’re waiting for a plane to take off: there are so few plane crashes – or work accidents – that we feel we don’t need to care about it. But, of course, the very reason there are so few plane crashes and serious workplace incidents is because there are people working every single day to make air travel and our work places safe.

One of those people is Adam Beary of Bear Process Safety, whose mission is to simplify safety by creating lean, innovative solutions to help build an easily manageable program for companies. Bear Process Safety offers process hazard analysis, process safety auditing, process safety training, standard implementation, and operating procedures.

Since 2018, Bear Process Safety has been working primarily with larger chemical manufacturers and renewable energy companies but has recently branched towards smaller customers. 

Bear Process Safety was recognized as a BRAC Diversity Star award winner in the small business category for 2022, and CEO and President Adam Beary was a 2022 Business Report 40 Under 40 honoree.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, estate sales are jam-packed with barely-used china no one wants because in most modern households meals are often fast-food or grabbed from the to-go counter and holiday meals are often catered and sometimes served on paper plates.

So, what do you do if you are a homeowner with an underutilized formal dining room?

Well, not so long ago Mauree Brooksher was in such a position when she and her husband bought a 50-year-old home with a traditional formal living room. Uncertain what to do with it, Mauree turned to social media for ideas. There, she found a blog showcasing a formal dining room converted into a mahjong room, with beautiful pictures of the tables and tiles. Mauree was hooked.

Today, Mauree and her business partner Stephanie Politz, own and operate Mahjong Rouge, a club of sorts that offers mahjong classes and hosts tournaments to promote the game in the Capital Region.  Founded in 2024, Mahjong Rouge has taught 1,300 students the tile-based game that dates back to the mid-1800s in China. Now, the game has become so popular that Mauree and Stephanie recently launched Mahjong New Orleans.

What constitutes “fun” changes over time and is different in each culture, each community, and each family. Technology has greatly impacted the ways we entertain ourselves and interact with others. From radio to television to games played on our computers, technology is constantly evolving and therefore changing our lives in new and different ways.

What hasn’t changed is the simple pleasure and joy of being in the company of others. People with a strong sense of community just feel better, leading to greater emotional resilience and higher life satisfaction.

Mahjong is an old game with an enduring purpose of gathering family or friends around a table for an evening of fast-paced skill and cunning. By teaching mahjong classes in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Mauree and Stephanie are broadening people’s appreciation of Chinese culture and offering new opportunities for fun and community.    

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you are unemployed and looking for inspiration, you’re in the right place. It took nearly 18 months for my lunch guest Nick Miner to be offered a job in design after graduating from LSU. After months of getting nowhere in his job search, Nick took a more aggressive approach to applying, made an e-portfolio, and started introducing himself to agencies. He ultimately landed a job at Mesh, a local ad agency where he was hired as the art director. 

Today, Nick Miner owns his own business Miner Design Company, specializing in logo design, branding, art direction, packaging design, illustration and graphic design.

Tony Zanders was born and raised in New Orleans but made his career in tech in Boston and Silicon Valley. Eleven years ago, he returned to Louisiana to be closer to family and, during the pandemic, launched his second tech startup, Skill Type. Leaning into an international network of venture capitalists, Tony fundraised a 4 million dollar investment for his company from contacts in London, Silicon Valley, New York, Miami and in Louisiana, proving the old adage “it pays to have friends in high places.”

While building his company in Baton Rouge, Tony became a coach and mentor at Nexus Louisiana. In 2024, Tony threw his hat in the ring for the role of president and CEO and was tapped for the position by the board. Today, he oversees 10 million dollars in annual revenue at Nexus Louisiana.

After 2020, for a year or two, our default conversation was the pandemic. No matter what we were talking about, everything came back to what was happening before or after Covid. Today, the default conversation, especially in business, is AI. Is AI coming for my job? If so, when? What should I best do to prevent it taking my job, or what should I do if it does take my job?

You might notice the use of "if." The fact is, right now, nobody really knows what the future of work will look like. But as it changes, Tony is in the forefront of that change, working with tech companies that are literally creating the future. On the other side of the coin, Nick is proving that no matter how creative technology can be, the source of all that creativity is, after all, a human being with the equivalent of a pen and piece of paper.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When I read those numbers, I naturally thought to myself how do they all stay in business? How does each coffee shop or chain distinguish itself from its competitors?

Katie Jenkins, Owner and Executive Director of Grace Therapy Center and Stir, has taken a thoughtful approach to business competition and growth. Grace Therapy Center is a clinic for children with autism and other developmental differences that Katie started in 2021.

Now with three locations, Grace Therapy Clinic offers applied behavior analysis therapy (otherwise known as ABA) for indiividual children, children in social groups and at summer camps.

Of all the positioning possibilities you could imagine for opening a coffee shop, tieing it to a series of specialty autism clinics isn't something even the folks at Starbucks or coffee shops in California or New York have thought of. But that's exactly what Katie Jenkins is doing with Stir Cofffee House on Airline Highway here in Baton Rouge. Stir employs Katie's child clients who mature and are old enough to join the workforce.

The coffee industry is responsible for more than 2.2 million U.S. jobs and generates more than $100 billion in wages per year. 

Over the years, we’ve had several guests on Out to Lunch who have contributed to the coffee industry’s success locally. By providing job opportunities at Stir to those who might struggle to find traditional work because of their intellectual and developmental disabilities, Katie Jenkins is not only contributing to the coffee industry’s success in Baton Rouge but she's providing invaluable work and life experiences for her clients at Grace Therapy Center. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many of America’s most successful companies, including tech giants Amazon, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft, started in humble garages.  Perhaps the most famous of which is Apple, founded by college dropout Steve Jobs in 1976. Today, Apple is a multinational corporation with annual revenue in 2024 of $391 billion. And the infamous garage on Crist Drive? It’s now listed on the city’s historic properties.  

Blood

Closer to home, David Slaughter stepped away from commercial real estate in 2017 to open Orion Laboratories with his wife Rachel in a 800-square-foot garage office at the back of their home. Today, Orion Laboratories is the largest independent laboratory in Louisiana, processing labs seven days a week for area health systems, independent clinics, urgent care clinics, nursing homes, physician groups and surgery centers, stretching all the way from Baton Rouge to Monroe, and in 2023, David was named Business Report’s Young Businessperson of the Year. 

Oil

Some businesses never get out of the garage. Like Vinnie Carollo’s for example. In Vinnie’s case, though, it’s not because the business failed. In fact, it’s a big success. And it’s still in a garage.

Vinnie Carollo’s fascination with obscure, odd cars began with a Porsche 944 in need of a repair. As he tried to fix the vehicle, his dad joked that he should go to Porsche school to become a technician. Six months later, Vinnie left home to attend 23 weeks of instructor-led, hands-on training. Then, in 2015, after nine years of working at dealerships and servicing Porsches over the weekends in a friend’s car detailing and cleaning shop, Vinnie Carollo started Vex European and Exotic Auto Repair in a 900 square foot garage with one car lift. 

Vinnie quickly outgrew that space and, over the next two years, moved three times, ultimately to his current location on Benefit Drive. This garage is around 20,000 square feet, has 13 car lifts and employs up to 25 people.

The good news about most modern European cars is, when something's wrong you can hook them up to a diagnostic computer and find out pretty quickly what's probably going on. It's not that simple diagnosing human problems. Yet. There's all kinds of talk about futuristic body scanners, but as far as we know that's way off in the future, and till that day arrives diagnostic medical testing as we know it will probably continue.

Vinnie and David are both following a well-worn path taken by generations of entrepreneurs who show ingenuity and perseverance building successful businesses in specialized and essential markets.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Hampton has capitalized on both the proximity of Bourbon Street and our rich French Louisiana history to open Laissez Versez Distillery, a Baton Rouge-based bourbon distillery.  

With four bourbon offerings, the distillery has garnered several awards since launching in 2019 and serves it fresh from the barrel in the tap room at its Airline Highway facility.

One Coffee

After a night out drinking bourbon, you might need a strong cup of coffee to get yourself to work. For many, the jingle “The best part of waking up is Folger’s in your cup” still rings true, especially for at-home consumers. You would be forgiven for thinking "Starbucks" is synonymous with "coffee" these days but Folger’s still holds the leading market share in the U.S. ground coffee market, accounting for over 25%.

But tastes and markets evolve, and if you have been paying any attention you know that the over 170 year-old brand faces stiff competition. Even here in Baton Rouge.

Chris Nance says he and his partner didn’t know anything about coffee till 2023. Well, they knew a little about drinking it but not much about how its marketed. After 16 months of researcha nd development they came up with a plan to manufacture premium coffee in partnership with a roaster in Lafayette, called Reve, and to target blue collar workers with a brand they christened Backbone Coffee. 

the oldest piece of advice in the history of manufacturing and marketing is, "Build a better mouse trap." In other words, take a product that everybody needs and make yours better than what's already out there.

There is no shortage of coffee or bourbon in the US, and especially here in Louisiana. So, in the better mousetrap theory of evolution, you have to make yours stand out from all the others to succeed.

Chris has found a way to differentiate Backbone Coffee from all the competitors by taking a marketing approach that, surprisingly, nobody has thought of: blue collar coffee.

And John is already hauling in awards for bourbon, which is no easy feat in the first decade of making a product that traditionally can take over a decade just to age enough to get to market.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

By the way, AI wrote that, which might foretell the end of my career as a writer and radio host. My two lunch guests today potentially worry about the future of their jobs too.

Taylor Bennett is the founder & CEO of Mesh, an integrated advertising agency specializing in brand strategy, creative, web and digital marketing. For more than 20 years, Mesh has worked with local businesses such as Baton Rouge General and Visit Baton Rouge, as well as providing pro bono work for the Manship Theatre, Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation, Ducks Unlimited and Jefferson United Methodist Church. In 2021, Mesh received the Best in Show Overall at the annual American Advertising Awards, also known as the Addy Awards.

Max Zoghbi launched his career in cinematography with a daring adventure: together with his two best friends, Max traveled the entire 2,300 miles of the Mississippi River over 61 days in a kayak, documenting the journey through photos and video.

After returning home, Max began picking up small video gigs—weddings, a commercial for a friend’s dad’s business—while working to break into the film and commercial industry.  In 2011, Max founded Loupe Theory, providing direct production and agency work for Tostitos, Keller Williams, Cisco, NBA, Smoothie King, Lamar, Abercrombie & Fitch among others.

Not since the introduction of the personal computer has technology influenced the workplace like AI seems poised to do. Whether you believe AI is an existential threat to the creative class or makes design work more efficient, it’s fair to say AI is here to stay.

Max Zoghbi and Taylor Bennett are business people working in creative fields, both navigating a rapidly changing workplace. Yet, as with any business, flexibility, adaptation, and innovation have and will be the markers of their continued success.  

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by  Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to an advisory issued in 2023 by then U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, about one-in-two adults in America report experiencing loneliness, a condition that impacts mortality at a similar rate as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

For entrepreneurs, business owners, or corporate executives who might be feeling “lonely at the top,” the isolation can have devastating effects, especially for men. Studies show that men experiencing social isolation or loneliness have a higher risk of premature death from all causes compared to those with strong social connections. 

So, where do you turn to for positivity and community? Albert Pellisier of Man Up! and Meredith Waguespack of Sweet Baton Rouge have some ideas.

Albert Pellissier of Man Up! developed a passion for entrepreneurship while attending LSU when he published and produced student coupon books distributed at registration, a sorority-fraternity phone book, and the class schedule booklets. 

After college, Albert got into real estate, investing in multifamily units around the university and opening a salon suites concept, which is still operating. 

But Albert’s success in real estate isn’t why we invited him to Out to Lunch. 

He is also the founder of Man Up!, a business focused on offering secular, personal development retreats for men, and the author of “What’s on Your Back Burner?: Using Dormant Desire to Relight Your Fire.” 

Published in 2024, “What’s on Your Back Burner” offers a simple three-step process to resolve inner conflicts that keep individuals and entrepreneurs from realizing their goals.

Meredith Waguespack failed out of two colleges — Louisiana Tech and Northwestern State University – before she graduated from Southeastern University in Hammond.  While in college, Meredith worked full time at a Baton Rouge-based boutique, managing its two local stores until they closed, and then at Chico’s at Towne Center.

In 2011, after working as an outside sales rep for a tech company and three years as a dental assistant, Meredith launched Sweet Baton Rouge—then called Southern Football Tees— as an online boutique.  Now, nearly 15 years later, Sweet Baton Rouge offers Louisiana lifestyle apparel online and at a brick-and-mortar shop in Perkins Rowe.

80% of retail stores fail before their 10th birthday. Sweet Baton Rouge approaching its Sweet 16 is a testament to Meredith's business acumen and her positioning the store in the Baton Rouge community. The store hosts an annual pop up market with over 40 vendors, called The Ultimate Tailgate, and funds a college scholarship.

In an increasingly polarized world, both men and women are looking for solace, support, and inspiration. In our digital age, many of us turn to social media or online chat groups to find like-minded people and community.

But we typically find online connections don’t quite satisfy us like real world relationships.  Even if that relationship is just friendship, or even casual conversation.

Meredith and Albert are both in their own ways bridging the gap between the virtual and real worlds: using social media to create in-person events and experiences that foster community. Whether it’s comfortable t-shirts for game day or a secular retreat on a Louisiana farm, they’re building businesses while connecting people with their passions and goals. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ben Rabalais from Albaledo Media at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So she makes an appointment with her doctor and the recommended specialists, of which there are many. Yet, the medical diagnosis is the same: there’s no cure for what ails her. 

Then, as in all Hollywood blockbusters, our heroine discovers a miraculous, surprising cure, recovers her health, and lives happily ever after. 

Hollywood describes these “ripped from the headlines” tales as “based on a true story.” In this episode of Out to Lunch we hear two of those true tales.

NaQuellar “Nikki” Thompson was a stay-at-home mom with three children when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019. Her doctors had no explanation why the cancer progressed so quickly, so Nikki decided it must be in part a result of what she was eating. She became a vegan and, after three years of living a vegan lifestyle, opened Veganish Vibes on Bennington Avenue in 2022.

Dr. Lynn Duhe was drawn to holistic medicine by her own health and wellness journey. In 2017, she began to suffer from migraines. When five different doctors gave her no hope for recovery, she turned to a chiropractor and a nutritionist for treatment. In 2019, Lynn Duhe launched Miracle Wellness Center, which became a full medical practice in 2022.

Nikki and Lynn both turned to alternative medical treatments after receiving a potentially fatal diagnosis. With harrowing, true tales “ripped from the headlines” — both Nikki and Lynn were cured. But the story doesn’t end there. Separately, Lynn and Nikki decided to share what they had learned from their experiences with the public by opening their respective businesses. And today Baton Rouge is the better for it.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Photos by Ben Rabalais from Albaledo Media at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chef Barrett Meeks and Abney Harper are two Baton Rouge restaurateurs making memorable meals for locals with successful establishments located just doors apart from each other on Corporate Boulevard in Baton Rouge.

Executive Chef Barret Meeks of Mansurs On The Boulevard developed his passion for cooking when he was just 8 years old. He’d been invited into John Folse’s kitchen at Lafitte’s Landing Restaurant to see how a dessert was plated. 

Later, after graduating from LSU and the Louisiana Culinary Institute, he opened a food truck called The Bengalier. 

In 2015, Chef Meeks joined the kitchen staff at Mansurs on the Boulevard, working his way up the ranks to become Executive Chef in 2021. 

Abney Harper met her husband and business partner while a student at Tulane University Law School. Years later, after practicing law for over a decade, she left her practice to join the restaurant industry. 

Today Abney is the co-owner of two businesses: Prima Apres, a fast casual pasta and pavlova restaurant, and Sucre Baton Rouge, and Sucre Covington, desert restaurants famous for their macarons and gelato.

Whether we're eating Italian cuisine, Creole specialties, or mom's favorite recipes, in Louisiana we love gathering around a table with family and friends for an exceptional meal. Those meals are often inspired by cCreole history and traditions and typically end with a sumptuous bread pudding or bananas foster. But other equally memorable meals end with bite-sized surprises like a French-inspired macaron or exotic pavlova, a meringue named after a Russian ballerina.   

In Baton Rouge we're thankful for these specialty culinary experiences that are made possible by Abney Harper and Barret Meeks.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Photos by Ben Rabalais from Albaledo Media at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daycare

Tessa Holloway is the Owner and Director of Kidz Karousel, a network of early learning centers with nine locations across South Louisiana. What started as a personal decision to save her children’s daycare in Port Allen has grown into one of the region’s most recognized family-centered childcare businesses. 

Tessa and her husband built Kidz Karousel around the needs of families, because they were one. Today, Kidz Karousel is a sought-after partner for major employers like Woman’s Hospital and Our Lady of the Lake.

Daddy

When we talk about building stronger communities, we often start with kids' education, mentoring and opportunities. But what if we went one step further and invested in the people raising them? 

That’s exactly what Levar Robinson is doing with Fathers on a Mission. After years of mentoring youth, Levar realized the deeper need wasn’t just helping kids—it was supporting their dads. Today, he leads a growing nonprofit that empowers fathers to be more present, more prepared, and more connected. And in doing so, he’s reshaping what family support looks like in Baton Rouge—and soon, across Louisiana.

Parenthood isn’t easy—it takes dedication, patience, and a whole lot of support from the community around you. Levar and Tessa are both showing us that building stronger communities starts at home—whether that’s creating safe, nurturing spaces for kids or empowering the fathers who shape their lives. Their work is a reminder that real change happens when people step up, not just to fill a need, but to build something lasting for families and the whole city.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

That’s what J.T Hackett did. (J.T’s real name is Jacelyn, but everybody calls her J.T.) For 12 years J.T. was co-owner of Petz Plaza, a pet-focused business that provides services like daycare, boarding, and grooming. That’s a business that’s focused on fortunate pets. In 2019, J.T turned her attention to less fortunate pets when she became the Director of Programs at Baton Rouge’s Companion Animal Alliance.

The Alliance is a shelter that takes in over 9,000 stray or abandoned animals a year. In 2024, J.T. became the organization’s Executive Director.

I mentioned that J.T was co-owner of  Petz Plaza. The other co-owner of the business was her husband, Michael Hackett. When the Hacketts sold the business to private equity, Michael turned his attention to other successful ventures. Among them, he bought into The Main Squeeze – a juice franchise that started life in Lake Charles and now has stores spread across the country.

In 2021 Michael decided to turn his expertise at business into a business. He founded a consulting company specializing in branding, public relations, business development and community outreach. The company is simply called Hackett Consulting and its wide range of clients include Rebuilding Together Baton Rouge, Our Lady of the Lake, a local automobile dealership, a mortgage lender, a concierge nursing group, and The Baton Rouge Area Chamber.

What is as remarkable as the scope of these businesses is the fact that when a company hires Hackett Consulting they get Michael Hackett. He is the company.

There are a lot of variations to marriage. There are couples whose marriage is a mystery, who seem to have nothing in common. At the other end of the spectrum there are couples like the Hacketts, who seem to have everything going for them.

Typically, we have guests on this show who don’t know each other. We invite people to lunch who we think would get along, and could benefit professionally from knowing each other. Today we’ve worked backwards. We knew you J.T. and Michael get along, and that they benefit professionally from knowing each other. What we didn’t know is that their dedication - not just to each other and to business success, but to higher ideals and to Baton Rouge – is inspiring.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

She found that the tutoring landscape felt outdated and uninspired. So Amanda decided to build the kind of place she wished existed: Studyville — a modern, membership-based tutoring lounge where students can get expert help with homework, test prep, college admissions and more, all in a space that makes learning feel engaging.

Some people join an organization just looking for a job. They’re in and out. Others stay long enough to build a career. And in rare cases, they end up shaping the future of that organization from the top.

That’s exactly the story of Alicia Vidrine. She started at the Tiger Athletic Foundation as an intern during her last semester at LSU, and over the years, she climbed the ladder step by step. Today, she’s the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Under Alicia’s leadership, TAF has expanded beyond funding facilities. Today, it helps power scholarships, operations and long-term support for student-athletes, all while adapting to a changing landscape in college sports.

Working your way up the ladder in your career is never easy. It doesn’t matter if you can see the rungs of it from the start, or if you have to build your own ladder as you climb it.

Both Amanda and Alicia exemplify this journey of growth and perseverance. Alicia climbed her ladder all while adapting to the ever-evolving world of college athletics. And Amanda built hers when looking for a better way to support her kid's education. 

Both of them saw opportunities to make a difference in their fields and took the bold steps necessary to bring your visions to life.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yvette Bonanno knows that well. She grew up in the Baton Rouge restaurant scene and that early exposure sparked a lifelong love for food. Today, she’s combining that experience with cutting-edge food production as the founder of Crave-a-Ball, a Baton Rouge-based company turning classic Louisiana dishes into hand-held, deep-fried, ready-to-serve balls. 

Yvette’s aiming to build Crave-a-ball into the next great Louisiana food brand.

In business, longevity is no accident. It’s the result of resilience, reinvention, and often, a strong sense of purpose passed from one generation to the next.

Darren Pizzolato grew up in the heart of a legacy: Tony’s Seafood. Darren was born into the business—literally—and has never worked anywhere else. Over the years, he and his family expanded Tony’s Seafood into one of the largest seafood markets in the region, known for its live catfish, award-winning boiled crawfish.

Darren's family was also a driving force behind the launch of Louisiana Fish Fry, a brand that went on to become a national staple before the family sold it in 2018. Today, he’s helping shape the next chapter of that legacy in collaboration with Yvette’s company Crave-a-ball.

Food has always been more than just fuel here — it’s a connector, a tradition, and a way to bring people together. And once a tradition is started, it’s easy to follow along and stick with it. 

From Tony’s Seafood, a Baton Rouge staple that has kept the community coming back for decades, to Crave-a-ball, a new venture that is pushing the boundaries of boudin ball flavors, both companies are continuing the legacy of their families while adding to decades-old recipes.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

That’s exactly what happened with Abbey Lovett. She’s a mom of two who saw something missing in the Baton Rouge business scene: a flexible, supportive workspace built with women in mind.

So, she created Pathos Collective—a space that gives members 24/7 access to: a coworking area, a fitness center, professional development events, and is even working on bringing in in-house childcare.

Since launching in November 2024, Pathos has hosted multiple sold-out events and has already grown to over 30 members.

Some entrepreneurs start by spotting a gap in the market and figuring out how to fill it. 

Others follow a passion that ends up turning into something much bigger. Jenni Peters is definitely in that second group. She fell in love with running back in grad school, and that passion eventually led her to open Varsity Sports, a specialty running store in Baton Rouge. 

What started as a shop for serious runners has grown into a welcoming hub for the whole fitness community—offering everything from shoes and gait analysis to group runs for people at all levels.

Now with locations in Baton Rouge, Mandeville, and New Orleans, Jenni hasn’t just built a business—she’s built a community.

At the core of any great business is the ability to really connect with people. Whether it’s through a product, a service, or just creating a space where folks feel seen and supported—those connections are what make businesses thrive.

And that’s definitely true for both Abbey and Jenni's businesses: they've both built something that goes way beyond business.

Whether it’s a coworking space or a running store, when you create a sense of belonging, you’re building something that lasts.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a region where development has often meant the loss of green spaces, there’s a growing movement to restore and care for what’s left—especially its trees.

Sage Roberts Foley is Executive Director of Baton Rouge Green, an organization she’s been involved with since 2010. Baton Rouge Green is a nonprofit dedicated to planting trees, maintaining green spaces, and improving the urban landscape. 

Sage is passionate about making a tangible impact, and under her leadership Baton Rouge Green has taken on some ambitious projects that are already transforming the region.

Trees are great to plant, but they’re not something that gives you an immediate return on your investment. Trees are, more than anything, an investment in our future. But a beautiful tree-canopy future for Baton Rouge isn’t going to be worth much if the future citizens of the city don’t have roots here.

And that’s where the Baton Roots Community Farm comes in. Baton Roots is an urban farm. And a collection of agricultural projects that provide an opportunity for community members to learn best practices in sustainable agriculture.

It’s an initiative that falls under the umbrella of a Baton Rouge organization we’ve talked about before on this show, The Walls Project. 

The Associate Director of Baton Roots Community Farm is S.K. Groll.

Every year when June 1st rolls around we start talking about hurricanes. If this does anything - besides inducing a community-wide sense of anxiety - it makes us confront the fact that we’re living in a precarious place.

Whether you believe climate change is man-made or simply the result of a natural cycle, we have to do whatever we can to make Baton Rouge resilient enough to withstand whatever nature and the future throws at us.

While most of us do what we can by thinking positive thoughts and staying upbeat about life here, folks like Sage and SK are getting up every day and actually doing something to help ensure city life is not just sustainable, but better for future generations.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

That one’s simply not true. Everyone has something they want to see come to life. Everyone has a vision of something they’d love to create that doesn’t exist… yet.

18 years ago, Chris Dykes started tracking his habits on an Excel spreadsheet. In the course of the next 18 years, Chris quit his job and co-founded an app-building business, Clear Blue Design. With this new company at his disposal, Chris looked at his spreadsheet - which he was still using every day - and came to the conclusion there had to be a better way. 

That’s when Chris and his team created the app, Ever Better. Subscribers choose what they want to improve - fitness, finances, or whatever they want -  and the app gives them a way to measure their personal growth. 

When it comes to being creative, not everyone gets their foot in the door right away.  Claudine Diamond, owner of Blue Lotus Visions, didn’t find her passion until a little later in life. In 2010, she started teaching herself how to paint with acrylics, then oils, then watercolor and now, 15 years later, she’s landed on mixed media.

Claudine works with botanical materials, some found in her own garden, that she transfers onto paper using a gel plate and acrylic paint. 

Through her company, Claudine is building a community of artists. Together they host call-to-artist parties where they collaborate on singular pieces of art with upwards of six artists creating one piece. 

In a world where art can provoke several emotions, Claudine prides herself on making art that makes people happy.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Regardless of where you run into them or what your relationship is with them, animals affect all of us. But some deal with animals you don’t see every day. 

One of those people is T-Mike Kliebert, Head Tour Guide at Kliebert & Sons Gator Tours. T-Mike grew up working on an alligator farm with his grandfather. 

There, he helped with the alligator and turtle business. As he grew older, though, and regulations started to change for things like distribution of turtle eggs, the business switched to more of a sanctuary for the animals. 

After T-Mike’s grandfather passed in 2018, and after taking over the company, T-Mike moved Kliebert & Sons Gator Tours to a temporary two-acre property in Ponchatoula. He’s currently working on expanding and making the gator’s “forever homes”.

Not all of us have alligators, but a lot of us do have tame everyday pets. Whether it's a dog, cat, rabbit or bird, 66% of American households have some sort of pet.

And those pets need vaccines, check-ups and doctor's visits just like we do. What we might not think about when we bring our pets to the vet is how much work goes into a business like that.

Just like any doctor’s office, the vet needs meticulous record keeping and a place for online bookings to be kept. Most vets use a variety of tools for these tasks. 

Elliott Greenwood is looking to change that through his new application, Chckvet, not to be confused his company name Chckup.

Chckvet aims to be a home for all of the services a vet needs: an automated online booking system, a client portal for pet records, newsletter templates and more.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well, outside of business, real life is different. You can’t even imagine the number of things that can go – well, if not totally wrong, not as right as you’d like.

When things go off the rails, or before they do, to try and head off the worst outcome, there are places and people to turn to. Like Stephanie's two guests on Out to Lunch.

Rachael Hebert is Executive Director of The Red Shoes, a non-profit center for personal and spiritual growth with a mission of supporting women on their life’s journey. Located in Mid City here in Baton Rouge, The Red Shoes was founded in 1999 to celebrate, empower and nurture women and offers a space to explore and develop their inner life.

Rachael is a licensed clinical social worker and who took over as Executive Director in 2024, but she has a long history of working with the organization dating back to 2007 when she worked as an administrative coordinator at the center. The experience inspired her to become a social worker and to establish STAR – the Sexual Trauma Awareness and Response, which has proven in the decade since to be a vital community resource.

Rachael is also involved in other community nonprofits including community radio station WHYR. 

Greg Tiritilli is an addiction counselor here in Baton Rouge with years of experience helping individuals navigate the challenges of recovery. Greg is the Program Director for residential and long-term programs at St. Christopher's Addiction Wellness Center, where he plays a key role in shaping treatment strategies and supporting both clients and staff.

Greg joined St. Christopher’s after previously working as an addiction counselor at The Recovery Center of Baton Rouge. Greg is a native of Dallas and a graduate of LSU who is now deeply rooted in the Baton Rouge community, balancing his professional dedication with a love for the outdoors, live music, and spending time with family and friends. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's amazing how often the word "hi" and the question “How are you?” go together. The latter is such a standard greeting it barely registers as a serious question.

The standard answer is, “Good. How are you?” Now, if we were to stop there and have a real conversation about how we are, most of us would say we’re good, but we could be better. We’d like a better job, better car, bigger house, more money, less stress… But much of the time these kinds of life-improvements are out of our control – or they’re a more distant goal. So, if we can’t do better immediately, what we can do is feel better.

One of the ways we do that is with food. There’s comfort food. And there’s food as medicine. One particular medicinal food that’s having a moment these days is mushrooms. Here in Baton Rouge, Jordan Gros is a Biological Engineer and CEO of a mushroom-as-medicine company called Mycocentrics.

The use of mushrooms as medicine stretches back thousands of years and encompasses cultures as diverse as Chinese, Indian, and Native American. In searching for a cure for her own spinal injuries and chronic pain, Jordan applied her college education in biological engineering to the healing power of mushrooms, and when she found it worked, she founded her company.

Different cultures have different definitions of  “comfort food.” In India it’s typically Butter Chicken or samosas. Italian comfort food is lasagna, pizza and risotto. Here in the US, we in the South have a lock on comfort food with dishes like pancakes, chicken and waffles, biscuits and gravy, and gumbo.

If mom’s not cooking today, or you’re too busy to cook for yourself, you can get all these comfort foods, and much more, at Another Broken Egg Café.

More than 26 years old, Another Broken Egg Café is currently one of the fastest-growing, daytime-only food franchises in the country. There are more than 100 locations in 16 states. Here in Baton Rouge, Devin Carls is the Territory Manager for Another Broken Egg Café.

We’re all busy. We’re typically rushing between work and home, keeping it together with friends and family, trying to stay healthy and happy. In our daily zipping around, we can take things for granted.

We might not think twice about mushrooms, for example. And if we do, it’s more likely to be in a cream sauce than in a tincture. And we might just drop into Another Broken Egg Café whenever we feel like it and expect to get a table and order anything off the menu without considering the massive amount of organization that’s going on behind the scenes to keep the doors open and the lights on.

Oscar Tickle sits in for Stephanie Riegel on this episode of Out to Lunch, recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Creators and storytellers across the nation are meeting that growing need by making new and interesting physical content of their own. Christopher Payne is doing just that with his publication Fine Print.

Christopher grew up in a small town in California named Cherry Valley near the Mojave Desert. While living there, he honed his skills as an artist, producing art that focuses on what he describes as, “nature viewed through a distorted lens”.

After finding artistic success in exhibits, on magazine covers, and having artworks placed in movies and TV shows - and after living in LA and Austin - a new job search led Christopher to Baton Rouge four years ago. Now he  leads his Fine Print team across the nation from here in the capital city.

It goes without saying that the news has had one foot out the door of the physical medium for years now. This has caused magazines, newspapers and newsletters to have to make moves to stay alive. One of the main things you’ll see them doing is establishing a strong internet presence to make sure their readers can get their news anywhere and everywhere. Ivory Payne is no stranger to this evolution. Ivory is a graphic artist and the publisher of the Baton Rouge Weekly Press, a paper that started life 47 years ago and today has a significant internet presence - though Ivory still prints physical issues for those traditionalists who want it. 

Ivory says the paper has a circulation of around 60,000, which, per capita, makes it one of the most well-read local papers in the country.

Ivory was born and raised here in Baton Rouge but spent much of his working career in Ohio. He came back home in 2016. Back here he wears many hats, including President of the Louisiana Black Publishers and Media Association, assistant pastor at the Greater New Birth Full Gospel Fellowship, and publisher of a bi-annual coffee table book about African American leaders who make a positive impact in their communities, called Leaders Publications.

It’s clear to see that these two Paynes don’t just share the same name, they’re two sides of the same coin. On the heads side of the Payne coin, Ivory is keeping the public informed through one publication and highlighting innovators with another. On the tails side, Christopher is using his skills and talent to lift up others' work as well. 

Ivory and Christopher are both very passionate about what they do and that’s important: If it weren’t for organizations like theirs, physical mediums would surely phase out of existence.

Oscar Tickle sits in for Stephanie Riegel on this episode of Out to Lunch, recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We never know where life might take us. Something small that happens to us, or that we witness as children, may change the course of our lives. Andy Barth grew up in Baton Rouge and was in and out of the hospital. After his mom suffered a stroke, he watched her experience with rehabilitation and therapy. 

Andy also spent time in the hospital due to several knee injuries that led to surgery and physical therapy. Seeing how the physical therapists conducted themselves and how they interacted with their clients, Andy saw a future for himself doing that same thing.  Now, he’s been a physical therapist for 21 years and has become an innovator in the field with his company, Gold Standard Therapy Solutions.

Gold Standard Therapy Solutions is a therapist owned and operated referral agency that connects healthcare providers and healthcare agencies in Los Angeles. Here in Baton Rouge, Andy is developing a nationwide digital version of this service, called Care Connexion. 

There are two components to change: vision and courage. The vision to see how things could be done differently, and the courage to do them. Maybe it's because Andy lives and works between Baton Rouge and Los Angeles that gives him vision and fresh perspective. Whatever it is, he's inspiring others with his innovation.

Oscar Tickle sits in for Stephanie Riegel on this episode of Out to Lunch which was recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When we say "real estate" we're mostly talking about something more than just a transaction. "A man’s house is his castle," as the old saying goes, or maybe we should say a person’s house is their castle. But whatever, the adage speaks to something really meaningful about the value and significance we place on home ownership. It defines who we are. And for most people their home is their single most valuable asset. 

As recently as 2005, nearly 70% of Americans owned their own home. Today that figure is closer to 60%. And with the rising costs of homeownership, it is hard for many people to buy a house – especially their first house.

But there are plenty of people in the business of buying and selling houses and helping others do the same.  

Trey Willard is a realtor and owner of the W Group, a residential real estate brokerage firm based in Baton Rouge that Trey founded in 2020 and has grown in the years since to include more than 50 agents in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette. Trey is a native of Baton Rouge who got his start as a professional DJ and also worked as a server at a chain restaurant, where he honed valuable skills - like how to read a room and quickly build reslationships. Trey got into the real estate field in 2010, when he started out as an assistant to a local Keller Williams agent and realized he had found his calling. 

Mimi Doucet is a senior loan officer at GMFS Mortgage, a Baton Rouge-based residential mortgage lender with locations in over 12 states and more than 200 employees.

GMFS was founded in 1999. Today it's the largest residential brokerage in Louisiana and has helped more than 150 thousand people buy a home.

Mimi has been a mortgage broker for more than 30 years, getting her start in the early 1990s and working at several firms before joining GMFS in the early 2000s. She has been recognized by the industry as one of the top lenders in the state for the number of loans she has closed.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's the one the tourism marketing folks sell to visitors, centered on New Orleans on one side of Baton Rouge and Cajun Country on the other. And then there's the Louisiana that we live in, which is Baton Rouge. Maybe to tourist salespeople it looks like there's nothing very exciting going on here, but that is far from the truth. Baton Rouge is anything but a civil-service seat of government town like other state capitals.

Though we do have a decent number of people who work in government departments, we also have people who create a unique Louisiana culture that's a tapestry made up of all kinds of threads that are drawn together here. This tapestry is created by people like Stephanie's two lunch guests: Oscar Tickle and Kimberly Szuszka.

Oscar is a multimedia producer and content editor at Melara Enterprises, which publishes the Baton Rouge Business Report and 225 magazine, among other publications. And in his job there, Oscar gets to help tell some of those interesting Baton Rouge stories through videos and podcasts.  

Oscar joined the company in 2023, after graduating from the LSU Manship School of Mass Communications as a journalism major with a focus on environmental reporting. He also has made his own documentary – a fascinating 45-minute film about the Hunt for Louisiana’s Swamp Cows. 

Kimberly Szuszka is adding to the unique cultural tapestry in Baton Rouge with Okki Tokki, the city’s only Korean restaurant. Kimberly opened the  restaurant in 2024 in the heart of downtown and specializes in a casual, build-your-own bowls model, with a focus on exposing customers to the kinds of authentic Korean ingredients diners from around here may not be accustomed to seeing.  Kimberly grew up in Baton Rouge and opened the restaurant because she said she always wanted to have a Korean restaurant in her city and after graduating from LSU, decided to fill the void herself. She is also active in promoting Asian culture through organizations like the Asian Night market, which we talked about on this show previously. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fritz Embaugh, founder and CEO of Baton Rouge's Plus One Design and Construction, figured out nearly 20 years ago what he wanted his company to be.

Plus One provides turn-key services on commercial and residential projects – from architecture and design to planning to construction and project management. Among the firm’s varied portfolio are well known restaurant buildings – like Curbside Burgers and French Truck Coffee—churches, apartment complexes and renovations to the LSU Hilltop Arboretum.

Fritz is a licensed architect and general contractor, who started the firm in 2005, after more than a decade working with local architectural and construction companies. He is also a veteran of the Gulf War, where he served with the U.S. Marine Corps. 

Chloe Eick is founder of Chloe Eick Art and Appraisals, a Baton Rouge firm that provides appraisals of arts and antiques. Chloe is an artist herself, with talents in a variety of media. She founded the firm in 2023, after graduating from LSU and becoming a member of the International Society of Appraisers.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do we address this complex challenge? On this edition of Out to Lunch, Stephanie is visiting with two community-engaged local entrepreneurs, one focused on bringing people together, the other on helping them heal.

Sean Braswell is owner of Simple Joe Café, a mid-city diner that serves breakfast and lunch and has positioned itself since opening in 2015 as a community gathering spot. The kind of place where neighbors meet up for home-cooked meals or friends meet weekly for coffee, and just linger and visit in a warm friendly atmosphere.

Sean began his professional career in the military, serving in the Marines and the Navy simultaneously, later went into sales and mortgage brokering, then nursing. Neither was the right fit. Along the way, he worked as a waiter and eventually worked his way up to head staff trainer at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse here in Baton Rouge. And that’s when he realized that opening a restaurant might be the thing.

In the years since it’s opening, Simple Joe has regularly topped the lists of people’s choice awards, like Best of 225.

When he’s not busy at the restaurant, Sean believes in volunteering and giving back to the community he loves so much. 

Amanda Hargrove is Director and Chief Financial Officer of Hope Community Services, a mental health services agency that provides individual and family therapy, medication management, psychiatric support and treatment to children and adults.

Hope primarily serves people in East Baton Rouge parish, though in the years since Covid it has branched out to offer telehealth services as well, which has enabled it to reach a broader service area.

Amanda and her partner in Hope, Monica Parker, founded the agency in 2014. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In an era when traditional media, social media, and ever-present modes of telecommunications determine how these roles and personas are received and perceived, crafting images, honing messages, and telling stories around them has given rise to entire industries.

Stuart Feigley is president of Feigley Communications, a Baton Rouge strategic marketing agency that specializes in creating ad campaigns across a wide spectrum of industries, including healthcare, education and government. Stewart co-founded the firm in 2006, and in the years since, Feigley Communications has handled such high profile local cleints as LSU, the La Dept of Health, and the Baton Rouge Area Chamber among others.

Stuart is a native of Baton Rouge with 36 years experience in the field. After graduating from the LSU Manship School of Communications he went off to big national firms in Dallas and Ohio, where he worked for large corporate clients. He came home in 2006 to found Wright Feigley Communciations with the late Jeff Wright, rebranding the firm as Feigley Communications in 2016. 

While Stuart is helping clients on the figurative stage, Sarah Klocke is working with people on the real stage – as in theater. Sarah is Executive Director of Theatre Baton Rouge, which has been delighting audiences in Baton rouge since 1946 with dramas, comedies and beloved Broadway musicals.

You may remember we interviewed Sarah’s predecessor Jenny Ballard on this show a while back. Sarah took her place in October 2023, as the organization was struggling to recover from the pandemic and the financial challenges it wrought on performing arts organizations across the country.

Sarah came to Baton Rouge most recently from St Mary’s College in Omaha Nebraska, where she was the program director of theater and communications.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Camille founded her firm in 2005 and in the nearly two decades since has served over 700 clients, helping them draft business plans and pitch-decks to present to investors and lenders. All told, she estimates she has helped her clients raise more than $350 million.

Camille has an MBA, is based in New Orleans, and is one of the few firms specifically focused on doing business plans for small business. She counts among her clients some of our previous guests on this show, including: Falaya, Marex Services, Resource Environmental Solutions and Speedy Eats. 

If somebody went to Camille and told her they wanted to open a vegan restaurant in Zachary Louisiana, I don’t know what Camille would say but she might suggest that that doesn’t immediately look like a recipe for success, right? Maybe a poboy shop or a Bar B Q restaurant, but vegan. In Zachary?

Well, Neshia Rowe opened Golden Vegan restaurant in Zachary in 2022, after launching the concept from her home in 2021. Was it a success? Sure was! And still is. In fact it’s turned out to be such a success that Neshia has since opened two more Golden Vegan restaurants – one at LSU and the other at Southern University.

Neshia will be the first to admit that Zachary was an unlikely locale for her first restaurant. She says she founded it there because the area didn't have a lot of healthy food options and the concept behind her menu is to educate her customers about healthy eating, to help them gradually transition from a diet of fast food and fatty food to plant-based options that don’t deprive and taste great.

And, talking of great tasting food, Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Taken together, each one of these individual life-changing diagnoses forms a part of an overall cancer care industrial complex which adds to up to an annual $75 billion sector of the national economy. And, like every other business heading into the second quarter of the 21st Century, cancer treatment is changing and advancing with the implementation of technology that includes AI. 

In Baton Rouge, very few people are more familiar with the current state of cancer care than Sotirios Stathakis, Chief of Physics at Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, and a radiation oncology physicist with more than two decades of experience in this highly technical field.

Sotirios came to Mary Bird in 2023, and in his role there oversees the cancer center’s physics and dosimetry teams. He also is involved in implementing new AI technology at Mary Bird to help improve internal processes, with the goal of improving both outcomes and the patient experience.

Sotirios is a native of Greece who was educated in Canada and Scotland before returning to Greece to obtain his PhD in medical physics. Prior to his current perch in Baton Rouge, he served in a similar role at the University of Texas Health San Antonio Mays Cancer Center, an NCI-designated cancer center .  

While cancer care is one of the fastest growing segments of our healthcare economy, another rapidly expanding field is pet care, which is growing by 7% a year. In cold hard cash, over the past 12 months Americans spent even more on pet care than cancer care: a whopping $80 Billion.

According to numerous studies, we love our pets to the point where we'll sacrifice all sorts of other discretionary expenses to lavish our furry friends with whatever they need to be their best selves.

Locally, Lauren Swartley is a hands-on expert on the subject of pet care. Lauren is the founder and owner of Lend A Paw, a premium dog walking and pet sitting company that is bonded and Insured through Pet Sitter Associates, and Pet CPR & First Aid Certified through the American Red Cross. 

Lend A Paw is also the first and only Fear Free certified pet sitting company in Louisiana.

Lend a Paw provides in-home one-on-one care for pets, with specially curated visits and software, so you're able to view your pets in real time.  Lauren founded the business in 2018, after she adopted a heartworm positive Staffordshire terrier named Hayes and fell in love with him and the cause.

Despite advances in medical science and the onward drumbeat of AI, for reasons we probably don't totally understand, lavishing love on our pets reportedly improves our opwn health. In this win-win world Sitorios and Lauren have more in common than you might think at first glance.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez. at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the popular fields of app by numbers downloaded are apps that marry the worlds of music and tech. You've no doubt heard of Spotify and Pandora, but you are less likely to have heard of music industry apps Tipzy and Bloom.

Brandon Harris is founder and CEO of Bloom, a booking app that bills itself as an Airbnb for the music industry by centralizing the live event booking process. 

Users – principally performers and venues - communicate, schedule and organize upcoming events, negotiate payment terms, and execute transactions through the app. And they can use app to discover each other.

Brandon also has another tech company,  Hareseca, that is focused on serving the space industry, specifically NASA, with software and AI products.

Brandon is a native of Baton Rouge with a passion for space exploration and music; seemingly diverse interests that inspire his tech driven initiatives. 

Tenley Gorman is cofounder and Chief Operating Officer of Tipzy, a Baton Rouge startup that also operates at the intersection of music and tech.

Tipzy uses AI to curate the perfect playlist of background music to set the desired vibe for bars and nightclubs. It’s a niche service but an important one: music plays a key role in shaping a bar’s bottom line and patrons' overall satisfaction and Tipzy makes it easier for establishments to excel at both.

Tenley has firsthand experience in this area: she worked as a bartender and also has a background in mathematics and data science.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I would bet, probably never.

Every day it seems like we’re swamped with more spam. And when we do actually rely on email for something important, well, you know how that goes. You send someone an email and ask them three questions. They reply to one. You reply with a comment about their reply and re-ask your other two questions. They reply with a comment on a whole other subject and before you know it you’ve got a long list of back and forward messages you’re scrolling through looking for who said what, when.

It's just so totally inefficient.

Now, imagine that you’re an architect and you have to rely on this kind of communication with multiple contractors and sub-contractors to manage a construction project. This is what actually happens in the real world. It’s crazy. And that’s why Chuck Perret created a company called Centerline. Chuck says the goal of the company is, “to kill email.”

Centerline is cloud-based data management for architects that pulls all of their project-related information out of their inbox and puts it into what’s called a Project Information Model.

Chuck launched Centerline in 2021, began taking clients in 2022, saw 350% growth in 2023, and today the company has architectural firm clients across the country.

If  Centerline is a software solution that solves a problem for a specific industry, imagine a company that solves any kind of problem, by simplifying any kind of task with software solutions, for any industry. Oil and gas. Maritime. Healthcare. Even sports, and local government.

You might be thinking, “That sounds a bit ambitious.” Well, sometimes shooting for the stars works, because that’s what Kellen Francis’s company, Codegig, does.

One of Codegig’s major clients is Shell. Not a local Shell gas station, but 30 different departments of Shell Oil, including the entire Gulf Coast. They also work with another couple of companies you may have heard of: Dow Chemical and Valero.

Anyone who’s ever had a job has had "one of those days" at work. One of those days where whatever we’re doing is so tedious, or the opposite – so mind-bogglingly difficult – that you just stop in your tracks and think, “Theres’ got to be a better way.”

What happens after that, typically, is that we suck it up and get on with it. But every once in a while, guys like Chuck and Kellen come along and actually invent a better way.

Ann Edelman sits in for Stephanei Riegel on this edition of Out to Lunch which was recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stephanie's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch are are experts in this segment of healthcare.

Dr. Keta Patel is owner of the Excel Wellness Center in Baton Rouge, which focuses on holistic wellness and functional healing, and is particularly focused on helping women combat hormonal imbalances from hyperthyroidism, perimenopause and menopause, insulin resistance and autominnune conditions.

Keta is a chiropractor and also offers chiropractic care at her clinic, which she opened in 2015. She is also a nutritionist and has become well known on the speaker circuit, where she talks about the relationship between holistic wellness and hormones and her approach to helping patients - especially women - feel better so they can be their best.

Dr. Alvin Jaufre is an equine chiropractor - which means he works on horses. If you didn't know horses needed chiropractors, you’re not alone! Actually, though, it’s a busy and growing field that Alvin has been involved in since 2014, when he opened Lagniappe Animal Chiro.  

Alvin grew up in south Louisiana and is one of just nine nationally certified veternirary chiropractors in the state of Louisiana.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show  by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Despite billions in federal funding and policies intended to help, the need continues to grow.

On this episode of Out to Lunch, Stephanie talks with two local entrepreneurs who are taking matters into their own hands to fill the void and make things better.

Wendy Green Daniels is President and CEO of Beechwood Residential, a Baton Rouge-based real estate development and consulting firm that specializes in multifamiy affordable housing. Wendy founded the firm in 2012, with a mission to enhance the lives of residents and revitalize communities through the creation of high-quality, socially impactful housing.

Before venturing out on her own, Wendy, who grew up in Baton Rouge, spent more than a decade learning the ropes from other successful nonprofits, including Mercy Housing and Columbia Residential in Atlanta. Over the years she has overseen the development of more than 4,500 mixed-income housing units.

Sandrine Nkouga is the founder and CEO of the El Shaddai Family Clinic, a new primary care clinic in Prairieville that specializes in family medicine and also treats patients for behavioral health issues, weight management and chronic disease.

Sandrine is a native of Cameroon, Africa, who came to the US as a young child and grew up in Virginia. She received her doctorate in nursing from Touro University in Nevada, and after moving here with her family for her husband's career, opened her Louisiana clinic in 2023 to help address the demand for more primary care providers and to make it easier for uninsured or underinsured patients to receive quality care.

Wendy and Sandrine's businesses are both great examples of a recent trend in business, a kind of for-profit activism. These types of businesses combine entrepreneurship and social activism, harnessing the power of the capitalist economy for the good of all of the community, not just the wealthy, powerful, or fortunate. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard.

You can find photos form this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine how that changed the world. Not only the way we see and hear ourselves and others, but the way we think about reality. In the nearly two centuries since, technology has created unlimited creative opportunities for people in the audio and visual fields and given rise to some exciting new possibilities.

On the forefront of changes in the audio world for the past couple of momentous decades, Bill Kelley has been a Recording Engineer at the LSU school of Music and Dramatic Arts, a century old school on the LSU campus with more than 400 students and two dozen majors.

Bill produces 300 or so recitals a year for students and faculty, and supports them with their various creative projects. Bill also has several creative projects of his own: he's a musician and has also created an audio production tool, The Rhythm Tickler, that makes it easier to build digital loops that musicians can use to create new compositions.  

On the visual side of the ledger, Kristen Soileau Freeman is a Baton Rouge-based wedding and lifestyle photographer with an approach that is at once spontaneous and organic on one hand and artful, and studied and beautiful on the other.

Kristen hung out her shingle, Kristen Soileau Photography, in 2010, while she was still a student at LSU, where she majored in fine arts. In the years since, she has grown her business into one of the city’s most in-demand wedding photographers, which is no small thing in an era when brides must have the Insta-perfect photo from the moment of the proposal til end of the wedding reception – and everything in between. Kristen is a native of Lake Charles, who came to Baton Rouge in 2009 to attend LSU.

Both Bill and Kristen are great examples of the wisdom of the piece of advice often directed at people looking for career guidance: "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." They've both turned creative passions into careers that enable them to capture the beautiful sights and sounds of the world around us. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Baton Rouge author Susie Shepherd is working to change those statistics. She is a children’s book author, with eight titles to her name, who volunteers her time promoting reading and literacy among children.

Susie is a retired teacher from Baker with more than two decades’ experience working in special education and also has a masters in autism spectrum disorders, so is particularly keyed into the needs so many young learners have.

In addition to her children’s books, Susie also has published a collection of poems. 

Literacy is just one of our many challenges in Louisiana, and while Susie is focused on helping young people learn how to be better readers, Yolanda Robertson - better known as Yogi Rob - is focused on helping them lead healthier more well-balanced lives, because Louisiana is not exactly the healthiest state in which to live.

Yogi Rob is the founder and creator of an online platform, called variously The Yonk or OrganicMePlease, dedicated to helping customers on a journey to self-healing and well-being through a wide range of services and resources to support holistic healing, including homemade organic skincare products and holistic healing advice.  

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Venues, food, liquor, music, gowns, flowers, cake, photographer – and that’s not counting bachelor and bachelorette parties or what’s involved if the big day is a destination wedding in another state or country.

Call it the wedding industrial complex. Or call it good fun. Either way, local entrepreneurs know all about it and are capitalizing on the opportunities to meet ever-growing demands of couples who want more than a courthouse ceremony.

Ramsey Roberts Sims is one of Baton Rouge's wedding authorities who knows as much about brides (and probably grooms) as anyone in Louisiana. Ramsey is owner of I Do Bridal Couture, a boutique that specializes in designer bridal gowns at its two locations in Baton Rouge and Covington. Ramsey started the business in 2012, a few years after shopping for her own bridal gown and becoming frustrated with the lack of high-end inventory and personal service.

I Do Bridal Couture bills itself on offering that type of exclusive inventory and personal customer service. In recent years, Ramsey, along with her husband, has also started an online children’s boutique with her husband, somehow juggling both businesses with their three young children. Ramsey, thanks so much for joining m eon out to lunch.   

Once you've decided to get married, you need a place to hold the ceremony and celebration. Mary Skinner is CEO of Oak Park Events, a local events firm with two venues – Oak Lodge in Baton Rouge and Parc 73 in Prairieville, which specialize in wedding receptions, and also play host to a variety of other special events, parties, and gatherings.

Oak Park Events was founded by Mary’s parents and she worked with them as manager from 2009-2012, back when there was just one venue, Oak Lodge. Mary helped oversee the design, construction and eventual expansion of Parc 73 then she left the business to spend several years in commercial real estate, which is what she was trained in, rejoining in 2016 as CEO. Her parents recently retired so now Mary is running the company.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the millennia our tastes have changed but not our love of meat. These days consumers - who spent more than $122B in 2023 on meat - are seeking out high quality, artisanal, organic and sustainable meats. Which is good news for local entrepreneurs cashing in on the craze.  

Ross Brown's company, Bougie Bologna, specializes in making an all natural bologna using smoked pork shoulder – and if like a lot of Ross’s customers you grew up thinking of bologna as a luncheon meat from Oscar Mayer think again. Ross describes his meat product as Cajun smoked sausage in sandwich form.

Ross founded the company in 2022, after nearly two decades in the oil business, because he believed in the product and wanted to be his own boss. Bougie Bologna has proven to be a hit. There are currently three varieties sold in grocery stores from Lafayette to New Orleans, including a deal with Rouses Supermarkets that will put the products in 70 locations across south Louisiana.

Ross, aka The Bougie Man, is a native of Lafayette, who is still getting used to running a demanding business that is growing faster than he could have imagined. 

Derek Stuart is co-owner of The Meatatory, as in meat and laboratory, a craft butcher in Prairieville that specializes in craft burgers and sausage recipes, high end Wagyu and specialty beef cuts, as well as local staples like Boudin balls and barbecue.

Derek and his wife, Laura, opened the Meatatory in 2022. It is both a retail storefront and a catering business with a menu that includes charcuterie boards, sides and desserts.

Like Ross, Derek grew up in south Louisiana, Ascension Parish, specifically, and developed a  passion for food and cooking meat early on. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’re like most people, you keep scrolling. Or, maybe you read the article, shake your head at the dire situation, but shrug it off because, well, what can you do? 

The reason you can afford to take a laissez faire attitude toward our disappearing coastline and wetlands, is because there are people who don’t. There are people working every day, here in Baton Rouge, to preserve our piece of Planet Earth.

Darius Bonton is the founder, owner and principal of Bonton Associates.

Bonton Associates are an engineering company focused on designing and implementing infrastructure and transportation systems that allows us to build what needs to be built, and get where we need to go, without destroying the environment in the process.

To the contrary, Bonton is all about delivering solutions to water and transportation issues that do more than just comply with environmental regulations, they actually improve our existing way of life.

If you’re looking for an organization whose name doesn’t pull any punches, how about the Coalition To Restore Coastal Louisiana.

“The Coalition” the title refers to is a wide range of organizations and people who partner to do an even wider range of activities to save our coast - from planting grasses in marshlands to giving expert advice to local, state and federal organizations.

The Coalition is Louisiana’s first statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to coastal restoration. They started out in 1988, and since March 2024 Ethan Melancon has been their Advocacy Director.

In 1789 the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published a poem called The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. You might not be familiar with the poem, but you probably know a line or two from it. Namely, “water water everywhere / Nor any drop to drink.”

The poem is about a sailor stranded at sea, ironically, dying from dehydration while being surrounded by water. The theme of the poem is nature’s indifference to human suffering.

Whether or not nature is indifferent to us, we humans continue to do our best to adapt to the elements, and even downright defy them.

We owe our very existence in Southeast, and Southwest, Louisiana to past generations’ willingness to drain swamps, build levees, and bounce back from hurricanes.

In our current generations, it’s the work of companies like Bonton Associates and organizations like Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana who are continuing to organize, design and execute strategies for containing the power of nature that allow us to remain here, and hopefully will for generations to come.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. Jim Engster sits in as host for Stephanie Riegel. More info about Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Baton Rouge isn’t particularly known as a high brow kinda place as far as the arts are concerned but there are plenty of hidden gems, and you don’t have to scratch the surface hard to find outlets and venues that are showcasing the best of the musical, visual and performing arts.

Jason Langlois is Executive Director of the Manship Theater, which opened in 2005 on the ground floor of the Shaw Center for the Arts. The building was transformative for downtown Baton Rouge and the theater was its anchor tenant, bringing new cultural offerings to the heart of the city that include musical performances, dance, poetry, plays and movie nights. 

Jason grew up in Austin and New Orleans and has lived in Baton Rouge since 2001 when he was a student in the EJ Ourso college of business. He has been at the Manship since 2009, started their Films at Manship program and more recently the standup comic series.

Over the years Jason has helped grow the theater and put it on more stable financial footing, bringing in new audiences with ever more offerings. 

Raudol Palacios is Artistic Director and cello and ensemble teacher at Palacios House of Arts, a local family run nonprofit that offers lessons in the musical, visual and performing arts to people of all ages – and regardless of their ability to pay.

Raudol and his parents, Gloria Ruiz and Manuel Palacios, started the Palacios House of Arts in 2018, as a way to bring their love of music and arts to the community. The family is originally from Cuba and in 2015 the family moved to Baton Rouge, when Raudol was studying music at LSU. Today, he is a professional musician and also helps run the school with his parents, teaching classes, organizing events and programs and other cultural activities that engage community participation.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. YOu can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lexlee Overton is a Baton Rouge attorney who has found a way to help her colleagues be better, perform better for their clients and feel happier in their profession. Lexlee is a seasoned lawyer, executive leadership expert and peak performance specialist. And melding all this together, Lexlee has created a coaching method, for lack of a better term, that she calls Mind Over Law.

Mind Over Law offers team building workshops, one-on-one counseling and training sessions, coaches legal teams, and leads a national leadership program for women.

Lexlee developed this method after spending more than two decades in the legal profession and experiencing the kind of burnout she now tries to help her clients overcome. 

While Lexlee is coaching lawyers, Lauren Temple is coaching people on how to maximize their fitness and physical performance – which brings mental well-being along with it – through her two boutique fitness clubs.

Lauren's two fitness clubs, which are both on Perkins, are called Tone BR. The two clubs are a merger of what used to be Tread BR and Pilates Plus.

Lauren is a native of Baton Rouge and single mom, raising two daughters, who experienced a terrible injury and had to learn how to walk again. After overcoming those challenges, Lauren was determined to run her own fitness studios. In the years since, she has grown the clubs into successful and growing businesses  in a market that is notoriously competitive for gyms and fitness club operators. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bread

Steven Gottfried is owner of the St. Bruno Bread Company, a commercial artisan bread bakery in Baton Rouge that delivers fresh bread daily to local restaurants and more than a dozen grocery stores.

St Bruno is a wholesaler and doesn’t have a storefront. And that's intentional, in furtherance of Stephen’s mission to raise the standard of daily bread and elevate the experience of eating everyday foods.

Steven is a native of Baton Rouge who learned the craft from chef Gary Darling in Covington before spending several years honing his skills first in San Francisco and then at Bellgarde Bakery in New Orleans. He went out on his own in 2017, originally in New Orleans, but the COVID pandemic changed those plans, and since late 2021, St. Bruno has been based in Baton Rouge.

The upside of Covid is that we in Baton Rouge can now get a variety of St Bruno breads including sourdough, French baguette and po-boy loafs. 

And now, the Circus!

Laura Siu Nguyen is an event planner and communications professional who is also the founder of Night Market BTR, a new annual event that celebrates Asian American history in the style of a Lunar New Year festival.

Laura created Nigh Market BTR to celebrate culture, community and creativity in Baton Rouge and brings people of Asian American heritage together. Laura is a native of Honduras, who came to Baton Rouge more than 15 years ago to attend graduate school and never left. In the years since, she has been involved in helping launch and promote a variety of events and activities – including her own. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show on itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Safety

John Cambre is president of ResponsAble Safety Staffing, a Baton Rouge Company that  provides trained safety staff on a contract, temporary or permanent basis to clients in the oil and gas, construction and general industrial sectors.

The company was founded by John’s father, Darryl Cambre originally as a safety consulting company in 2007. John, then fresh out of college, joined the firm and quickly realized that the greatest need their clients had was to find qualified employees in the safety field so he built out their expertise and changed the company’s brand in 2010.

In the years since, he has grown ResponsAble Safety Solutions into a national company with clients across the country. 

Skills

While safety is important in an organization so is performance, especially if you’re talking about a team or competitive organization. But a lot of people get caught up in the pressure of performing, or may not be maximizing their potential, which is where Aaron Pearson came in.

Aaron is the owner of iDeveloped Skills Academy, a training program that that works with athletes to help them identify areas where they can improve and develop their skills and potential. Aaron founded the company in 2010 and has since developed several spinoff ventures -- Elite by ECW, an athletic clothing brand that makes custom-jerseys for local sports teams; and, EazyTicks, a digital ticketing and operating platform for area schools. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's strange now to think back on those weeks; how we adapted and coped, and what we learned about ourselves, our businesses and institutions and our communities. It was difficult and stressful, tragic for many, exciting for others, and creative entrepreneur’s took advantage of the opportunity to rethink the way we do things and find new ways of bringing people together and creating community

Jenn Ocken, a Baton Rouge photographer, business consultant, podcast host and writer, made a name for herself in a big way during the pandemic with her Front Porch Photos—portraits she took of families and couples and people with their pets on their front porches at a time when we were all living on our porches and in our yards.

The Front Porch Photos, shared widely on social media, helped unite the community and reminded us that we were all sharing the moment together.

Outside of photography, Jenn’s career has been thriving with workshops and consulting that helps clients live a more empowered, fulfilled, harmonious life. Her latest tool is called ThrivFOCUS- - an innovative journal that integrates goal setting, self reflection and organization. 

Sherin Dawud co-founded and co-owns the Nura Company, a local firm that specializes in consulting, marketing and event-planning with a focus on helping nonprofits and mission-driven clients in healthcare, education, advocacy and entertainment that want to make the community a better place to live, work and play. 

Sherin co-founded and co-owns the firm with Raina Vallot. Like Jenn, Raina and Sherin were inspired by the events of the pandemic to create the firm. Companies were looking for new ways to connect with people. They saw it as an opportunity to reimagine impact through marketing.  In the years since, they have worked with such clients as the Baton Rouge Youth Voice Initiative, the Baton Rouge Alliance for students, the National Fried Chicken Festival, which is held in New Orleans each fall, and Peace Over Everything.

Sherin originally teamed up with Raina to co-found Power Pump Girls in 2017, a social impact club whose mission is to empower women to connect and serve.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this edition of Out to Lunch, Jim Engster sits in for Stephanie and is joined by two lunch guests who both head up institutions in Baton Rouge’s growing Health District. Beyond providing reactive medical care to these already existing health issues, John Kirwan, Rene Ragas and their respective institutions are focused on what causes these diseases in the first place and how to proactively keep our population healthier long term.  

John Kirwan is Executive Director of Pennington Biomedical Research Center here in Baton Rouge, which is renowned the world over for its focus on diabetes and obesity.

John himself is internationally renowned as an expert in diabetes and nutrition science with more than 30 years of research and teaching and a specialty in type 2 diabetes and how to potenitally cure it.

John came to the center in 2018 from the famed Cleveland Clinic, and in the years since has generated more than $50M in research funding and spearheaded the opening of Pennington’s obesity treatment center.

John was a guest on Out to Lunch  back in the pandemic era, when we were meeting on zoom. A lot has happened since then and it is great to see John in person. 

Rene Ragas is President and CEO of Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, the largest birthing hospital in the state. Since opening in 1968, Woman’s has delivered nearly 400,000 babies and is reocngized for its Level 3 neonatal intensive care unit, expertise in mammography and breast and cancer care.

What’s perhaps less well known is the hospital’s research capabilities, especially in cervical cancer, where Woman’s has been a pioneer since the implementation of pap screening test used to detect this type of cancer.

Rene joined the hospital in 2022. He has more than two decades of experience as a healthcare executive, most recently as north shore market president for the FMOL health system.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. During the recording of this show the power went out in parts of Baton Rouge but the medics and Jim soldiered on! You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Clothes and accessories are fun, fanciful and define who we are. Baton Rouge entrepreneurs are building successful businesses that capitalize on our desire to define ourselves by what we put on our bodies and atop our heads.

Karla Coreil, co-owner of Chapeaux, a Baton Rouge based millinery business that combines 19th-century British quality and tradition with South Louisiana style and flair.

Karla and her partner in Chapeaux, Jenn Loftin, opened the business in 2022 and custom make creative head pieces for high end occasions like the Kentucky Derby and down home celebrations like the St Patricks Day Parade.

Chapeaux also hosts private parties, which they call Chapeaux Party, at which guests can make their own festive hats and head pieces.

Karla is an attorney. Jenn has a Ph.D in education and works in educational publishing. When they started the business they said they were worried about how to spread the word. Turns out, Chapeaux caught on so fast their problem now is keeping up with demand.

Joey Redditt is founder and owner of Jo Design Studio, a Baton Rouge couturier that makes custom clothing for men, women and children, with a particular focus on  special occasion dresses.

Joey has been designing clothes since 2010, when he was gifted a sewing machine. At the time, he had his own successful teeshirt company, Grab it Rabbit. After that business took off, he decided to try his hand at designing clothes. Today he has 35 thousand followers on Instagram, his own studio and a growing number of customers.

Joey works fast and Jo Design Studio offers to make bespoke creations -- sometimes in just a few hours. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this edition of Out to Lunch, two lunch guests who are helping break through the clutter, with products and services that are enabling our tech systems to work for us more effectively - and helping businesses better communicate their messaging.

John Morello, is Chief Technology Officer of Gutsy, a tech firm that has come up with a better way to help companies protect themselves against cyberthreat. More specifically, Gutsy uses process mining – and we’ll get into that in a minute – to ensure that the various cybersecurity systems a complex organization has in place are talking to one another and doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

If John’s name is familiar to you, it may be because he was a guest on Out to Lunch in 2019, when he was running Twistlock, a tech firm that developed cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. In the years since then, John and his partners in Twistlock have grown that company, attracted new investors, and created the spinoff, Gutsy, to address a need they identified running Twistolock.

John is a 14-year veteran of Microsoft, who lives in Baton Rouge and is also a master diver and very active in coastal conservation. 

Kenny Nguyen is founder and CEO of ThreeSixtyEight, a Baton Rouge-based creative and strategic media agency that focuses on branding, marketing and advertising with a high tech, high energy super creative approach. The company’s origins date back to 2011, when Kenny and his friend were still students at LSU and started Big Fish Presentations, which specialized in public speaking and presentation services. In 2016, it merged with another local firm to form ThreeSixtyEight. In the years since, it has grown to include clients that include Alfa, Tomb Raider, and Compass Datacenters. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Within this growing and rapidly changing sector, nurses play an outsized role. They comprise the largest component of the healthcare workforce, they're the primary providers of hospital patient care and they deliver most of the nation’s longterm care. They’re also helping to lead the charge in new ways of delivering care, creating companies right here in Baton Rouge that are reinventing the way nursing is done.

Renita Williams Thomas is a pediatric nurse specialist and the owner and CEO of In Loving Arms Pediatric Day Health Center, an outpatient center for children with medically complex needs such as congenital heart disease, traecheotomy, seizure, and genetic and neurological disorders, among others.

The center combines skilled nursing, education and therapy and enables children with chronic conditions to interact with other kids their age who may also be going through similar health challenges. Renita founded the center in 2012 after spending more than two decades in the field with the Southern University School of Nursing - where she earned her bachelors and master’s degrees in nursing - Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, the Louisiana State Department of Health and the Lousiaina School for the Visually Impaired. 

Blasia Rivet is a Registered nurse and the founder and owner of Decision Critical, a concierge nursing agency that offers in home and mobile private duty nursing services in the Baton Rouge region. Services are tailored to fit patient and caretaker needs and include acute and chronic conditions, elderly care support, post op recovery, and more.

Blasia founded Decision Critical in 2014 to fill the need she saw in the community for a higher level of personalized care than one can get beyond the doctor’s office. Blasia is a native of Baton Rouge and a graduate of southeastern Louisiana university school of nursing. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Baton Rouge - which likes to call itself "a big small town" -  has several homegrown brands that have been in business for generations. In the years since Katrina we've also welcomed a number of well known retailers from downriver in New Orleans.

One of them is Perlis, a family-owned apparel retailer has been a fixture in New Orleans since 1939 that has dressed generations of Uptown gentlemen and, in more recent decades, women, in what the company calls Southern Style.

In 2009 the Perlis family opened its first Baton Rouge location on Jefferson Highway. Bobby Berthelot has been the store's manager since 2013.

A native of New Orleans, Bobby majored in business and after graduating learned about the ropes of merchandising, retail and made-to-order menswear at the venerable Rubenstein’s on Canal Street in New Orleans then Brook’s Brothers before becoming GM at Perlis in Baton Rouge. 

Lauren LeBlanc Haydel is the founder and owner of Fleurty Girl, another well known south Louisiana brand that hasn’t been around as long as Perlis but is taking the region by storm.

Lauren founded the company in 2009 when she was a single mother of three and decided to risk it all creating t-shirts for women that celebrated New Orleans. Today, there are nine FLeurty Girls, including a location in Baton Rouge that opened in the summer of 2023, and Fleurty Girl ships its south Louisiana-inspired merchandise – including t-shirts, gifts, door hangers, gifts for the home and an amazing array of sparkly Mardi Gras stuff – all over the world. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. Photos by Brian Newton.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our appearance used to be a kind of genetic lottery. Not so much any more. Today you can get your hair, eyes, nose, lips, breasts, tummy, and butt lifted, sculpted, enhanced, reduced or reshaped to more closely resemble how you’d prefer to look.

Signs of aging we euphemistically call “laugh lines” and “crow’s feet” can be smoothed away so your selfie looks as youthful as everybody else’s on Instagram. Without a filter!

This kind of physical enhancement used to be the province of Hollywood stars and the wealthy citizens of Manhattan and Beverly Hills. Today we have access to these treatments in Baton Rouge.

One of the places you can take this journey here is Ford Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Dr Ann Ford Reilley has been practicing medicine for 30 years and was the first woman in Louisiana to be certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Dr Reilley’s daughter, Dr Kate Chiasson, has gone one better than her mom: Dr Chiasson is double board certified, by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Plastic Surgery.

Mother and daughter plastic surgeons are partners at Ford Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

There are others forms of body modification we use to enhance our appearance. One of the most ancient - and currently most popular - is tattooing.

We have archaeological evidence of humans with tattoos as far back as 5,000 BC.

In the early 20th Century, tattoos came to be associated with outlaws and sailors.

Somewhere along the line that changed. Today, tattoos are regarded as pieces of art, acceptable in all walks of life and they show up everywhere - from the bedroom to the boardroom.

Daniel Esen has been a tattoo artist since 2008, and he’s been inking skin in Baton Rouge for over a decade at his own shop, Black Torch Tattoo.

Back in the 1970’s, a hairdresser turned entrepreneur by the name of Vidal Sassoon marketed his salons and beauty products with the slogan, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”

Sassoon was talking about something as impermanent as a haircut. For Ann, Kate, and Daniel, his slogan applies in a far more consequential form. After they leave their shop or your clinic, their patients and clients are changed forever. Tattoos and cosmetic surgery are permanent.

What Ann, Kate and Daniel are doing every day requires skill, talent, confidence and courage. They’re working in professions in which there is literally no room for error. This conversation is a fascinating insight into what it’s like having that kind of responsibility.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Stephanie's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch Baton Rouge are are two of those small business owners and have unique insights into what it’s like doing business in the heart of always-evolving downtown Baton Rouge 

Saskia Spanhoff co-owns Cocha Restaurant on Sixth Street downtown with her husband, Enrique Pinerua. The couple opened the restaurant in 2016 with a focus on locally sourced, sustainable, non GMO foods with a Southern menu that draws on the region’s Spanish, French African, and Caribbean influences. In the years since, it has grown into one of downtown’s most popular gathering spots.

Saskia is a native of Baton Rouge and LSU graduate with over 25 years of experience in the restaurant and wine industries. She has worked at restaurants around the country. 

Scott Hodgin is owner and Managing Partner of TILT, a local firm, also based downtown, that specializes in branding, marketing and packaging design for a variety of local products that may be sitting on the shelf in your pantry, including Camellia Beans, Blue Plate mayonnaise, Faubourg Brewing beer, and Big Easy Kombucha. Scott co-founded the firm in 2005 after spending several years learning the ropes at other firms. 

It's probably no exaggeration to say that every person in the US over 5 years old knows what Coca Cola is and what Walmart is. Assumedly, having achieved 100% market penetration these companies can now quit advertising. However, we see Walmart and Coca Cola marketing everywhere, from YouTube to highway billboards. Why? Because, as we learn in this conversation, it's one thing to have a popular business like a downtown restaurant but it's a whole other thing to keep the branding as fresh as the food.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la. 

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Will Bradshaw and Daniela Rivero Bryant don’t think so. They’ve found a way to make real estate development not only accessible but beneficial to the communities in which it takes place. Will and Daniela are the co-founders of Reimagine Development Partners, a company that does property development and is reimaginging what that looks like.

Like other developers, Reimagine takes advantage of the Federal Historic Tax Program. But, unlike other developers, Reimagine replaces the lender – normally an institution like a bank - with a crowdfunding model. In this way, members of the local community chip in five to ten thousand dollars and become investors in the kind of property development deal normally reserved for financial institutions or wealthy investors.

So, regular folks get access to the kind of potential profit, and the immediate real-world tax advantages, normally only available to property developers.

Will and Daniela started the firm in 2022. He is a career real estate developer and part time professor at Tulane, where he was a founding member of the university’s sustainable real estate development program. Prior to launching Reimagine, Will founded Green Coast Enterprises, a triple bottom line company, which means it is focused on people, prosperity and the planet.

Daniela is an expert in urban disaster resilience and community development. Prior to launching Reimagine, she spent 15 years supporting the post-Katrina housing recovering in New Orleans and assisting local government in Latin America with resilience and recovery poverty creation.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On The Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Dawn Brown is Water Services Director at Matrix New World Engineering, a New Jersey based engineering firm specifically focused on environmental and climate related challenges, as well as resilience and sustainability projects.

These are terms we hear a lot in Louisiana and, based here in Baton Rouge, Dawn makes sense of what they actually mean for us.

Matrix was founded in 1990 and opened its Baton Rouge office in 2015. Dawn is an environmental professional who focuses on project management and development with a particular focus is waste permitting and landfills.

A native of Baton Rouge, Dawn was a high school biology teacher before switching careers, and while Dawn now deals with environmental issues, Rebecca Gardner is doing her own part to change the world, helping migrants and disadvantaged women around the globe through Hands Producing Hope, a non profit she founded in 2014.

Hands Producing Hope sells ethically sourced products made by migrant women and women from disadvantaged countries through a retail shop on Government Street in Baton Rouge and through its website and satellite locations. The organization partners with communities through artisan training programs, maternal health education, life skills classes, adult literacy education, business mentoring and more. It's an extraordinary operation.

Rebecca is a native of Baton Rouge who founded Hands Producing Hope because of her passion for helping disadvantaged families and her desire to see long-term sustainable change in impoverished communities.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Stephen Loy is Executive Director of Nexus Louisiana, parent company of the Louisiana Tech Park, which is located in the old Bon Marche shopping center on Florida Boulevard. The tech park was created more than 20 years ago to drive economic development and job creation by providing tech startups with resources to bring their products and services to market faster and more effectively.

Stephen has been executive director of the tech park since 2011 and has been with the organization since 2004, when he was hired as their Director of Communications. Today he oversees day to day operations, develops strategies to attract early stage companies, and manages one of Nexus' signature programs : Tech Park Academy. 

While Nexus Louisiana is growing the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Jency Hogan is helping to grow the local cultural economy through the drama school she and her husband, Aaron Hogan, founded and run. It’s called Love Acting and it’s specifically focuses on teaching film acting, as opposed to stage acting. The Hogans are both professional actors, who founded the school on returning to Jency’s native Baton Rouge after eight years in Los Angeles. Jency has produced short films, co-directed a western epic, was on the producer team of a biopic directed by Ethan Hawke, and is currently a recurring character named Vera Minder on the TNT hit Claws.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Analise Gonzalez  at itsbatonrouge.la.

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As this brave new world of online shopping continues to evolve, we’re seeing an ever-growing and fascinating landscape of entrepreneurs who are using pieces and parts of the new technology, mixing the old with the new, the virtual with the real, and coming up with new iterations of retail.

Nathan Pearce is CEO of Pearce Bespoke, a Baton Rouge clothier that is making custom tailoring more accessible, affordable, and easy, by using some of the digital  tools that have made e-commerce so popular to create old-fashion, handmade garments.

Pearce Bespoke offers tailor-made suits and separates through a mobile shop. They come to you, get your measurements, and whip up a designer piece of clothing for you in just a few weeks.

Nathan has been in the clothing business for much of his career. He launched a custom T-shirt making business while fresh out of college and founded Pearce Bespoke in 2021, which now has brick and mortar locations in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette. He is also franchising the brand and has more than 50 locations across the south. 

If you listen to radio shows and podcasts about business, you’ve probably heard entrepreneurs talk about the success of their business, describing almost gleefully how they initially failed before they made it.

Well, failure isn’t always as much fun as these success stories make it sound. Not every failure is followed by success. Sometimes it’s followed by a career change.

Take, for example, Conrad Freeman. Today Conrad runs the fabrication lab in the LSU College of Art and Design. It’s a lab where faculty and students can design and build stuff using a variety of materials.

Before that, in 2020, Conrad founded Freeman Handcrafted designs, which made contemporary furniture by hand for commercial and residential customers. While Conrad’s furniture was beautiful, the market for his high-end products was very small in Baton Rouge and running the business was challenging, which is why he left just two years after founding the company for the position at LSU.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from thois show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.

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For past generations – your parents or grandparents - charting a life course seemed to be a lot simpler. Especially for a woman. You graduated from high school, you got married to your high school sweetheart or a guy you met in college, and everybody lived happily ever after.

Then we hit the 1970’s, and 50% of marriages ended in divorce.

Today in the United States, people are waiting longer to get married. Or opting not to tie the knot at all. Since 1973, marriage rates in the US have declined nearly 60%.

Other statistics tell us that people are finding it harder to make meaningful connections. More young people than ever report feeling alone, disconnected, and clinically depressed.  

And all this comes at a time when a staggering array of apps and online dating sites are promising to pair people up for everything from one-night stands, to casual relationships to forever partnerships.

What’s not working? And how do we fix it?

We could look forward, to the next generation of technology and ask AI to find us love and happiness. Or we could look back. And rather than having to check a box that says, “I’m not a robot,” how about sitting down face to face with an actual human being who is a dating specialist?

Yes, there is such a job. It’s called a Matchmaker. Admittedly there aren’t many of them. Ann Parnes is one of the very few.

Ann Parnes is founder of Match Made in NOLA, a traditional matchmaking service that is, as its name implies, based in New Orleans but has expanded to Baton Rouge and does business like a real old-fashioned matchmaker – by carefully curating potential partners and introducing them to one another.

Ann began her career as an attorney and spent several years prosecuting criminals, until 2014, when she felt a calling taking her in a different direction and became a certified life coach.

From there she began to sense what she says was a real calling and a recognition that she had a gift for bringing people together, so in 2017 she opened Match Made in NOLA. And now her services have expanded to include Baton Rouge.

most people who are dating and looking for a partner are younger. They’ve grown up with Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, OK Cupid, Christian Mingle, J-Date, Match.com and the list goes on. There are even specialty dating apps like “Dig – the dog lovers dating app.”

So, let’s start with the obvious question. Is someone who turns to an old-fashioned matchmaker burned out on dating apps? Or is a typical client someone different who can’t bring themselves to use a dating app and hasn’t had any success meeting anyone at The Chimes or Chelseas?

Could matchmaking be for you? On this special dating love and marriage edition of Out to Lunch, Ann explains the art and science of dating to Stephanie.

If you're looking for a great place for a date in Baton Rouge you can't beat Mansurs on the Boulevard. We've been meeting there every week for years on Out to Lunch and we're all still happily working together! And if you're looking for even more of an insight into Ann's life you can check her out on It's New Orleans Happy Hour.

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South Louisiana is known for food and music and other artistic and creative cultural expressions so perhaps it’s surprising that we’re not known for our clothing designers. With so much inspiration to draw from, meet the crestive forces behind two local clothing lines. 

Dave Duncan is co-owner of Jack Duncan Design, a sustainably made menswear brand that creates shirts for the everyday man. Dave founded and runs the company with his wife Brittany Tubb Duncan, who shares his passion for finding unique prints and has her own brand, Itty by Bitty, which provides children’s options in the Jack Duncan prints.

Dave and Brittany founded Jack Duncan Design in early 2023 and currently operate out of their home study and shop in mid City. 

Paula LaFargue is owner and designer at the Maybe Collection, a Baton Rouge-based business that also uses ethical practices to make comfortable, functional women’s garments that have minimal environmental impact – and they’re also beautiful and affordable.

Paula started the company in 2016 after spending 10 years designing clothes for nursing moms, children and utility workers – not all at the same time. She is a a native of Baton Rouge who attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and cut her teeth in the fashion industry in New Orleans and Chicago before returning home in 2009.

Paula is a returning guest on this show. We last spoke during the pandemic, when we were remote on Zoom. Since then, the Maybe Collection has grown. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

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There are 27,400 farms in Louisiana, though it’s a rapidly changing and challenging way to make a living. Even given the obstacles though, there is opportunity for a new generation of creative cultivators who are practicing new ways of raising livestock, growing crops, and creating new products with the output.

Galen Iverstine is founder and co-owner of Iverstine Farms and Butcher. The name of the company refers to a farm in Kentwood, Louisiana that uses sustainable farming practices in raising its cattle, and a full-service butcher shop, smokehouse and "eatery" in Baton Rouge.

At the Baton Rouge outlet Galen sells local, farm-raised meats, and supports local farming partners who prioritize land-healing methods.

Galen started the business in 2010, when he purchased his 65 acre farm. It grew out of his experience senior year at LSU, when, trying to figure out what to do with his life, he took an English class that focused on food writing and in doing so learned all about food policy, industrial agriculture models and subsistence farming. It might be the most unique introduction to farming, ever!

Nathalie Noel's connection to Louisiana agriculture is through our sugracane crops. Nathalie is CEO of Noel Family Distillery, a company based in Donaldsonville that uses locally sourced sugarcane to distill ultra premium spirits. Not only do they make tequila, rum and vodka, they also blend their spirits with natural flavors to produce a line of ready-to-drink, canned craft cocktails.

Nathalie founded the Noel Family Distillery with her dad, Chip, who was inspired to open a distillery by his travels as a pilot, where he discovered Caribbean style and Central American rums.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dustin Puryear os founder and CEO of Giant Rocketship, a Baton Rouge based tech company that has developed an AI-powered project manager that efficiently assigns and monitors tasks for IT companies, and can reassign them if a team member faces challenges or is unavailable.

Dustin founded Giant Rocketship as an outgrowth of Puryear IT, which provides a range of IT services for small and medium-sized business. Dustin still owns both companies, but spends most of his time these days focused on Giant Rocketship.

Dustin has also has a developed a niche as a speaker in IT circles, where he shares insights on technology, cybersecurity and AI. 

Firmly in the real world, Baton Rouge native Nick Miller is founder and CEO of Build Commercial Construction, a full service commercial construction company that works in the multifamily, retail, healthcare and industrial spaces, and also does storm and wetlands remediation - a growing segment in climate-challenged south Louisiana.

Nick graduated from LSU’s Bert S. Turner School of Construction Management and got his start with Manhattan Construction, where he was a project manager overseeing construction of L’Auberge Casino. He later spent several years with a large general contractor until taking the brave step of branching out on his own to form Build Commercial Construction, which specializes in the design assist delivery method of construction which increases the collaborative efforts between owners, designers and the general contractor. Recently the firm expanded its footprint to two nearby states. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Rachel Verron is founder and CEO of Ruby Research, a Baton Rouge based company that offers data, research and analytics services to nonprofit and government clients. Ruby Research helps clients use data to learn, improve and grow.

Rachel is a mixed method policy researcher with a personal specialty in human services, child and family policy and a passion for the nonprofit space. Before founding the firm in mid-2021, she was director of business intelligence and analytics at the LSU Foundation. Prior to that she was an analyst Louisiana Economic Development.

Rachel says Ruby Research represents a coming home to what she feels is her true vocation: putting the best of her knowledge and energy to work in loving service to her community.

Lex Adams is CEO of Crimer, a software company that uses AI and analytics to predict patterns of a crime, to stop crime BEFORE it’s committed.

Lex and some of his computer science buddies created Crimer in 2018 while they were still students at LSU. In the years since, they’ve gotten a lot of attention with their software, which pulls data from a variety of sources, feeds it into an A.I. system, then it spits information predicting where crime will happen.

You may remember Lex’s name: he was a guest on this show in 2020, during the height of the COVID lockdown when we recorded remotely. Since then, Lex has gone on to form two spinoff companies – Vigilus, a startup that specializes in web and app development for businesses, and Griffin Games, a tiny startup that does video game development. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find Photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People 65 and older represented just 16% of the population in 2019. By 2040, they’ll make up nearly one fourth of all Americans, and those numbers are expected to continue to climb.

Part of the reason people are living longer is because of new technologies and innovations in the healthcare sector that are enabling providers to deliver more effective care in new and more efficient ways. It’s a space full of challenges and opportunities - and local Baton Rouge entrepreneurs are on the front lines.

Rachael Slaughter is President and co-owner of Orion Labotatories, a medical testing lab based in Baton Rouge that in just a few short years has become the largest independent lab in the state, processing some 600,000 patient samples a year.

Rachael co-founded the company with her husband David Slaughter in 2017. Today, they’re taking on industry giants like Quest and Lab Corps, with an in-house test menu, a dedicated team for specimen collection and an extensive courier network.

Rachel has more than 15 years experience in the medical field – in fact, she was the one who got David into the business. In the years since it has grown to more than 80 employees, headquartered on Corporate Boulevard.

Maria Yiannopoulos is founder and owner of Bon Jour Social and Leisure Center, a social club for seniors who are aging in place in the Greater Baton Rouge area.

Bon Jour opened its doors in February 2023 and offers social life enrichment activities and a safe social outlet for seniors to meet and socialize in the aftermath of COVID.

Maria was a guest on this show a few years ago when she was marketing director of a local assisted living facility. In the years since, a lot has changed and Maria has decided to out on her own with this unique and much needed niche service.

Maria is a native of Baton Rouge, who spent her early childhood in Greece, and has extensive professional experience in assisted living communities, aging in place for seniors and helping individuals with disabilities gain independence through technologies and devices.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

 Mark Fallon is CEO of APTIM, a Baton Rouge-based company that provides engineering, program management, environmental services, disaster recovery, complex facility maintenance, and construction services to clients in in the energy sector, as well as governments and the military.

APTIM was spun off several years ago from CB&I, which, many in Baton Rouge may remember, bought The Shaw Group in 2013. Mark has been at the helm of the company since April 2020, which was, no doubt, an interesting time to start a new big challenge. But he came armed with a wealth of knowledge and experience. Prior to joining APTIM, Mark was president and CEO of sister companies – Envirocon, a national remediation and deocmmisioning contractor, and Modern Machinery, a distributor of heavy construction and minig equipment. He also worked at CH2M and started his career in the US Department of Energy under President Bill Clinton. 

Fran Harvey is Director of the Global Geospatial Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Innovation Park at LSU that teaches students to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage and display all kinds of spatial or geographical data using the only GIS Industry based certification program in the country.

Are you wondering, "What exactly is GIS?" Well, you're not alone. Most people  - and that certainly includes most highschool students - don't realize they are using GIS data every time they pick up their smart phone and open the map app or check the location of the Uber they’re waiting on to pick them up or the Door Dash guy who is delivering their order. But GIS is everywhere and the Global Geospatial Institute believes that if young people can learn the skills that go into GIS they will be better prepared to enter today’s workforce.

Fran was introduced to GIS technology while working as an environmental scientist. She spent several years in disaster response and recovery as a senior GIS analyst and decided to go back to school for an advanced degree in the technology.

She spent more than a decade at the La Dept of Environmental Quality as an environmental scientist and GIS analyst and went on to use her expertise in as a GIS specialist in the aftermaths of several gulf coast hurricanes. In 2014, Fran and her husband founded the Global Geospatial Institute. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can photos from this show by Brian Pavlich  at itsbatonrouge.la. 

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On this episode of Out to Lunch, meet two of the leading lights of the Baton Rouge education system.

Tina Holland is President and CEO of Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University in Baton Rouge, better known as Fran U. Tina came to Fran U in 2014 from Notre Dame, Indiana, where she had served as Executive Vice President and Provost of Holy Cross College. In the years since, she has overseen an aggressive and successful expansion of Fran U.

Tina Holland, whose combination of military and education experience and vision has elevated Fran U to an accredited college

Fran U started out nearly a century ago as Our Lady of the Lake, a nursing school. Today it is a fully accredited university with new undergraduate and graduate degree programs that Tina has created.

Tina is overseeing the development of Fran U’s first freestanding building which will give the university a new level of autonomy.

Tina is a native of Los Angeles and a former officer in the U.S. Marine Corps., who brings an extraordinary knowledge and skillset to a position that requires navigating the turbulent waters of not only higher ed and Catholic Church but local politics as well.

Christine Merchant is  World Language Coordinator with the East Baton Rouge Parish School System. If you’re thinking, “I didn’t know East Baton Rouge Schools had a world language coordinator,” you’re not alone but you might be surprised to learn that not only is the school system’s immersive language program highly successful, but also that Christine has been running it for 42 years!

In fact, Christine is the first and only person to hold this position.

Christine Merchant, the depth of her French accent is matched by the depth of her 42 years of dedication to foreign language education in Baton Rouge

The most visible flagship of the East Baton Rouge School System’s foreign language track is FLAIM, or more formally, the Baton Rouge Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet, but world languages are offered at a large number of EBR public schools.

Stephanie Riegel hosts a mostly English language edition of Out to Lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

baton rouge business podcast christine merchant east baton rouge parish schools flaim fran u mansurs on the boulevard out to lunch stephanie riegel tina holland

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But it’s also exciting to think about all the ways that this technology can be used to cure diseases or build sophisticated satellite systems or even do simple things - like helping us do the laundry! Or training a new employee on how to do their job.

AI Laundry

Chris Hilliard is co-founder of Suds Laundry Service, a traditional laundry service with a distinctly 21st century twist: Suds has created a custom app that customers can use to schedule laundry pickup and delivery from their home, dorm or office along with any special instructions. Suds will launder or dry clean the clothes and return them within 24 hours.

Chris and his partners created the company in 2019, while they were still college students at Southern University in Baton Rouge,  looking for a solution to the piles of laundry building up in their dorm rooms. In the years since, they have graduated and grown their startup with help from the Southern University Law Centers’ Technology and Entrepreneur Clinic.

Chris grew up in Lafayette and now calls Baton Rouge home.

AI Hires & Trains

David DeCuir is a partner in iCan Technologies, which provides software tools to help companies effectively train and track the competency of their employees and contractors, which is no small thing for the industrial and energy companies that David’s company works with.

iCan also recently developed an AI technology that helps companies create scripts for job interviews, offering an interviewer specific real-time questions and prompts based on how an applicant is responding. Think about that for a moment! 

David co-founded the company in early 2020 – literally weeks before COVID changed everything, in his case for the better. He didn’t start out looking to create a tech startup but had spent years working in the oil and gas industry and realized there was an opportunity to do things better.

David also is a native of Lafayette. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.

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COVID was a major disrupter of all segments of the real estate market. And the post-COVID era is no less unprecedented. Which makes every day at the office an interesting one for those who work in the real estate business.

Dave Lakvold is a commercial real estate appraiser and owner of The Lakvold Group, which has been appraising apartment complexes, office buildings, warehouses and retail centers in the Baton Rouge area since Dave started the company in 1995. That was around the same time he married his wife, Angie Lakvold, also an appraiser who, at the time, was working for First Commerce Corp, a bank holding company.

Four years later, Angie left the bank and joined Dave at the Lakvold Group.  They’ve been working together ever since.

Dave focuses on commercial bank and litigation appraisals, and Angie specializes in infrastructure and litigation appraisals. Over the years, their clients have included some of the area’s highest profile businesses and investors.

Andy St. Romain is a partner in the Baton Rouge office of the law firm Jones Walker, who specializes in real estate. Jones Walker is a sponsor of Out to Lunch so we thought we’d take advantage of that relationship and invite Andy to join us to talk about real estate with Dave today.

Andy has been with Jones Walker since 2004. In the years since, he has advised clients on the full range of residential, commercial, and industrial real estate issues, representing developers and lenders. Andy is also a CPA and an adjunct professor at the Southern University Law Center.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can photos from this show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.

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John Jackson is co-founder of Launch Media, a full service multimedia production company that offers video production and creative services from brand development to scripting, casting, post production and corporate communications.

The company's suite of services has evolved from their origins back in 2005, when it was called Green Screen TV and focused on making short videos. Over the years, as the company has grown, John has become active in historic preservation the redevelopment of downtown Baton Rouge. In 2014, he bought a historic building in the heart of downtown, renovated it and opened it as a co-working space for creative companies called the Creative Bloc. 

Marie Constantin is one of the region’s most accomplished photographers and photo journalists. Marie became internationally known for her photographic works of the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta when the Vatican chose one of her photos to hang in St. Peters Square for Mother Teresa's 2003 Beatification Ceremony.

A native of Hartford CT, Marie came to Baton rouge to attend LSU where she studied journalism and in the decades since her work has taken her around the world – including to the slums of Calcutta, where she documented the work of nuns there who serve the poor.

In 2018 Marie became alarmed at the buildup of litter and trash around Baton Rouge, particularly in the Baton Rouge Lakes, one of the city’s most prized assets and natural resources. She used her photography to capture images of some of the most extreme examples of the trash – which catalyzed the community and helped her grow a grass roots cleanup effort into a nonprofit, the Louisiana Stormwater Coalition. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find out more and see photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Craig Stevens is President of Genesis 360, a Baton Rouge based company that acts like a one-stop shop providing services related to building maintenance, grounds maintenance and construction and even IT services.

Craig started the company in 2011 as a parking lot-striping company so its scope of services was limited but quickly grew as Craig began offering more and more services to a clientele that now span the country and include commercial business and the federal government.

Craig, a native of Opelousas, who now lives in Baton Rouge, is a retired Air Force officer, who served for 25 years in the U.S., Europe and Asia before retiring as captain of the 93rd bomb squadron. From there he went to serve as Director of Operations for Circle K before founding Genesis 360 in 2011.  

Xavier Hoskins is Managing Partner of DXI Health Solutions, a Baton Rouge-based company that specializes in orthotics, joint replacement implants, spinal hardware bone growth hardware and disposable medical equipment.

Xavier and his partner David Hyde founded the company in 2011, after Xavier spent a dozen years in the pharmaceutical industry. Xavier also is a veteran. He served in the U.S. Army  after graduating from Ole Miss. Xavier and Craig also know each other because they were both members of the first class in the Baton Rouge Area Chamber’s Drive Minority Business Accelerator program, which was held during the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023. 

Out to Lunch is recorded over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find more information including photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Paul Charbonnet, a drone pilot and the owner of Atmosphere Drones, which shoots all sort of aerial scenes for movies, TV and a variety of users; and Cyrus Lester, co-owner of Mushroom Maggies Farm, a Saint Francisville based farmer of specialty and exotic mushrooms that Cyrus and his wife Maggie sell to local restaurants, farmers markets and specialty distributors.

Though Paul and Cyrus were strangers to each other when they met on the show, several months later, quite by chance, they became next door neighbors! And from there they've become real friends.

In the few years since a lot has changed. Both have weathered the pandemic. Cyrus has had a second child. Paul has started a second company called Compass Visuals, which specializes in robots that work with their cameras to hyper real videos for commercials. And Cyrus has had a second child, in addition to growing his farm.

On this reunion edition of Out to Lunch we're welcoming back two old guests and new friends to see how they’re doing and find out what’s new at Atmosphere Drones and Mushroom Maggie's.

Out to Lunch is recorded over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Two local authors tell all

Michael Rubin is a full-time attorney specializing in appellate law with the high powered McGlinchey firm here in Baton Rouge. He's also a successful author of legal thrillers that, like John Grisham’s gripping novels, center on things Mike knows well—the Deep South, racism, family legacies and where the law intersects with the criminal justice system.

Mike is the co-author of The Cottoncrest Curse, Cashed Out and A White Hot Plan along with his wife, Ayan. The books are published by LSU Press and the University of Lafayette Press and have earned a handful of book awards.

Mike's varied career doesn't end with just the law and writing novels, he's also had stints as a jazz musician, a humorist and a public speaker.

Barbara Sims is also an author. Her 2014 book, The Next Elvis: Searching for Stardom at Sun Records, is a memoir of her years working as a publicist and promoter at Sun Records in Memphis in the male-dominated workforce of the 1950s. At the time, Barbara was in her early 20s, and her job at Sun placed her in the studio with the likes of Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich and other Sun entertainers.

Like Mike, Barbara has had a rich and varied career, and though her time at Sun Records was perhaps the most glamorous and book-worthy chapter, she went on to become an English Professor at LSU here in Baton Rouge, where she taught for more than 30 years.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our unhealthy lifestyles are also a problem: we spend too much time in front of screens - now under the control of artificial intelligence - and we eat the wrong foods full of processed ingredients and high fructose corn syrup.

But, there are signs of hope everywhere that it’s not too late! And forward thinking entrepreneurs are creating businesses specifically designed to address the challenges with the way we build and live and eat.

Caitlin Robbins is co-founder and co-owner of Swamp Fly, an environmental design and consulting firm that specializes in strategic planting design, wildlife gardens, reforestation, green infrastructure and land management for both residential and commercial clients. Swamp Fly is proudly woman-owned and Caitlin and her partners are committed to protecting Louisiana’s vulnerable ecological communities.

Caitlin is the firm’s Baton Rouge operations manager so is focused primarily on the Capital Region.

Caitlin is a native of baton rouge, who got her masters in anthropology from LSU and has a master’s degree in public health and tropical medicine. She is also a licensed landscape horticulturist and recently received a certificate in compost training from the LSU Ag Center, which she plans to use to expand Swamp Fly’s capacity to offer full circle sustainable services. 

Dr. Katie Crifasi is owner of Plantry Café, a vegan and vegetarian restaurant in the Villas of Bluebonnet Centre Shopping Center just north of I-10.

Katie is a physician at Our Lady of the Lake Physician group. She opened the restaurant in the spring of 2023 because it was the kind of place she thought Baton Rouge needed – a restaurant where patrons can enjoy plant based food in an upscale,  contemporary restaurant setting.

Katie, a Baton Rouge native, is a primary care physician with a Doctor of Osteopathy degree. D.Os go to med school and take the boards just as M.Ds do and they practice in hospitals and clinics everywhere, but their focus is more holistic and is focused on a whole person and wellness-centric approach to medical care. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well, whether or not you can tile your bathroom as well as a tile layer is debatable, but there’s one thing that a number of people, at some point decide they just have to DIY - and that’s life. Especially work life.

You can stay in your job, doing what you do, and be perfectly happy. But if you’re not happy with the way things are, if you feel unfulfilled, and you wish you could change your current situation, well, you can make the leap and DIY.

Ronnie Anderson has a great job. He’s the Laboratory Technical Supervisor of Baton Rouge General, at the Ascension and Bluebonnet locations.

But when his daughter asked him why there were no princesses who looked like her in the fairy tales he was reading to her, and Ronnie couldn’t find any anywhere, he picked up his pen and started writing.

To date Ronnie’s written six books of fairy tales, united by the mythical Anboran, a place where young readers can find a diverse collection of people, and princesses of color.

Taking DIY to a whole other level, Ronnie also founded the company Rogue Star Publishing, to publish his books. 

Nenette Gray called herself “a legal drug dealer” for the 12 years she was in pharmaceutical sales. Then, when pharma decided to part ways with her, Nenette decided to turn lemons into lemonade, and created Lemonade Creative Marketing.

Lemonade does marketing for brands like Exxon Mobil, Blue Cross, Baton Rouge Community College, and many more. But you won’t see Nenette’s marketing ideas on billboards or TV. You find them on items like coasters, coffee mugs, phone cases, and thousands of other pieces of promotional material.

A company can go online and get a million keychains made with their logo on it, but that kind of DIY is a bit like being your own bathroom tiler. It’s not the same as having Nenette’s creative marketing team devise a campaign of inventive promotional items specifically for your company and your clients.

We’re all looking for inspiration. It’s why we gaze at the sunset, read fairytales, meditate, and dream about retiring. You can find inspiration in all those activities. But you can also be inspired by people. Everyday people.

Here in Baton Rouge we don’t have a culture of celebrity. So, you never know, the person shopping next to you at the store, or stuck in traffic in the car behind you, might have created a mythical kingdom for children. Or be creating inventive promotional marketing for one of the biggest oil companies in America.

They might be Ronnie Anderson or Nenette Gray.

Ronnie and Nenette both grew up here, and live here, like the rest of us. But unlike most of us, their imagination, creativity, and courage to chart their own path is inspirational.

This episode of Out to Lunch is hosted by Olivia Stewart, CEO of Oxbow Rum Distillery. The show was recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stephanie Morace is owner of Balloonatics of Baton Rouge, a local business that specializes in balloon arts and entertaining. That includes everything from the balloon animals and sculptures you see at carnivals and kids’ birthdays to high-end decorative walls for corporate events and galas.

Beyond her day-today balloon world, Stephanie travels the country demonstrating her techniques at trade shows and competitions. It’s not at all what she envisioned she would be doing back in 2013, when she left her job as an environmental engineer to hang out her shingle as a balloon artist and entertainer. In the years since Balloonatics has grown beyond Baton Rouge to New Orleans.  

Herb Piert has a business that's possibly even more fun than balloon art. Herb is co-owner of Pedal Pub Baton Rouge, a portable barroom that's powered by folks sitting at the bar with pedals at their feet, pedaling what is essentially a party bike. Customers get a self-powered sight seeing tour of the city while the bar serves them beer and plays music.

You may have seen one of these contraptions with a bunch of bachelorette partygoers singing and laughing very loudly in Nashville or New Orleans and now Baton Rouge. Herb and his wife and business partners brought Pedal Pub Baton Rouge to the capital region in late 2021 as franchisees of the Pedal Pub concept.  

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As crypto continues its fluctuations, here in Baton Rouge there are more than a few entrepreneurs betting on the continued adoption and growth of alternative currencies. Among them are Stephanie Riegel's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch Baton Rouge.

Jared Loftus was the poster child for entrepreneurism in Baton Rouge a decade ago. He had owned a popular T-shirt company near the LSU campus, then brought the food truck revolution to the capital region with Taco de Paco. He also took on the beleaguered bus system, CATS, at a pivotal moment and got himself appointed to its board, and then walked away from the spotlight to help grow the very successful startup Mastery Prep, an online test prep firm which was acquired by a huge national company.

Moving more into the tech world - as you may remember from our pandemic-era Out to Lunch shows - Jared helped build RASA.io, an AI powered email newsletter platform, and theses days he's all-in on crypto!

Jared's latest company, founded in early 2022, is Max Boring, which is focused on building out the infrastructure that makes decentralized blockchains possible. What exactly - or even approximately - does that mean? If you're wondering, "What the heck is the blockchain?" and "Where does crypto currency come from anyway?" Jared explains it all in this conversation.

Charlie Davis is an entrepreneur and CEO of Moxey, a network of small businesses who have banded together to improve their sales and cash flow through a unique community currency.

You may remember we talked about the original version of Moxey back in 2016 when it was called The Trade Authority. In the years since, the community currency has grown to include 3,000 small business owners and has created a mobile app that makes using Moxey as easy as Venmo or a credit card.

In a small-world - or perhaps small-town - coincidence, Charlie Davis is also a co-founder of Mastery Prep.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What separates creative entrepreneurs from the rest of us is the ability to take those everyday things and come up with a way to reimagine them and make them better so they can reach more people. They're generally the kind of innovations that engender a "Wow, now you come to mention it" response in the rest of us.

David Rollins is co-Founder and Director of Sales at Aura Ad Company, a south Louisiana ad agency that has a unique niche in the out-of-home advertising, or what we used to call outdoor advertising, space. Aura specializes in cartop digital billboards. That’s right, Aura puts digital signage on top of ride-sharing vehicles or taxis, then pairs the technology in its signs with the GPS technology that most people unwittingly enable on their smart phones, to get an idea of how many people are exposed to the sign and who, demographically speaking, those people are.

It’s a whole new type of advertising. And it’s particularly attractive to small businesses who may not have the budget to hire an ad agency or buy billboard space on the side of the interstate.

David is a Baton Rouge native and graduate of LSU, who was working in Austin doing sales for an IT firm, when he came up with the idea for Aura Ad and came home to Louisiana to launch it. 

Chastity Sanders is Founder and Owner of Bathphoria, a company that sells all-natural organically sourced soaps and bath products. Chastity founded the company in 2019 because she was allergic to many of the soaps commercially available on the market, so she decided to create a line of her own, using non GMO materials.

Chastity is a native of Baton Rouge whose background and training as a certified pharmacy technician gave her a first-hand familiarity with the crossroads of chemical science and retail. Since her launch, Bathphoria has been featured on Walmart’s online platform and in national magazines, though most of Chastity's sales come from pop up markets and local events.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Randy Mire makes his living in one of those industries: medical marijuana.

Randy is a pharmacist and owner of Capitol Wellness Solutions.  We had Randy on this show back in 2018, when the state’s medical marijuana industry was just getting started and Randy was the sole licensed pharmacist in the state to dispense medical marijuana.

Today, Capitol Wellness Solutions is one of 9 licensed pharmacies around the state that is selling medical marijuana, and state lawmakers in 2022 passed several measures to grow the size of the industry by allowing more licenses and more types of legal marijuana.

Randy had been a licensed pharmacist in Baton Rouge for a decade and already had a niche in specialty drugs before he decided to try selling medical marijuana. 

Rachel Jackson also has a niche in Baton Rouge selling a plant-based product with what some might consider healing properties: tea! Rachel’s business, Adornleaf Tea, blends handmade organic herbal teas with inspired names like Goddess In Repose, Early Rise, and Mull It Over.

Rachel was a visitor services coordinator at the Louisiana Arts and Sciences Museum, when she decided in 2018 to pursue her passion for tea by starting her own business. Rachel sources the leaves then blends them by hand and packages them to sell.  

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mo Vij is founder and owner of 365 Labs, a tech company that builds software and processes for public safety departments, courts, prosecutors, and first responders.

Mo founded the company in January of 2021, using his @Highland campus as its headquarters.

The company is funded by Vij Capital, a private equity firm Vij founded in 2019 to fund technology firms. In the years since its founding, 365 Labs has revamped law enforcement systems for agencies around the country, changing the way police process records, how courts handle warrants, and how law enforcement issues tickets.

Mo is no stranger to the tech world, or to this show. You may remember he was a guest several years ago, when we talked about his company General Infomatics, which he founded in 2004. In 2020 Mo sold a majority share of that company to a private equity firm based in California. General Infomatics continues to work out of  the @Highland campus next to 365 Labs, and that neighborliness is not coincidental, the companies continue to work together. 

Dianna Liu is founder and CEO of Arix Technologies, an IT company that creates robotics software - which is the fancy way of saying they build robots. The robotic systems Arix creates perform inspections for the petrochemical industry. For example, they make a robot that checks for corrosion on the inside of pipes and others that monitor the safety conditions of componentry in chemical plants and refineries, which can be difficult and dangerous for humans but not so hard for robotic systems.

Dianna founded the company in 2017, after spending several years with Exxon Mobil. She got her MBA from Yale after getting her bachelors in mechanical engineering from Duke University. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But the lemonade stand can be so much more. Not only a teaching tool but a way to help young people with disabilities learn entrepreneurship.

Case in point: Sherilyn Hayward's business, Leroy's Lip Smack'n Lemonade.

Sherilyn is co-owner of this local Baton Rouge lemonade biz, Leroy’s Lip Smack’n Lemonade, an enterprise she and her husband Dan started with their son Leroy in 2012, when Leroy was just 6 years old and participating in Lemonade Day Louisiana, a nationwide annual event that teaches children how to be entrepreneurs.

From that simple beginning the one-day lemonade stand expanded to festivals and pop-up locations, eventually growing into a full blown business. Today, Leroy’s Lip Smack Lemonade is sold in 40 grocery stores around Baton Rouge and beyond, as well as in Tiger Stadium.

But business success is not what makes this enterprise so unique. Rather it’s that Leroy is a special needs kid, and the real mission of the business is not just profit. It's also to teach Leroy and other kids with what we think of as life-limiting -challenges that there are, in reality, no limits in life except the ones you put on yourself.

Leroy's Lip Smack'n Lemonade employs Leroy and other young people with disabilities. The company is also helping Children’s Hospital, donating a portion of proceeds from every sale it makes to the institution 

Kevin Whalen is the owner of Rally Cap Brewing Company, a Baton Rouge based micro brewery he founded in 2017, with friend and business partner Jeremy Brown.

In the years since, the business has grown to include a baseball-themed tap room, which opened in 2019 and features several different brews that vary by season, all brewed right here at its brewing facility in the Industriplex area.

Kevin Whalen is a self-taught brew-master. He's had a passion for brewing for more than a decade and teamed up with Jeremy Brown when they met in business school at Duke University and decided that seeing they both wanted to own their own business they'd join forces.  

Along the way, Kevin has had a varied and interesting career – has worked for the Montreal Expos, as well as minor league clubs, been Assistant Athletic Director at Lamar University in Texas, and served as vice president of casino operations at L’Auberge Casino. 

In the heat of a South Louisiana Summer, there's very little that's more refreshing than a cold beer or lemonade. And if you're in Baton Rouge that refreshment is made even better knowing your cooling libation is made from fresh ingredients not more than a handful of miles from where you're drinking it.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode of Out to Lunch, meet two of the leading lights of the Baton Rouge education system.

Tina Holland is President and CEO of Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University in Baton Rouge, better known as Fran U. Tina came to Fran U in 2014 from Notre Dame, Indiana, where she had served as Executive Vice President and Provost of Holy Cross College. In the years since, she has overseen an aggressive and successful expansion of Fran U.

Fran U started out nearly a century ago as Our Lady of the Lake, a nursing school. Today it is a fully accredited university with new undergraduate and graduate degree programs that Tina has created.

Tina is overseeing the development of Fran U’s first freestanding building which will give the university a new level of autonomy.

Tina is a native of Los Angeles and a former officer in the U.S. Marine Corps., who brings an extraordinary knowledge and skillset to a position that requires navigating the turbulent waters of not only higher ed and Catholic Church but local politics as well.    

Christine Merchant is  World Language Coordinator with the East Baton Rouge Parish School System. If you're thinking, "I didn't know East Baton Rouge Schools had a world language coordinator," you're not alone but you might be surprised to learn that not only is the school system's immersive language program highly successful, but also that Christine has been running it for 42 years!

In fact, Christine is the first and only person to hold this position.

The most visible flagship of the East Baton Rouge School System's foreign language track is FLAIM, or more formally, the Baton Rouge Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet, but world languages are offered at a large number of EBR public schools.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take, for example, Patrick Healey. Patrick is owner of Premium Tours and Transportation, which, among other excursions, has a bus ride called Baton Rouge Blitz.

Baton Rouge Blitz is a direct luxury bus service that runs from New Orleans to Tiger Stadium on LSU Tigers game days. The company’s executive coaches depart from downtown New Orleans hotels and arrives at the game in plenty of time to allow for tailgating, then returns patrons later that night.

Patrick founded Premium Tours in 2015 and besides the football fan bus also runs other unique outings including a tour of local breweries and "Gators and Guns," a tour that takes customers to a shooting range to shoot machine guns then brings them on a swamp tour.

Patrick originally moved to Louisiana from his native southern California in 2007 to help with the rebuilding effort after Hurricane Katrina and has apparently totally adapted to the Southeast lifestyle! 

Tremaine Devine is better known as Chef Tre, the owner of Tres’ Street Kitchen, which provides high-end gourmet meals cooked in your home, catering, and a food truck.

Chef Tre grew up on the south side of Chicago and had to overcome a lot of the challenges facing many kinds in the inner city. But he found his passion in the culinary arts, which he originally learned from his grandparents and would go on to study, formally, at the Louisiana Culinary Institute.

Today, Chef Tre wants to give back and dedicate his life to building a legacy for his family, which is the north star behind Tres Street Kitchen. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In that time, the capital city has also seen growth and transformation in its hospitality and tourism sector, which is largely, though not exclusively, concentrated downtown.

In recent months, the organization that oversees the tourism and hospitality sector – Visit Baton Rouge – and the DDD have both come under new leadership by a new generation of women, who are bringing new ideas and creative vision for growing and reimagining Baton Rouge’s downtown and its tourism industry.

Whitney Hoffman Sayal is Executive director of the Downtown Development District, a special taxing district in baton rouge that includes Spanish Town, Beauregard Town, and the Central Business District.

The DDD was created in 1987 and works to support the district, using community-driven master plans and economic incentives to help businesses and nonprofit philanthropic organizations in their development and entrepreneurship efforts. Whitney had big shoes to fill when she took over in 2022 after a national search to replace the late Davis Rhorer its founding executive director. But then, she was a natural, having worked at the DDD under Davis for eight years. Whitney is a certified planner with a master’s in landscape architecture from the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture.   

Jill Kidder is President and CEO of Visit Baton Rouge, the official tourism and marketing agency for the city-parish. Jill is also a newcomer to this high-profile position; she took over from long-time leader Paul Arrigo in 2022. But Jill is no stranger to the industry. She has 37 years experience in the hospitality sector and has lobbied for the industry at the state capitol and in Washington DC. She comes to her new position after 15 years with the Louisiana Travel Association, where she spent the past five as its president and CEO.

Women in leadership positions, guiding a major American city with a storied history into a multi-cultural and multi-revenue future. Believe it or not, yes, it's Baton Rouge! 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts and Stephanie Lee at itsbatonrouge.la

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Often it is during the worst of times - crises, hardships, or conflagrations and controversies - that people see opportunities to help those most in need. Or, on a grander scale, to dismantle systems of oppression and come together in new ways to make things better.

Take, for example, Casey Phillips of The Walls Project. 

We've talked about The walls Project previously on Out to Lunch. In this conversation, Casey expounds on a specific initiative that has the potential to address Baton Rouge’s systemic problems in new ways. It’s called OneRouge, a partnership between The Walls Project, which works to break down the societal walls in our community, and MetroMorphosis, Reverend Raymond Jetson’s nonprofit organization that seeks to transform urban communities from within.

The OneRouge Coalition was created in 2021 and has brought together 400 organizations in the community to address the economic and social disparities in Baton Rouge through a systematic framework that has identified the nine drivers of poverty and created coalitions to tackle each one by breaking down its component parts and working together – what’s known in the nonprofit world as collective impact -- to address it.

Casey is a music industry entrepreneur who spent more than a decade away from Baton Rouge, before moving back in 2011 to found The Walls Project.    

Amber Elworth is owner of Light House Coffee, a coffee shop with the unique mission of supporting migrants by providing them with opportunities for employment, a space to sell handcrafted items they have made and just a safe space where they are welcomed and included.

Amber and her husband founded the shop in 2017. At the time, Amber was working at Catholic Charities in Baton Rouge as a social worker in its immigration and refugee services division. She got to know a lot of the migrants coming into the community and recognized the need for a place like Light House.

Today, the coffee shop has grown in popularity, expanded its menu to lunch and dinner, and secured a liquor license to serve beer and wine.

As a middle class average working person, it's easy to live in Baton Rouge and think that our most urgent problem is traffic. It's more difficult to be aware of the issues that trouble the people in the cars and buses clogging our city streets or living alongside them. It's encouraging to learn from Casey Williams and Amber Elworth all that they're doing to improve Baton Rouge for all of us.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I bet you have. It seems like every place you call, from a giant multinational company to a local small business, has a phone system that for some mysterious reason has to constantly be updated.

Why exactly does the menu have to change? What was wrong with the last time I called when I had to press 1 for sales and 2 for tech support?

If it seems like even making a simple phone call has gotten complicated these days, well, actually, the commercial phone business has never been simple. Back in 1980, here in Baton Rouge, Mark Toney started up a phone business, for other businesses. He called it Preferred Telephone Systems. He was supplying phones that, in those days, you couldn’t even buy. Believe it or not, you had to lease a telephone – even for your home – from the – count them - one phone company, Southwestern Bell.

We’ve moved on from those monopoly days to a very different world of business phones. Today we require a phone to do a lot more than just connect us to a receptionist. Echoing that demand for greater sophistication, Mark Toney’s Preferred Telephone Systems is now called Preferred Data Voice Network. The President of the company is Mark Toney’s daughter, Melissa Asevedo.

Your phone these days is more than just something you talk on. In fact, talking is  probably what you do least on your phone. Most of the time we’re using our phone to access something online. Whether it’s social media, a news outlet, or making a restaurant reservation, we’re mostly using one of the many apps on our phone.

If you have a business and you want people to find you online, you need an app of your own. Or a website that works equally well on a phone, a tablet, and a computer. If you’ve thought about building your own app, or customizing your own website so it works seamlessly on every device, and you’ve actually pulled that off, you deserve a medal. Most of us are simply incapable of doing that.

And that’s why, here in Baton Rouge, we turn to app and web developers like Breach Software. Breach Software have built apps and web tools for LSU, state and local governments, and a bunch of small businesses.

The company is headquartered at LSU’s business center, Innovation Park, and they’re probably the only business in Baton Rouge to have gotten business advice from Family Feud host, Steve Harvey! The co-founder of Breach Software is Colin Hebert.

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There aren’t many things you can bet on and be guaranteed to be right. But I’d be willing to bet that if you don’t currently have a phone in your hand, you recently put it down, or you’ll soon be picking it up.

There’s no getting away from it, our phones have become an integral part of our everyday lives. And if you have a business, they’re an integral part of your business too. Melissa Asevedo and Colin Hebert's companies that fuel our business phones are equally integral parts of the local Baton Rouge business community.

This episode of Out to Lunch is hosted by Olivia Stewart, CEO of Oxbow Rum Distillery. The show was recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As consumers we all like to splurge from time to time. Even if we’re pinching pennies, there’s always going to be a special something we’ll make an exception for because it makes us feel good, mentally, physically or emotionally. If you’re that entrepreneur, who can intuit what customers need, you just might have hit on the secret to success.

Liz Anderson is owner of Honey Hive Treats, a locally owned sweets boutique in baton rouge that specializes in homemade pastries and desserts, including cakes—and wedding cakes—cookies, pies and brownies. 

Condoleeza Semien is founder of Beluga Bliss a company that sells handcrafted blends of aromatherapy oils and products suffused with aromatherapy oils. The blends are all natural and are designed to help with insomnia, sinus issues and pain cause by a variety of conditions ranging from arthritis to autoimmune diseases.

Beluga Bliss is getting a lot of publicity for a small baton rouge startup, not least because Condoleeza was just 14 when she founded the company! She is all of 17 now and is a senior at University View Academy, an online charter school, where she is also two years into her college degree. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We've met people who have turned their passions for bee keeping, scuba diving, art, and may more occupations into profitable businesses. Stephanie's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch are further examples - they're rock climbers and acrobats.

Rock climbers

Lee Guilbeau is owner of Uptown Climbing, a rock-climbing studio in Baton Rouge that offers climbing in many forms for climbers with various levels of experience. Lee and Rob Antrobus, his business partner, opened the studio in 2017, two years after meeting by chance at a climbing wall industry conference in Colorado. At the time, they were both trying to open gyms. They decided to team up and combine their skillset. Six years later, Uptown Climbing is the largest climbing studio in Baton Rouge.

Lee and Rob are both Baton Rouge natives. Lee has a kinesiology degree from LSU and worked a bit in the mountains of Colorado and then Wyoming before coming back to Baton Rouge, where he worked as a trainer for more than a decade before opening Uptown Climbing. 

Acrobats

Erik Otts is a professional acrobat and aerialist who owns a Baton Rouge acrobatic studio called Acreaux.

Eric teaches students how to do circus tricks, including balancing poses with partners, twisting, hanging from silks, and more. If you're the type of person who is looking to have a body that looks like you've spent hours in the gym but you don't actually enjoy spending hours in the gym, working out with Erik and his staff at Acreaux might be the kind of challenging but fun and rewarding workout you're looking for.

If you're a regular listener to Out to Lunch Baton Rouge you might recognize Erik's name: he's also our photographer! Photography is something he enjoys doing in his free time but it's more than just a hobby. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Stephanie Lee at itsbatonrouge.la

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Charles Sasser is a primary care doctor based here in Baton Rouge, whose practice, Sasser Direct Primary Care, represents a new and intriguing business model for health care delivery. Instead of a traditional fee-for-service model - where a doctor’s visit or hospital stay is paid for primarily by a third party like an insurance company - with Direct Primary Care, you join the group, pay a monthly fee that, depending on your age might be $50 or $75, and then when you need to see the doctor, you schedule and that’s it. No co pay, no bills! And labs and tests cost you the wholesale rate.

Yes, it's the much-discussed "affordable healthcare" that is actually is affordable.

With healthcare costs skyrocketing and insurance rates increasing by double digits every year, the DPC model is growing around the country and could be the wave of the future. If it’s so sensible, why isn’t everyone doing it? Charles Sasser explains. 

Ellen McKnight Hill is a registered dietician and public health advocate with The Maxine Firm, a nutrition, wellness and public health firm, whose primary objective is chronic disease prevention in urban and rural communities. The firm offers a variety of services including seminars, webinars and other community outreach efforts to bring wellness and nutrition education to those who may not know how to integrate healthy eating and regular exercise into their daily lives. Ellen is a principal with the firm and one of its founders. She's also a part of the mayor's Healthy City Initiative and an Adjunct Nutrition Professor at Baton Rouge Community College.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Like most platitudes, this one also is true.

You might not think things as already established and mundane as breakfast cereal or everyday signage need to change. But they do. Companies that are able to adapt to change, even if they’ve been around a long time - or start ups that can come up with a better way to deliver an old favorite - are the businesses that survive and thrive.

Let's kick off the conversation by talking about something as ubiquitous and seemingly plebeian as signage, with Steve Perrett. 

Steve is President of Letterman’s, a longtime locally owned company that started out in the 1940s as a print shop specializing in blueprints for architects and contractors - back when you actually had to walk into the store to pick up your prints. Today, Letterman's has become the state’s largest, privately owned full-service reprographics company, offering signage and graphics printing, technical document printing, and professional document management.

Letterman’s still does blueprints, but it also does those large-format prints you see wrapping  buses and the exteriors of public buildings, as well as wayfinding signage, including ADA-compliant Way Finding signs.

Steve’s dad, Charles Perret, bought the company in the 1980s from its original founders, Mr. and Mrs. Carl Letterman. Today, Steve and his brother Chuck help their dad run the business and have expanded its footprint beyond Baton Rouge, to New Orleans, and Lake Charles.

Steve (technically,  "Dr. Steve" actually) has been with the company since the 1990s. Among his several degrees from LSU are and MBA and a doctorate in human resource management.

From Signs to Cereal

Moving on to something seemingly even more unremarkable than signs: breakfast cereal! Does the world really need a new cereal? Because the one constant is changes, yes we do.

Rich Simmerman is CEO and co-founder of Ceres Plant Protein Cereal, a startup that has created a breakfast cereal for people who subscribe to plant-based lifestyles. The cereal has 20 grams of plant-based protein and no sugar! It's made from naturally grown ingredients free of herbicides and chemicals. Its low-carb, diabetic friendly, keto friendly, vegan, plant based and - get this - it tastes good.

Rich grew up like a lot of American kids – eating a lot of highly processed breakfast cereal loaded with sugar. He was overweight and unmotivated and wanted better for the next generations of kids, so he teamed up with his friend Branson Morgan and in the first 12 months since launching, won local pitch competitions and are scaling up manufacturing and distribution.

Rich is a recent graduate of Loyola University and is currently working on a MBA at Tulane. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When you think about how much can go wrong day-to-day in any single workplace - especially in a fast food restaurant where people unexpectedly don't show up for shifts, machinery breaks, and, by the very nature of the business, customers demand immediate service and almost always know exactly what the product is supposed to taste like - owning 57 of these establishments sounds like an impossible task. Well, how about owning 150? That's the total number of Sonic restaurants Ted developed in his more than 40 year career.

Ted Kergan is originally from Detroit. When he made his way down South, Ted was in Alexandria in 1977 when his brother talked him into joining him in the fast food biz and began his career as a managing partner in a Sonic restaurant. Ted eventually became a partner in the operation with his brother, the late Gary Kergan, who was murdered in 1984.

Anyone who has been around Baton Rouge for a number of years know that Ted played a key role in solving the high profile crime and bringing Gary's killers to justice, though not until nearly 30 years had passed. His tale of detective tenacity became a book, My Brother's Keeper, which Ted helped write along with Chris Russo Blackwood.

While pursuing justice in this case and in the process "consuming a fortune" tracing his brother's killers from New Orleans' French Quarter across the country to Las Vegas, Ted was growing his company. Ted Kergan and his Sonic empire have been recognized as one of the top franchise outlets in the country.

You'll see why we pulled this show out of the archives: it's frank look into the life and business of one of Louisiana s most successful businessmen. This conversation was recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard in Baton Rouge. 

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All sports require organization. And specialty equipment. Football, for example, is arranged by leagues - from high school through the NFL - and requires pads and helmets. Tennis is typically centered on clubs, and requires balls and racquets. Hunting and fishing trips are most often arranged informally by friends, and require rifles, rods and reels.

Stephanie's guests on Out to Lunch today are involved with updating the organization of hunting and fishing trips, and the sale of equipment required for hunting. Namely, firearms.

Laurie Lipsey Aaronson is President and CEO of Lipsey’s, the Baton Rouge-based company that has grown to become the largest firearms distributor to licensed firearms retailers in the country.

Lipsey’s was founded in the early 1950s as a wholesale hunting and fishing distributor named S&S Sporting Goods. Laurie’s father, Richard Lipsey, changed the name when he and members of his family acquired the business in the 1970s and began to expand it.

Today, Lipsey's leads the firearms industry in the collaboration and distribution of exclusive firearms. Lipsey’s also sells silencers, short barrel rifles and accessories.

Laurie - who by the way was one of our first ever guests on Out to Lunch Baton Rouge - grew up learning the business from her dad and became chairwoman and CEO in 1993. She also leads another family business, Haspel, which created the original seersucker suit in New Orleans in 1909 and now offers a vibrant collection of men’s clothing and accessories that Laurie has helped expand and diversify. 

Logan Meaux is founder and CEO of Mallard Bay, a platform for sportsmen looking to book hunting and fishing trips with reputable charters anywhere in the U.S. The platform is like an Airbnb for sportsmen seeking accommodations with real-time availability, secure payments, quality assurance, and help with arranging lodging and meals along with their guided hunts.

Logan is a recent LSU graduate, who was inspired to create the platform after having a particularly difficult time booking a hunting trip for his dad’s birthday. Logan got together with two friends, both then students at LSU, Joel Moreau and Wyatt Mallet, to create the company. They then put together a team of business and computer science students and alumni to help with development. They launched in early 2022. In the short time since then, Mallard Bay has won a pitch competition, attracted local and national publicity and have their platform up and running and attracting users nationwide.

This is all pretty impressive for a first gig right out of college, but then Logan comes by it naturally. His dad is Chris Meaux, founder of Lousiana's extraordinarily successful startup, Waitr, currently known as ASAP.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Joshua Anderson is founder of Accelerant Education, a Baton Rouge-based company that develops software specifically designed to help high school students learn computer science and computer programming.

Joshua started Accelerant when he realized that only about half of the high schools in Baton Rouge have computer science programs. Joshua understands the value of a computer science education: he is a self-taught software engineer and a graduate of LSU’s Flores MBA program. He also directs StartupGrind Baton Rouge, a community of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. 

Marina Biragova is Executive Director of the Technology and Entrepreneurship Clinic at Southern University Law Center here in Baton Rouge. The clinic assists under-represented entrepreneurs across the state with their business formation and structuring, intellectual property, and compliance issues.

Marina is also an Intellectual Property attorney and a small business advocate, with a specialty in technology and business law. She is a graduate from Pyatigorsk Institute of Economics and Governance School of Law, which is in southwest Russia, as well as the LSU Law Center. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

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If you think there's nothing you don't know about online shopping by now, let me you clue you in on the next level, courtesy of Maryclaire Manard.

Maryclaire is founder of Cluey Consumer, an online platform that enables internet and IRL shoppers to practice conscious consumerism by providing them with easy, accessible data that measures a company’s impact on people, politics, and the planet.

The platform is free, and lets users create customized platforms that include the values they prioritize and the brands they currently use. Cluey then lets a user know if their brands are misaligned with their own values, which, in theory could cause them to change their buying patterns, which, in turn, could force companies to change their behavior.

Maryclaire launched Cluey in the summer of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. Before that she graduated from Vanderbilt and spent much of the past decade working in media- and consulting. With the current generation's focus on ethically-produced and green, sustainable products, and businesses' awareness of the need to respond to market demands and be good corporate citizens, Cluey Consumer is the right tool at the right time.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la

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Take, for example, the current experience of Professor Manos Chatzopoulos.  

Manos is Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at LSU. Like a lot of folks on the LSU campus, Professor Chatzopoulos got fed up trying to find a parking space. Where you and I might curse in frustration or even pray for a parking spot before we're late for our appointment, we're not astrophysicists who specialize in supercomputer simulations of supernovae and massive stellar evolution. Manos is. So what did he do? He came up with a parking app.

Park Zen uses smart crowdsourcing to track and connect users with available parking in their vicinity— right down to the spot. It’s like a Waze for parking.

Manos is working on marketing Park Zen to organizations with heavy traffic and parking needs, like college campuses and shopping malls. 

Manos is not only making life easier for his colleagues and students on the car-crowded LSU campus, he's also getting noticed in the entrepreneurial community. The Park Zen app took first place in the 2022 Baton Rouge Entrepreneur Week Pitch competition, which earned Manos $100,000.

David Price is the creator of another driving-related invention: The Safety Pouch. The Safety Pouch is a high-visibility wallet that a driver can use to present their identification to police officers during traffic stops.

The brilliance of the bright orange pouch is that it’s easy for a driver in a traffic stop to grab off the sun visor, snap it on the open car window and keep their hands in plain sight.

David brought the pouches to market during the ascendancy of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Safety Pouch is aimed at demonstrating cooperation and cutting down on dangerous, sometimes deadly, misunderstandings.

Entrepreneurially, it was the right idea at the right time and it took off. In the fall of 2021, David successfully pitched Walmart on his product, which ordered 15,000 pouches and now sell it in 400 stores - while David was still a college student at Loyola!

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Jody Mitchell is CEO of Directed Analytics, a Baton Rouge-based company focused on helping businesses with a range of services designed to generate ideas, develop systematic approaches, and come up with scalable solutions to help an organization succeed.

Specifically, the firm uses technology and data to come up with new processes, procedures, and ways to measure productivity and performance in areas like accounting, workforce, IT, digital marketing and cybersecurity.

Jody co-founded the firm in 2014 and in the years since has seen it grow to help  clients in a range of industry sectors.

When you get your business humming along and you're making money, you might decide it's a good time to sell. When that days comes along, selling your business isn't as easy as putting up a "For Sale" sign. Brandon Bourgeois is Senior Vice President and Marketing Director Of Sunbelt Business Brokers of Baton Rouge. The company is a local franchise of a national business brokerage firm that boasts it has sold more businesses through its more than two dozen franchisees around the country than any other business broker in the world.  

Sunbelt was started in the late 1970s in Charleston, South Carolina and specializes in helping mostly small businesses, offering an array of services that include not only pairing buyers and sellers together but helping a business owner decide how to price their business for sale and how to market it.

Brandon is a Baton Rouge native and graduate of LSU, who joined Sunbelt in 2012 after learning about it around the family dining table. Brandon's father, Bob Bourgeois, is the local franchise owner, who has grown the company beyond Baton Rouge to include all of Louisiana, parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.com.

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The concept behind this fundamental urban planning is, given that there are inevitably going to be wealth differences between different parts of town, as much of the structure of the city as can be controlled by ordinances and planning will ensure there are equally-distributed services like adequate public transportation, sanitation, green spaces and foliage. And conversely, there are not unequally created vast acres of concrete and food deserts.

As you know if you've ever lived in a city, these basic tenets are not as easy to implement and provide as they might seem. And, despite its relatively compact size and adequate financial resources, Baton Rouge is no exception.

We're the seat of State government and so our legislators see first hand every day, as they navigate the city, exactly where our deficits lie. And still, the city and its politicians can evidently only do so much to provide residents with the level playing field we all want as our urban foundation.

In Baton Rouge, we're fortunate to have people and organizations who have stepped up to independently improve our social system and try and make the city a better place for all of us. Two of these people and organizations are Stephanie's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch.

Samantha Morgan is Projects Manager at an organization called The Walls Project. The Walls Project's self-described mission is to lead programs, events, and alliances that work to break through and tear down the societal walls that discourage or prevent people from living safe, healthy, and prosperous lives.

Even if you think you've never heard of the organization, if you've spent any time at all in Baton Rouge you've seen the murals they've sponsored and created all over town. They're too numerous to enumerate but if you've ever noticed an eye-catching mural on a wall in the city it's more than likely one of The Wall's Project walls.

But painting on walls, if perhaps the most visible aspect of their work, is only a very small part of the organization's activities. Their programs range from a Tech Academy and a Coding Boot Camp in which kids who might not normally have access to such education learn tech skills that can lead to well-paid employment, to Baton Roots, a community farm and garden network.

Darlene Adams Rowland is Executive Director of BREADA (Big River Economic and Agricultural Development Alliance), the organization that owns and runs the Red Stick Farmer's Market. 

BREADA was initially created to "increase economic opportunities for small farmers," which in its quarter century of existence it has certainly accomplished.

In bringing the products of small farmers to the city, BREADA has also created a permanent downtown market and a mobile farmers market serving those limited-access neighborhoods we have come to call food deserts. They also provide incentives to assist low income families to increase access to fresh food, and have created a kids club that teaches healthy lifestyles to our youngest market shoppers.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

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With a growing acceptance of climate change, and policies in Washington that incentivize the development of renewable energy sources, it’s an exciting time to be in the clean energy space. Louisiana, because it already is home to so many petrochemical facilities, is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the growth.

But renewable energy and clean energy are terms that get thrown around freely and actually cover a wide variety of energy types. There is even some disagreement about whether certain types of clean energy are really as clean as they claim to be. What’s going on in Louisiana and where do the opportunities lie?

Renewable Diesel is a Big Deal

One person who certainly knows what's going in the renewable energy sector locally and worldwide is Bryan Christjansen, General Manager of  Renewable Energy Group’s facility in Geismar. REG produces about 75 million gallons of renewable diesel each year, and renewable propane, all sourced from leftover byproducts that nobody wants.

The local plant on Highway 30 is one of 11 REG facilities in the US and Germany that together produce more than 500 million gallons of biodiesel per year. REG's industry leading stance in biodiesel from its home here in Baton Rouge is such a big deal that it attracted the attention of oil giant Chevron in June of 2022, which acquired the company for a figure north of $3B. REG is expanding to contribute around 25% of Chevron's worldwide bio-diesel production goal of 100,000 barrels by 2030.

Here Come The Sun

As you have no doubt noticed, there's a lot of sunshine here in Louisiana. That's why we're not only a leader in oil and gas and renewable diesel, but also in solar power generation.

Pierre Moses is President of 127 Energy, a firm that specializes in developing solar- and battery-powered clean energy solutions for businesses, community institutions and individual customers. Pierre and his firm are experts in helping design and finance these clean energy systems, and have a mission to help make these systems more accessible to those who can least afford it, while also helping to address climate change.

Pierre co-founded the firm in 2009, on the heels of founding another successful startup  -- Make It Right Solar, a for-profit subsidiary of Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation, where he structured and completed more than 250 solar projects. 

If you believe the traditional group-think - that Louisiana is stuck in the mud and weighed down by our subservience to the traditional oil and gas industry - this edition of Out to Lunch is an eye-opener. It's nothing short of amazing to hear about the nationwide and worldwide industry-leader positions Louisiana is taking in renewable energy.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

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That engineer is Elizabeth Valenti, president and CEO of QRisq Analytics, the tech company that came up with this predictive technology.

Qrisq uses  geospatial analytics engines on big data to provide precise storm surge and wind risk analysis before and after a major storm. This is really important before a storm for all sorts of obvious reasons – like it can help you decide whether you should stay or evacuate, for instance, and whether it’s absolutely necessary to board up those windows. It’s also important on the back end because it can help resolve insurance claims, by determining whether a property was damaged by wind, which is covered by homeowners policies, or by flooding, which is covered by flood insurance.

Elizabeth developed the technology in the early 2000s, when she was working at Stennis. In 2015, she spun QRisk Analytics off into its own company. Until recently, the tool was only available to government clients, like municipalities, who have used it to help inform their policy decisions about how to prepare their populations.

Beginning with hurricane season 2022, Elizabeth has rolled out a web version of the QRisq app that will enable individual homeowners to determine the risk to their specific properties. Is this going to be an absolute game-changer for all of us living on the Gulf Coast who every time a storm heads our way have to decide whether to stay or run? Unfortunately it's taking a hurricane for subscribers to QRisq to find out. But as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, that day is coming.

Elizabeth grew up in St. Bernard Parish, an area that has been battered more than a few times by massive storms. She received her electrical engineering degree from LSU. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.

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We’re renowned the world over for our Cajun and Creole cuisines, our seafood industry, and the many restaurants and famous chefs we have produced. But Louisiana also has a thriving culture for food entrepreneurs. People may bemoan that our tech or manufacturing sectors lag those of Texas or Silicon Valley, but they cannot quibble with the fact that food-based businesses in Louisiana are a slam dunk!

Somebody who's seen more food entrepreneurial slam-dunks than anyone in the state is Gaye Sandoz.

Gaye is Director of Foodii,  the LSU Ag Center’s Food Innovation Institute. It's a business incubator that specifically helps food entrepreneurs develop, test, produce, package and brand that delicious salsa or healthy protein bars or to die for cookies they’ve made for years to the rave reviews of their family and friends.  

In the 10 years she has been at the helm of the incubator, Gaye has helped launch literally dozens of food business. She also has developed several successful products of her own, including the Clever Kitchen Microwave Barbecue Chicken Roasters, of which she has sold more than 60-thousand on shopping channel QVC.

Gaye first began working in the industry Edible Enterprises in Norco and started her own company, Sandoz Marketing Specialists, to offer consulting services in marketing and food product development. 

Alvin Tanner is a recent beneficiary of Gaye's expertise. Alvin is owner of Alvin Ray’s Bayou Best Pickles, a food start up based in Gonzales that makes a variety of jarred pickles, the signature of which is a sweet, crisp tangy pickle that Alvin describes as a cross between a dill and a bread-and-butter.

Alvin launched the company in 2014, when he started making the first of what would become three versions of his signature pickles. In the years since, he has grown his sales and distribution network, and today his pickles can be found in more than 400 supermarkets in six states, as well as in several local and regional restaurants.

Bayou Best Pickles have also proven incredible popular on the rodeo circuit! (Who even knew there was a rodeo circuit in south Louisiana?)

As the name on the label suggests, Alvin is from "down the bayou" and has been experimenting in the kitchen since he was a kid. He gave up his day job as a xx to work on Alvin Ray’s Bayou’s Best Pickles full time, and as he says in his inimitable Bayou Cadence, "I can't stop."

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

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Well, in Baton Rouge, one place to look is LSU's Innovation Park and a company called Iventherm.

Inventherm's latest innovation is a new startup company called Cremmjoy.

Jason Hugenroth is President of Inventherm and Cremmjoy. You may recall Jason's earlier appearance on Out to Lunch when Jason told us about products Inventherm had made for space exploration. Products that found their way into NASA's equipment. At that time Inventherm was the owner of 50 patents. Now they have 60. And their new business, Cremmjoy, is a million miles way from their previous aerospace, automotive and medical devices.

Cremmjoy revolutionizes soft serve ice cream and frozen drinks like daiquiris. The revolution is in the technology that drives the way products are made and dispensed. It basically eliminates the time-consuming and expensive process of disassembling, cleaning, and sanitizing the equipment.

Jason has been designing things for decades. He is an engineer, with a PhD in the field and a really cool lab at LSU’s Innovation Park. 

You may not have known soft serve ice cream needed revolutionizing. And you may think the same about retail shopping. Claire Aillet has other ideas. Claire is the creator of Shop The Area, an app that allows customers to shop at local boutiques and retail shops and get same-day delivery within 10 miles of their location.

The app brings together the convenience of online shopping while at the same time supporting local shop and boutique owners, who have been hammered by  competition from online retailers.

Claire is a hair stylist by day, who began working on the app in 2018 and launched it in early 2020. Since then it's started to take off in Baton Rouge with a bunch of local retailers jumping on board and users beginning to discover the combined hybrid power of local retail, online shopping, and speedy delivery.  

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Although progress has been made addressing this very real problem, climate change has continued to make the situation more dire, as temperatures increase and storms become more frequent and intense.

What exactly is the status of Louisiana’s efforts to protect and rebuild its coastline? Where are we in the battle against mother nature? 

To get a readout on how close we are in Louisiana to slip-sliding away into the Gulf of Mexico, we turn to Chip Kline. Chip is Executive Assistant to the Governor for Coastal Affairs, and board chair of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, the state agency in charge of saving the Louisiana coastline, which is no small task.

In 2023 the CPRA will oversee some $1.35 billion in coastal projects – the largest amount ever in the more than-decade-long history of the state’s coastal program. Those projects include things like sediment diversions, rebuilding marshland, the construction of flood protection structures and water management efforts.  

Chip has served as chair of the CPRA board since 2018, where he has overseen policy initiatives. He also manages the day-to-day operations of the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities, which means he is responsible for integrating the functions of all state agencies as they relate to coastal protection and he has been integral in advancing the objectives of the State’s Coastal Master Plan in Louisiana and Washington, D.C. which means he has to be well versed on technical and engineering topics while also comfortable navigating the often choppy political waters of Baton Rouge and DC. 

Kodi Guillory is President of Sustainable Design Solutions, a Baton Rouge based civil engineering specializing in water treatment plant design, wastewater treatment systems, water quality, coastal restoration permitting, marsh creation design and shoreline protection design.

Water and preventing us sliding into the water is a booming field to be in these days in south Louisiana, and Kodi is one of the area’s leading experts. She spent nearly seven years on the staff of the CPRA as an engineering supervisor, where she designed and implemented many of the agency’s projects before going out on her own in 2019 to create sustainable design solutions.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts. at itsbatonroug.la. And check out more conversation about Baton Rouge's love/hate relationship with water and our  never-ending (hopefully) struggle with water  

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The need to keep up with the latest fashion trends is fueling an 8% annual growth in fast fashion, a rate that is unprecedented and largely attributable to the growth of social media. But some entrepreneurs are bucking the mainstream with fashionable trends of their own: vintage clothing and sustainable jewelry.

Josh Holder is the owner of Time Warp Boutique, a vintage clothing store in Mid City that carries original men’s and women’s clothing and accessories dating from the 1920s to the early 2000s.

Josh opened the store in 2001, back before vintage got to be a thing. In the years since, he has grown the store to be one of the largest vintage clothing stores in the south, with a selection of merchandise that also includes hand crafted upcycled vintage garments, accessories, gifts and jewelry by local artists.

Josh didn’t grow up wanting to own a vintage clothing store. Instead, he became enamored of the concept when he went into a vintage clothing store in the 1990s and got hooked.

Originally, Josh majored in history at LSU which is more-or-less fitting: today, he considers himself something of a fashion archeologist. 

Molly Taylor Hatcher is a Louisiana artist and owner of Beneath the Bark Jewelry, which makes jewelry from locally sourced reclaimed and salvaged wood.

Molly founded Beneath The Bark Jewelry in 2014, after trying to come up with Christmas gift ideas for her family and friends. In the years since, the company has grown into a fulltime business and brand that has earned Molly national recognition.

In 2019, before the whole world shut down for 2 years, Beneath The Bark was invited to show its jewelry collection at New York Fashion Week, where it earned press coverage in Vanity Fair, Vogue, and The Cut.

Molly designs all of the jewelry sold at Beneath the Bark. All the wood she uses is recycled from woodworker scraps. And designing and making reclaimed jewelry is not Molly's only artistic talent. She's also a respected singer/songwriter. Check out this video or visit Molly's Facebook Page and explore the music she makes with her husband, Denton Hatcher.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.com. And you can check out more lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge recycled records and clothes.

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Lann and Caroline Wolf are co-owners owner of Underwater Adventures, a dive shop in the heart of mid city in Baton Rouge that sells dive equipment, provides service to divers, and offers SCUBA training and certification.

More fun still, Underwater Adventures will take you on a dive trip, where you can build your skills, further your experience and learn to become a master diver.

The business has been a fixture on the Louisiana dive community for over 30 years and the Wolfs bought the business from longtime Baton Rouge dive legend Mark Smith after Lann retired from a career in the military and law enforcement, including a stint as an East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Deputy.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at at itsbatonrouge.la.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. This edition of Out to Lunch continues our series of talking with couples who choose to work together. Despite the fact that most of us assume we could never work with our spouse, the conversations we've had with couples have pointed in the complete opposite direction. It seems like working together has many more advantages than disadvantages.

For conversation about other Baton Rouge adventures, this time in the air, check out Jamie Ray from Air Seekers.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Olivia Stewart is Chief Operating Officer of Three Roll Distillery, a craft distillery located in downtown Baton Rouge that specializes in a variety of rums made from sugar cane that is sourced and grown right across the river at Olivia’s family plantation in West Baton Rouge Parish.

Olivia’s family has owned and operated Alma Plantation since 1859. Her childhood on the farm instilled a passion for all things sugarcane, and eventually rum.

When the pandemic hit, Olivia moved back home to operate the family’s distillery. The company was previously was called Cane Land Rum and has since changed its name to Three Roll Estate. The name refers to a three-roll mill, a type of sugar mill that has been used in sugar production for more than a century. Today, Three Roll distills an array of rums from their own fields and mills. It's a completely unique supply chain the company refers to as "Cane to Glass."

The alcohol production business is, as you might expect, a predominantly male-dominated industry. So it's particularly significant that we're shaking things up here in Baton Rouge.

Cammy Magee is Chief Operating Officer of Tin Roof Brewing, a craft brewery also located in downtown Baton Rouge.  

Cammy’s husband, William Magee, cofounded Tin Roof in 2010 and in the years since it has grown into Baton Rouge’s largest craft brewery with local distribution at restaruants and grocery stores and a popular tap room.

Tin Roof  produces a variety of beers, some year round, some seasonal, including such perennial favorites as Orange Jubilee, King Cake, and Parade Ground.

Lately, the brewery has begun shifting its focus to a taproom-centric format that specializes in niche beers and flavors.

Cammy officially joined the Tin Roof team in 2017, though she had been involved from the beginning, pitching in with whatever needed help and handling marketing and social media. Today she oversees all the day to day operations from label design to production, scheduling and shipping to payroll.

Cammy is originally from Lafayette and has a business degree from the University of Louisiana. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.  And check out when Three Roll was called Caneland Distillery and we sat down with Walter Tharp.

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Tom Neyhart is founder and CEO of PosiGen, a Louisiana-based company that designs and installs solar systems to homes in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and communities of color.

Tom founded the company in 2011, after growing frustrated with the disparate recovery process in post-Katrina New Orleans and wanting to do something to help those with limited means find better more affordable ways to rebuild and move forward. PosiGen provides that help by designing and installing solar-power systems, including solar hot water systems, with roofing and energy-efficiency services added to the mix. The systems are available for purchase or lease and customers have a two-way net meter installed on their homes so they are credited for power they generate.

In the decade since its founding, PosiGen has served more than 18-thousand customers, underscoring the needs for the services it provides.

Tom is a native of Ohio, who came to LSU in the early 1980s to study petroleum engineering and wrestle for the LSU Tigers. 

Ken Tipton is a planner, architect and the Managing Partner at Tipton Associates, a Baton Rouge firm that has worked on the design or renovation of some of Baton Rouge’s best-known structures, including the main library at Goodwood, the LSU Huey P. Long Field House renovation and the new Catholic High School Student Center.  

Ken has been leading Tipton since the early 1980s and has grown the firm from a local firm to one that works nationally in 30 states. He has also served as an adjunct faculty members at the award-winning LSU School of Architecture. Ken also has done master plans for towns, cities and university campuses as well as disaster recovery projects for LSU, LA Tech and East Baton Rouge Schools. 

Both PosiGen and Tipton & Associates are Louisiana-ambassador businesses, working beyond the borders of Louisiana, demonstrating our homegrown forward-thinking and adaptive smarts to the rest of the country.

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erick Otts at itsbatonrouge.la. 

And while you're looking over the horizon, check out how you can get from Baton Rouge to Mars.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jeff Moulton is President and CEO of the Stephenson Stellar Corporation, a not-for-profit applied research firm focused on cybersecurity for its customers, most of whom are federal agencies.

Jeff is a return guest on the show. You may remember our visit with him in 2021. At that time Jeff was also leading the LSU Stephenson National Center for Security Research and Training. But at the beginning to 2022, Jeff left that position to focus his effort solely on the Stephenson Stellar Corporation, which is a fascinating story with so many threads that are unraveled in this conversation.

Jeff is a native of Pennsylvania, who had a 24 year career in the United States Air Force, where he held a diverse array of technical and leadership positions around the world. He then went on to leadership positions in technical and security-related research organizations, including Concurrent Technologies Corporation, the US Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center, and the Georgia Tech Research Institute, before coming to Louisiana to join the LSU Stephenson Center more than a decade ago.

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this by Erick Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But restaurants and caterers aren’t the only ones in the culinary sector. Foodie entrepreneurs in Baton Rouge are coming up with all sorts of new products and services using their creative culinary abilities to fill a gap or carve a new niche.

Take, for example, Mary Joy Fasullo and Ebony McAlister.

Mary Joy is Marketing and Communications Strategist for Focus Foods, a Baton Rouge-based company that provides meals to schools, nursing homes, disaster victims and residential customers.

Focus Foods started in 2019 as a network of former food truck owners who began manufacturing easy-to-prepare, frozen meals. It has grown to now provide 30,000 meals a week for K-12 students across seven parish school districts, and operates in partnership with agencies like Meals on Wheels and nursing homes to provide meals to seniors across 11 parishes.

Since 2019, Focus Foods has produced and delivered more than 25 million meals. And it recently announced plans to expand to a new larger warehouse space that will enable the company to expand its retail food and co-packaging business and expand into new markets out of state.

Mary Joy joined the company at the beginning of 2022 and works with her dad, who is well-known marketing executive and band leader Ned Fasullo. 

Ebony McAllister, along with her two young daughters Bailey and Harper, founded and owns Posh Pop Gourmet Popcorn, a boutique popcorn concept.

When it comes to fancy popcorn, butter, cheese and caramel didn’t go far enough, so the McAlister trio began creating ambitious and delicious popcorn flavors such as Caramel Café Noir; Praline Paradise, and Coco Crunch.

The McAlisters make their product at the LSU AgCenter Food Incuabator, which in 2021, expanded and rebranded as foodii, and sell it at farmers markets and special events around the Capital Region. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

Check out more lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge snack food with this edition of Out to Lunch Baton Rouge, Super Cheesy, about a miraculous machine that delivers a piping hot pizza to order in 20 seconds and Baton Rouge's on gourmet cheeseboards.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today’s LinkedIn world it's easy to connect with people, but how do you get to know the right people? For that matter, how do you really know the people who are a part of your organization and whether they are maximizing their potential?

John Beck can shed a bit of light on these questions. John is CEO of The Assessment Company, a Donaldsonville-based company that specializes in employee assessment solutions - which means, specifically helping match people to the work they do best.

The Assessment Company does this using different IT tools John has developed – software that measures, for instance, a candidate’s cognitive abilities, behaviors and interests, or that predicts the likelihood of certain types of conflicts with employees, or that helps unlock an employee’s hidden potential.

John developed these tools over the past 30 years in his career as an expert in Occupational DNA, and his clients include company’s all over the world. He also hosts the podcast, Hire UP, which covers a range of HR topics with guests’ interviews. And he's the author of a new book, Breaking the Code: Hiring Strategies, Occupational DNA and the modern organization.  

Brian Oliver is co-founder and CEO of Matchpoint Connection, a Baton Rouge based company that also plays a matchmaker role, helping to match brands – like Nike – with talent – like athletes.

This has become a huge thing since NCAA rule changes in 2021 began allowing college athletes to cash in on their Name Image and Likeness or NIL.  But the Matchpoint platform, which functions sort of like a dating app, is not limited to athletes and NIL deals. The platform connects all kinds of people looking for professional hookups, for example bloggers, models or musicians with brands eager to find influencers to partner with.  

Brian co-founded the company in early 2020, shortly before the college NIL deal became a reality. In the two years since, Matchpoint has grown to host about 5,000 influencers in nearly all 50 states and represents 550 brands. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.

Check out John Beck's previous visit to Out to Lunch with his entrepreneur daughter, Emily.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

More recently, you’ve probably heard a lot of buzz about NFTs: digital versions of artworks that are all the rage in sophisticated tech savvy circles and are sold online and can be purchased only with crypto.

Are you able to wrap your mind around either of these concepts? Is it important to understand really what they are and how they work? Is it all just a passing fad or is it the future pathway to wealth as crypto advocates claim in which case should you get in the market now while the getting’s good?

Stephanie Riegel puts these questions to Will Haynie, founder and co-owner of Pelicoin.  Pelicoin is a network of secure cryptocurrency ATMs with more than 35 machines in five states in the South.

Will and his brother founded Pelicoin in 2016, after playing around in the Bitcoin market for several years prior, and it has quickly grown to become the largest network of cryptocurrency ATMs in the Gulf South.

Pelicion’s ATMs enable users to quickly and securely turn cash into cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum. Will is a native of Shreveport and a graduate of LSU, who has been involved with several business ventures and has lived and worked in Richmond, Nashville, Alaska and Zambia. 

Mya Parker is a Baton Rouge NFT artist. She's 15 years old and a student at Zachary High School, where among other things, she is a self described "mature investor" who is building wealth through the sale of her digital art as NFTs.

If you're not totally clear what an NFT actually is, it's simply a piece of art that is created digitally, on a computer, rather than on a canvas. You can think of it as something you'd do in Photoshop. Some NFTs are complex and kinetic while others are simple static line drawings. The biggest to date are a series of images called Bored Apes who have their own nautical-themed society called the Bored Ape Yacht Club. 

Mya got into the NFT market in 2021 and already is selling her NFTs, which is actually a big deal. Most of the hundreds of thousands of NFTs on NFT marketplaces like Open Sea sit there forever and never sell.

From the outside, Baton Rouge might seem like the capital city of the state that is  consumed by politics, the LSU Tigers, and complaints about gridlocked streets. But we're also on the cutting edge of technology, futuristic finance, and art.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website itsbatonrouge.la

There's more lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge's unique and perhaps surprising place in the worldwide NFT marketplace at https://itsbatonrouge.la/2022/03/16/token-travel/ 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While it’s great we have technology to help us do things remotely, Baton Rouge entrepreneurs are helping people realize that institutions like libraries and brick-and-mortar learning spaces play an invaluable role in the learning process, for kids and adults.

Baton Rouge resident Tony Zanders is founder and CEO of Skilltype, a talent management platform that Tony created in 2018 specifically to help libraries better attract, train and retain personnel so they will be better able to compete in the 21st century.

Tony hit upon the idea for Skilltype several years ago, when he realized that many libraries struggle with personnel problems caused by the fact that the training and professional development programs for library employees are still structured around the 20th century model of libraries, which were largely about collections, and have failed to take into account what today’s libraries really need.

Skilltype is a proprietary software that helps train library personnel and then match them to library systems in need. Tony is an ed tech entrepreneur, who worked at Ex Libris and EBSCO, both large library database companies, before founding Skilltype. 

Amanda Vincent is founder, owner and CEO of Studyville, which is based off the We Work shared office space concept but is an academic workspace for teens.

Amanda formed the company in Baton Rouge in 2020, after fighting the homework battle from the front lines of her living room during the COVID lockdown.  She and her husband Benn tried every form of tutoring, coercion, manipulation, and textbook throwing until they realized there had to be a better way – and  Studyville was born.

The venture isn’t Amanda’s first: she co-founded Opera Louisiane in 2007 and later started the Fur Ball, the black tie dog-friendly fundraiser that benefits the Companion Animal Alliance. She figured if she could convince people to dress in ball gowns and bring their dogs with them to a ball, she could probably also convince them that studying could be cool! 

Amanda is a creative with a background in marketing and a masters degree in opera. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la. 

Check out another lunchtime conversation with Baton Rouge entrepreneurs, from old school travel to NFTs. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Monty Sullivan has dedicated his life to rectifying this problem. Since 2014 Dr Sullivan has been President of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, which comprises 14 2-year institutions around the state and is focused on preparing the state’s workforce for the future.

During his tenure to date at LCTS, Monty has strengthened and diversified the system and led strategic planning efforts.

Prior to heading LCTCS, Monty was chancellor of Delgado Community College in New Orleans, which, under his leadership, saw significant gains in fundraising, student outcomes and a reconnection with the business community in the region.

Monty has served in six different colleges and two state community and technical college systems over the last two decades. He is a native of Louisiana, who received his bachelor’s, master’s degree and doctorate from Louisiana Tech. 

Calvin Mills is an entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Help IT, a mobile app that helps small businesses and individuals find instant access to IT services, whether that help be remote or in person. The app has been described as the Uber of tech support because it serves as a broker - pairing needy customers with trained technicians.

Calvin created the app in 201X, under the umbrella of his company, CMC Technology Consulting.

IT consulting is just one hat Calvin wears. He is also a published author, a motivational speaker, and a governmental relations expert.

Calvin is a native of Baton Rouge and graduate of Southern University, where he played football in the 1990s. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website itsbatonrouge.la. And check out this recent lunchtime conversation where Baton Rouge's old school travel agent business meets the blockchain.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As our communities have gotten bigger and restaurants have proliferated, the competition among them has gotten more serious and – as it is when any market gets saturated with competitive choice -  prices come down to attract customers.

Keeping a restaurant open requires more than just the ability to cook good food. For example, the biggest restaurant chains in the world, if you ask a food critic, have the worst food. In this kind of topsy-turvy business, what do you do to keep a restaurant profitable? Do you stick with quality and hope you find an appreciative market? Or do you turn to big data, AI and IT systems designed for the restaurant business?

Stephanie Riegel puts this question to Gabe Piccoli, the Edward G. Schlieder Chair of Information Sciences and a member of the Cultural Computing group at the Center for Computation and Technology at LSU.

Gabe has held tenured academic positions at Cornell, as well as universities in France and Italy. During his tenure at Cornell in the early 2000s, Gabe was on the faculty of the Hotel School, where he became interested in the hospitality industry.

During his 25 year career, which started at LSU with a PhD in information systems, Gabe’s work has focused on the value creation potential of new technology. His academic, teaching and consulting interest is in digital strategy and digital customer service systems. He watched and the studied the digital intermediation of the hotel industry in the 1990s and sees interesting parallels going on today in the Quick Service Restaurant industry – of which Baton Rouge not only has many but is actually home to popular chains like Raising Cane’s.   

Stephen Hightower is on the front line of Baton Rouge's hospitality industry. Stephen is Managing Partner of the City Group Hospitality Restaurant Group, which does not own QSRs but does own and operate 11 operations with 7 unique concepts, including City Pork, Beausoleil, City Slice Pints and Pizza, Proverbial Wine and Bistro, Rouj Creole and Hub and Spoke, as well as Turning Point Food Services, which runs the cafeteria at Catholic High School.

Stephen is steeped in Baton Rouge hospitality know-how. He began his restaurant career at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Baton Rouge and worked his way up the ladder. After launching a couple of his own ventures, he hit on just the right concept for Baton Rouge in 2012 with the launch of City Pork. In the decade since, he has become one of the most successful restauranteurs in the city.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photo from this show by Erik Otts at our website itsbatonrouge.la.  And check out this recent lunchtime conversation with Baton Rouge restaurateurs Misti and Brumby Broussard from BLDG 5.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take, for example, Jerry Pearson. Jerry is owner of Pearson’s Travel, Baton Rouge’s oldest and only family owned full service travel agency.

Jerry has owned the agency since 1981, when he founded it as an offshoot of his Pearson’s Luggage and Gifts that he had opened in the 1970s.

Travel was different back then. And so was retail! But over the past 20 years, the internet has changed all that. Now, travelers can book their own flights and hotel stays online – or even plan their entire trip – and they don’t need to go into a brick and mortar store to buy a suitcase. Those are among the reasons Jerry closed his luggage store in the summer of 2021 and sold the building to a local healthcare company. But he continues to operate the travel agency, which – and this is in keeping with national trends – is doing well.  Turns out, a lot of people don’t like dealing with Orbitz and Travelocity and, if you’re not on a tight budget, why not let an experienced professional navigate the hassles of booking a trip?

Nationwide, travel planners are proving themselves resilient in the age of online everything.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's Chris Cummings. Chris is the owner of Pass It Down, an interactive storytelling platform with a library of templates and cloud-based interactives that companies, nonprofits or institutions can use to create digital storytelling experiences.

Chris founded the company in Baton Rouge-based company in 2015 after he saw his mother battle MS and early onset dementia and wanted to create a way to help his family and other families capture and pass down their memories. Since then, the company has evolved and grown. And from it Chris has created a new company – Iconic Moments. It's the first NFT marketplace for museums and cultural institutions.

An NFT marketplace is what, exactly? It’s a digital platform where NFT's can be stored, displayed, exchanged, and even minted or created. If you don't know what an NFT is, exactly, and "Blockchain" makes your head hurt, Chris is an expert and also an attorney so he is really good at explaining things. He is also a seasoned entrepreneur.

 Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most of us cannot imagine what life would be like if our spouse was also our business partner. Or if our business partner was also our spouse. In some instances it can be a disaster. But it can, apparently, also be the magic bullet; the secret to success.

Take, for example, Misti and Brumby Broussard.

Misti and Brumby have been married for nearly two decades, are parents to two children and co-owners of one of Baton Rouge’s most popular food businesses, BLDG 5.

BLDG 5 is a marketplace, eatery and patio that specializes in seasonally inspired food in a unique, funky location under the Perkins Road Overpass.

Misti and Brumby have a successful track record founding and running small businesses. Before they moved back to Baton Rouge in 2015, they owned an upscale furniture and retail shop in San Diego where they lived for 12 years. They sold the store to a celebrity chef before relocating here. But it wasn’t their first brush with celebrity. Both Misti and Brumby were in the film industry and, in fact, met on the set of “America’s Sweethearts” before becoming restaurateurs.

Misti has a degree in speech communication and marketing but worked in film production and as a costume designer. Brumby worked in various roles on 30 films and spent three years as an assistant to Julia Roberts. As if that isn’t interesting enough he was trained professionally as a chef, right here in Louisiana at the Louisiana Culinary Institute.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speed Bancroft, who, besides having perhaps the coolest name in the world, is an entrepreneur with one of the coolest ideas you can imagine. It’s an automated food kiosk that can deliver hot, fresh food directly to your car window.

Speed’s company, Speedy Eats, has designed a robotic kiosk that can store, warm and serve an array of fresh, hot entrees - like pizza and wings - with side dishes and beverages, while promising investors a quick and easy return on their investment. It’s like something out of the Jetson’s. or perhaps it’s more accurate to think of it as a 21c twist on the Automat of the early 1900's in New York City.

Robyn Nicosia is the owner of Bites and Boards, a Baton Rouge-based business that specializes in cheese boards. Robyn opened the business in 2018 as a cheese board delivery service – who knew people ordered out for cheese boards? – and has since expanded to offer classes in how to prepare cheese and charcuterie boards, and a cheese boutique.

Robyn is planning to expand to a new larger location in the Village at Willow Grove, which will offer cheese boards and cheese pairings with wine.

Robyn is a homemaker, who has always had a passion for cheese. She became a self styled expert in the art of cheese boards nearly a decade ago, when she set out to entertain her then -new husband’s friends. She says her vision is to build community, connection and shared experience through cheese. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website itsbatonrouge.la. That's where you can also find more lunchtime conversation about uniquely Baton Rouge food personalities, Chef Motto and Spuddy.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today’s complex, high-tech, polarized and post-pandemic era, it does indeed, as someone famously once said, take a village to raise a child. You as a parent cannot do it alone. Raising balanced, productive little people requires not only concerned caregivers but a robust school system and a variety of other programs that address emotional, physical and psychological needs.

Dr. Sito Narcisse is Superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish Schools, which has more than 45,000 students. Since taking over at the helm of the system in January 2021, Sito has rolled out an ambitious new strategic plan aimed at improving student achievement and creating a dual enrollment program that will help make more Baton Rouge students ready for college.

Sito comes to EBR Schools with more than a decade as a school system administrator. Before coming to Baton Rouge he served in key leadership positions in the District of Columbia, Metro Nashville, Prince George Co. Maryland and Montgomery.

Dr. Narcisse grew up in New York the child of Haitian parents. His first language was Haitian Creole and he learned English as a second language in school.

The East Baton Rouge Parish School District is a sponsor of Out to Lunch so we’re taking advantage of that by having the Superintendent of the District as our guest. 

Nely Ward and Jennifer Macha Hebert are founders of Basic Fitness, a lifestyle brand with a focus on health and wellness that offers a variety of services that include individual endurance raining, preseason team fitness coaching and nutrition coaching/guidance. They believe that healthy is happy, and work to bring that mentality to our clients and our communities.

Basic Fitness is particularly focused on youth sports, where Nely and Jennifer have noticed that young athletes are being coached out of sports at an early age, while advanced players don’t have the access to sport- specific training. That’s why they are currently developing a digital platform/app that focuses on athletic training and team management for the youth sports market that will deliver sports specific and age-appropriate athletic training for middle and high school athletes as well as those in the travel/tournament/competitive arena.

Nely and Jennifer know something about sports. Nely is a nutritionist and 3-time Ironman who has competed in numerous marathons. Jennifer is a 4-time ironman  competitor and marketing expert. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la. And there’s more lunch-table conversation about Baton Rouge's unique education option where you can graduate with a pilot's license.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kevin Tracy is Director of the National Hansen’s Disease Program, which is based right here in Baton Rouge and is the epicenter of Hansen’s Disease research and information in the United States.

Hansen’s Disease is better known as Leprosy. Although it’s not the biblical plague it once was, it still exists around the world today. Fortunately, a lot more is known about it today than back in biblical times or even in the late 1800s, when south Louisiana was home to one of the country’s foremost leprosy hospitals, or leprosaria, in Carville. Today, that center remains open only as a museum, but the Hansen’s Disease center is alive and well here in Baton Rouge.

Kevin Tracy has been CEO of the center since September of 2019. Prior to that, he worked for the federal government’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services for nearly a decade. Kevin has a degree in nursing and a graduate degree in accounting with a focus on healthcare administration. 

Dr. Jonas Fontenot is Chief Operating Officer of the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, a comprehensive cancer center in Baton Rouge that celebrated its 50th anniversary in late 2021 and recently announced some new partnerships that are reshaping the local cancer care market.

Mary Bird Perkins started out as a radiation treatment center – the first in Baton Rouge – and has since expanded to provide a range of service to thousands of patients across the region.

Jonas Fontenot is not only a medical doctor, as well as an MD he's also an expert in medical physics, with a Ph.D in medical science.  In addition to helping lead Mary Bird Perkins, he continues to teach and do research and has been the recipient of more than $4M in research grants to support his work around cutting-edge radiation treatments. 

As impressive as Jonas's resume is, probably his greatest claim to fame in Baton Rouge is that he helped care for Mike the Tiger No. 6, when the big cat mascot was diagnosed with a rare cancer several years ago. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website. And there's more lunch-table conversation about Baton Rouge healthcare at our website itsbatonrouge.la.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this edition of Out to Lunch Baton Rouge we meet a couple of folks who know this journey well.

Clerc Bertrand is founder and owner of Workaru, an app that you can kind of think of as an Airbnb for office space.

The Workaru app lets professionals find, compare, and book on-demand workspaces. Workaru helps connect people looking for a temporary workspace with businesses looking to monetize their available space - maybe an empty office, a conference room  or a shared work room. This is especially relevant in the era of Covid, when a lot of employers are paying pricey leases every month for a lot of large office space they no longer need. 

Currently, Workaru has available space listed in four of Louisiana’s five largest cities. Clerc is a native of small town Louisiana, who, also has had something of an illustrious professional track career and was a traveling representative for Brooks running company before coming up with the Workaru app.

Bill Ellison is CEO of Innovation Catalyst, a nonprofit venture capital fund based at the Research and Technology Park here in Baton Rouge. The fund provides seed capital to Louisiana-based high-growth tech companies.

Bill also heads up the Red Stick Angel Network, which is owned by Innovation Catalyst and seeks to identify, vet, and then aggregate it's members' investment capital to fund early-stage companies in Baton Rouge and elsewhere in Louisiana.

Bill Ellison is a serial entrepreneur, attorney, and private investor, who was in private practice for 20 years before pivoting to the entrepreneurial world in 2000, when he became an investor, General Counsel and Director of a HIT start-up company. Bill has subsequently started, operated, and invested in several start-up companies.

Normally Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard and we'll be returning to our regular lunch table next week. This week, conditions forced us onto Zoom. You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website, itsbatonrouge.la where you can also check out more lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge startups. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are surrounded by lakes and bayous. We're bisected by one of the largest rivers in the world. And we're sloughing off a football field of land every 30 minutes into the massive Gulf of Mexico that makes up our south coast.

We are so vulnerable to the power of all this water, and also so dependent on it. We love the water - we rely on it not just for sustenance but also for recreation. We even pay companies to dig pools of water in our back yards so we can swim, sunbathe and entertain.

Unsurprisingly, Louisiana businesses and institutions have become experts in water – how to contain it, control it and have fun with it.

Alyssa Dausman is Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist at the Water Institute of the Gulf, an independent, non-profit, applied research institution that was created right here in Baton Rouge over a decade ago to advance science and develop integrated methods to solve complex environmental and societal challenges around coastal and climate-related issues.

Alyssa has more than 20 years experience working in hydrology and science to support decision-making. She is currently leading strategic planning efforts for Gov. John Bel Edwards’ Climate Task Force as well as for the Capital Area Groundwater Conservation Commission. In addition, she’s working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on developing and implementing Strategic Planning for Research and Development. She is an expert on issues related specifically to the Gulf of Mexico, and has been published and lectured all over the world. 

Parker Ewing is owner of Ewing Aquatech Pools, a Baton Rouge-based swimming pool contractor that has been in business since 1966 and has designed and built more than 6-thousand pools and hot tubs for customers throughout Louisiana and Mississippi. Aquatech is a family business that Parker joined after graduating from the University of Alabama, where he majored in political science and Russian – an interesting combination that on the face of it might not sound like preparation for a life digging pools, but Parker the Pool Digger is a lesson in not judging a book by its cover!

Due to the state of the Covid 19 Omicron pandemic when this show was recorded, we were forced out of our usual launch spot onto Zoom. But normally Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard.

Jill Lafleur took photos of this conversation which you can find at our website, itsbatonrouge.la. And you can hear more lunch-table conversation about Baton Rouge's relationship to water here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jenny Ballard is the managing artistic director of Theatre Baton Rouge. Jenny began her career in Tennessee and came to Baton Rouge after several years in local theater there, to pursue a master’s degree in fine arts. After completing the program, Jenny joined Theater Baton Rouge in 2014, and in the years since has helped lead the company through many successful productions, a huge capital campaign and efforts to grow the company’s volunteer base and its education programs. 

Venessa Lewis is also in the performing arts arena -  though not on stage. Rather, she’s more likely to show up at a kiddie birthday party or perhaps swimming with the sharks in Mexico dressed up as the Louisiana Mermaid, which is her alternate persona. Venessa has a custom-made mermaid costume that she wears for public appearances, where she not only entertains but teaches young people about the oceans and marine life conservation. She also owns the Petite Princess Company, which rents out princesses for birthdays and other events. 

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Ken Stewart on our website. And for more fun in Baton Rouge, check out what you can do on a bike.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renee Chatelain is President of the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, a nearly 50-year-old nonprofit that promotes cultural growth, economic development, and educational enhancement through the arts in and around the 11-parish Capital Region that it serves. As the Arts Council of the Capital City, the organization is a hub for information and resources benefiting organizations and residents statewide.

Renee has been at the helm of the organization since 2015 and in that time has helped grow the Arts Council and lead it through its recent expansion and relocation. The new center opened in the fall of 2021, just as the community was emerging from the fourth surge of the Covid crisis, a time when many arts organizations were grappling with very real challenges to their sustainability. Thanks to the leadership and stewardship of Renee, Baton Rouge didn’t lose any organizations to Covid.

Chelsey Laborde Blankenship is a longtime board member of the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Louisiana, an organization that, like the Arts Council is providing an invaluable service to the community. Actually, make that nine communities!

In April 2021, the Boys and Girls Club of Southeast Louisiana and the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Baton Rouge merged to become the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Louisiana in order to better serve some 20-thousand families in nine southeast Louisiana parishes. The organization provides out of school programs for boys and girls, including dynamic opportunities to promote the healthy lifestyles and academic success of its members.

Chelsea spent four years at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Baton Rouge as its resource development and marketing associate before branching out and creating her own communications and marketing firm, CLB Consulting. 

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website. And check out more recent conversation about Baton Rouge arts and sciences with artist Rob Carpenter and PC OG Tim Rauls.

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Commerce has evolved from local service providers to department stores, big box retailers and online sites, but, here in Baton Rouge, although old fashioned businesses have become fewer and far between, they haven't completely disappeared.

Clyde Lawrence is owner of MIlitello’s Shoe Repair, a venerable Baton Rouge business that has been around since 1972. Everybody knows Militello’s and gets their shoes repaired there, or, at least, polished and shined.

Clyde came to Baton Rouge from his native Bossier City to seek his fortune in the chemical plants in the mid-1970s. He stumbled instead into Militello’s and landed a job. He’s been there ever since. In early 2018, he and his wife bought the business from longtime owner Fred Militello, who was retiring. Arguably, no one was better suited to run the service-based business but Clyde,  at the time, was himself thinking about retirement. Instead, he jumped in with both feet, took the plunge and today is not only the local tradition alive, he's growing the business! 

Geno Brown is co-owner of Brown and Brown Custom Clothiers.

Geno has been a custom tailor almost his entire career, because Brown and Brown is a family-owned business that was started under the name Fashion Limited, by Geno’s father, the late Eugene Brown, who died in 2019.

Today, Geno and his brother, O’Lindsey Brown, run the company, which was re-branded in 1993 when the Browns moved away from carrying ready-to-made clothes and started making their own custom, handmade garments using fabrics the Browns find on buying trips around the world.

Geno didn’t necessarily intend to be a haberdasher. He went to Morehouse College and graduated from Southern University with dual degrees in math and physics, then taught physics for a year before joining the business. He holds certified master tailor and certified master clothiers designations.

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded over lunch at Mansurs On The Boulevard restaurant. You can see photos from this show at our website.

Check out Baton Rouge's other premiere tailor Manuel Martinez.

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We often tend to describe people as left brain or right brain people, depending on whether they’re particularly gifted with one set of abilities or the other. Is this valid? Or does a successful computer guy need to have artistic skills as well? Does a successful artist need a left brain as well?

Tim Rauls might be considered a left brain person. Tim is the owner of Tim’s Computers, a PC retail and repair shop on Sherwood Forest in Baton rouge that has been fixing the computers of a loyal clientele for more than 25 years. In the decades since, Tim has seen the PC retail and repair business change considerably - from an era where the local IT guy was indispensable to one where he has been replaced by some techy in a call center 4000 miles away.

But through it all Tim’s Computers has survived the disruption - because there is still a segment of the market that doesn’t do online tech support.

When you walk into Tim’s you see a steady stream of mostly older customers who literally don’t know where to go when their trusty PC crashes.

Rob Carpenter is a local visual artist who specializes in drawings using a variety of media that produce intricate patterns using shapes and particularly lines.

Rob was a professor of art at Nicholls State University for more than a decade, and though retired from teaching, continues to spend his days drawing and painting in his backyard studio.  Rob's work appears regularly at the Baton Rouge Gallery and is featured in a new satellite studio of the Baton Rouge Gallery at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport. His work has also appeared in venues throughout Baton Rouge and has hung in galleries around the country.

Out to Lunch was recorded at La Divina Italian Cafe in the Acadian Village Shopping Center. You can see photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website.

And check out more lunchtime conversation about the Baton Rouge art scene

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A lot of research around agriculture - and it’s sister discipline, horticulture – goes on right here in Baton Rouge, where we also have some micro organic farms in the middle of the city!

Heather Kirk Ballard is Assistant Professor of Consumer Horticulture in the School of Plant, Environmental, and Soil Sciences at Louisiana State University's AgCenter. The Ag Center has stations in all 64 parishes around Louisiana and works directly with the agriculture and horticulture industries to bring the latest in cutting edge research from LSU out into the field.

In addition to her research and extension program, Heather is the host of the AgCenter’s Get It Growing program, which is a user-friendly guide to growing for the average person, and a member of the Louisiana Super Plants Program. Her extensive research focuses on consumer’s home garden needs, the effect of plants on the environment, our health, the economy and the community. 

But Heather isn’t just a researcher. She spent several years working in the commercial sector, most recently at General Electric and EcoLab, monitoring and maintaining water quality. And before that she was a high school teacher. 

Allison Guidroz is co-owner of Fullness Organic Farm, a small organic farm right here in Baton Rouge off Nicholson Drive near Gardere.

Allison is a Baton Rouge native, who fell in love with growing food while in college at LSU. She worked in community gardens, took an organic gardening horticulture course and started a business putting in custom organic raised beds.

After graduating, Allison and her husband, Grant, did a year of service through AmeriCorps with Slow Food Baton Rouge and continued work with community gardens, installed school gardens and hosted local food events. In 2015, they started Fullness Farms, with the goal of growing the best food possible for their friends and family.

Allison has since gone to complete a master’s degree in horticulture and the small organic farm the couple started for themselves has turned into a - pardon the pun - growing business.

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On The Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website. And check out more fascinating conversation about Baton Rouge's unique culture of agriculture: farming oysters.

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Greg Milneck is president and owner of Digital FX, which produces commercials and feature films, as well as post production work for the movie and TV industry. The company also rents equipment and leases out its 15,000-square-foot LEED certified studio for film and video shoots. Greg founded the company nearly 30 years ago, and in the decades since it has been involved in hundreds of projects including some of the big budget films that have been shot here in Louisiana, and it’s racked up dozens of awards. 

Anne Milneck, is the owner of Red Stick Spice Company, which sells spice blends, loose teas, small portions of freshly ground exotic spices, oils and vinegar from its story on Jefferson Highway in Mid City. Anne is a writer and professionally trained chef, and Greg’s wife. Anne bought the Red Stick Spice Company from its original owners in 2012. Since then she has grown the company, expanded its product line, relocated to a new, bigger and more visible and is planning to open a barista-run tea bar serving cups of its inhouse tea brand.

Photos at Mansurs on the Boulevard by Ken Stewart. 

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Calvin Fabre is President and CEO of Envoc, a software development and services firm he founded in 2003. Calvin is the creator of LA Wallet app, one of many but far and away Envoc’s most visible product.

In 2018, before anyone had ever heard of Covid, Calvin created the digital drivers license, which slid into your digital LA Wallet, making Louisiana the first state in the nation to offer such a product. The Louisiana State Legislature even passed specific legislation to make a digital driver's license on LA Wallet legal everywhere - from being pulled over by the police to getting into a bar.

Then the pandemic hit.

What seemed like the most negative event of recent times became an extremely positive development for Envoc. The State of Louisiana expanded the digital driver's license on LA Wallet to include a digital proof of Covid vaccination. Today, prompted largely by the need to show proof of current vaccination to get into many bars, restaurants, or a Saints game, more than 1 million people in Louisiana have downloaded LA Wallet. It's the biggest digital ID platform in the US. And it's poised to spread beyond state lines.  

Cody Louviere is founder of King Crow Studios, a local digital media company that specializes in virtual reality and, specifically, using VR tools to train some pretty important clients – like the US Air Force and the US. Space Force.

Though the pandemic didn’t force Cody and his company to create any new products or services per se, it created opportunities for its existing clients to accelerate their training so that when their employees returned to the office they were able to train them faster and more efficiently, and achieve better outcomes.

In addition to running his own tech company, Cody works with the Louisiana Technology Park to develop and retain the digital media workforce available in our area. 

Cody and Calvin are undoubtedly two of the brightest stars in the local tech galaxy collectively referred to as Silicon Bayou.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website. And check out Calvin Fabre's earlier to visit to Out to Lunch in a pre-Covid world. 

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Very few people within a 500mile radius of downtown Baton Rouge know this more than Jeff Moulton. Jeff is President and CEO of Stephenson Technologies Corporation, a nonprofit applied research and development corporation that does cyber research and development, and also provides cybersecurity services for clients in the federal government, commercial and energy sectors.

Jeff is also President and Chairman of the Board of a related entity, Stephenson Stellar Corporation, which helps provide next generation cybersecurity solutions for space systems.

Jeff is doing a lot of cutting edge and highly classified work for some very impressive clients. He has in-depth experience within the intelligence communities assessing and defining corporate-level and globally deployable network security solutions. He also participates in numerous national and international cyber forums.

For a bit of contextual background: Jeff is a native of Pennsylvania, who spent 24 years in the Air Force, before moving into his career in cybersecurity. 

Jay Hardman is Executive Director of the Port of Greater Baton Rouge. The port is located in Port Allen on the west side of the Mississippi River and sits at the junction of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway at its northernmost point.

The Port of Greater Baton Rouge is the 8th largest in the world in terms of annual tonnage, and handles a variety of bulk and breakbulk cargoes for domestic and international markets in, primarily, the agricultural, forestry and petrochemical sectors.

Jay has been with the port since 1999 and was named Executive Director in 2006. In his years at the helm he has overseen $45 million in infrastructure improvements, has been involved in enhancing port security measures, and designing and developing new economic development projects. 

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can see photos this show by Erick Otts at our website. And check out this lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge's little known link to space and the mission to Mars.

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But, deep space doesn't have any connection to Baton Rouge, does it? Yes, Luke, it does!

Bob Fudickar is Executive Director of the LSU National Center for Advanced Manufacturing, which, among other things, is building the rocket NASA is sending astronauts to Mars. The center is located at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, and is home to  partnership between NASA, the state of Louisiana, LSU, UNO and the UNO Research and Technology Foundation. It was originally formed in 1999, and is a state of the art research and production center focused on applying advanced manufacturing technologies to lightweight composite and metallic materials in support of the NASA space program and adjacent industries.

Bob Fudickar has spent his career in business and technology in south Louisiana, including stints at Arthur Andersen, General Electrics and NASA.

Serena Pandos is Executive Director of the Louisiana Art and Science Museum, which among other things, gets a lot of kids thinking about going to Mars, and elsewhere in space. That’s because the LASM is home to the Irene Pennington Planetarium, a 60-foot domed theater that is one of the most sophisticated multimedia presentation venues in the country.   

And the LASM is about more than just the planetarium. It is has a permanent collection of American and European art, Louisiana modern and contemporary art, photography and exhibitions on ancient Egypt, the solar system and the universe.

It's not unusual for people living in small Louisiana towns to think they're the center of the universe. Think for example of Crowley that bills itself as "The Rice Capital of the World" or Ville Platte's self-bestowed title as "The Smoked Meat Capital of the World."  Here in Baton Rouge, with our contribution to conquering space and going to Mars, we have a legitimate claim to our place as the actual center of the universe!

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website. And, believe it or not, there are other companies in Baton Rouge in the space industry.

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Primo

Troy Primeaux is the co owner of Primo's Peppers. It's a company that grows several varieties of organic hot peppers which it then sells to specialty food manufacturers not only in south Louisiana but across the country for use in products like hot sauces, spice blends and even coffees. Primo also uses its peppers in its own line, Farmer's Daughter pepper jellies, made by Troy s wife and business partner, Kara Farmer.

If you're a part of the international cult of pepper-heads, which is quite a sizeable group, you will recognize Troy, or at least his name, as the grower of The Primo, the world's hottest pepper. A pepper's heat is measured in "Scovilles." A jalapeno pepper is around 5,000 Scovilles. Troy's Primo Pepper is  a mind-blowing, record-busting1.5m Scovilles. Yes, that's right, 300 times hotter than a jalapeno,

Cajun Crate

Tara Guidry is another entrepreneur who is turning up the Cajun heat and has figured out how to capitalize on Louisiana culture. Tara Guidry is owner of Cajun Crate.

Cajun Crate is a monthly subscription that delivers specially curated boxes filled with Louisiana made products. Each box contains a different array of homegrown Cajun products like coffee, beignet mix, jambalaya, etouffe sauce, and much more. (And go ahead and click on these links: even if you're born and raised in Louisiana you're going to discover some gems you didn't know about.)

Cajun Crate partners with chefs and tastemakers from Louisiana to find the best products from around the state that to deliver to subscribers. There are hyper-local gems known only to inhabitants of small Louisiana towns who are getting a break into a national market thanks to being included in Tara's Cajun Crate.

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You  can see photos from this show by Ken Stewart at our website. And meet another Lafayette entrepreneur who's making waves, Lauren Bercier.

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When shoppers don't care if you're local and, no matter where they live, want current fashion and accessories at a fair price, how does a local business compete?

Scott Berg says it starts with service.

Scott has other strategies too, and proven successes to back them up. Scott is Baton Rouge Market President of Lee Michaels Fine Jewelry, including a Pandora franchise in the Mall of Louisiana.

Scott was just a two-year-old when his father, Lee Michael Berg, opened the first Lee Michaels in Cortana Mall in 1978. Today Scott and his dad work closely together, and Scott's 15 year old has some design ideas of her own.

Scott's daughter could learn clothing design and manufacture with Andrea Eastin. Andrea's company, Fair Fit, is a boutique fashion design studio with classes that teach people of all ages and both genders to sew, design and customize our own clothing. And you might be surprised to learn that a good number of Baton Rouge men are sitting down designing and sewing their own clothes.

We often talk about Baton Rouge developing its own signature style these days. Scott Berg and Andrea Eastin are part of that emerging independent style.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can see photos from this by Ken Stewart at our website. Here's more lunchtime conversation about local couture.

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Scott Nesbitt is a wetlands ecologist and the owner of Natural Resource Professionals, a consulting firm that provides regulatory expertise to municipalities, industrial interests and developers within South Louisiana. The firm’s regulatory expertise includes conducting all surveys and site studies required to identify jurisdictional wetlands and secure the necessary permits from the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Scott is also an investor in and manager of the Spanish Lake Mitigation bank, which helps drain much of Ascension and Iberville parishes. Scott has been in the business since 1987,  when the US Army Corps of Engineers officially recognized wetlands as a regulated “Waters of the US”. Since that time, he has gained widespread experience as a technical and regulatory wetland specialist. 

Ken Rust is owner of Enterprise Aquatics, a Baton Rouge based company that specializes in water and water management in several distinct ways. Enterprise Aquatics has two subsidiaries: One, Louisiana Pond Management, manages ponds and lakes, large and small, for aesthetics, water quality, and sport fish production.  The other is a new company  Small Scale Aquaponics, which specializes in water based food production, including aquaculture, aquaponics, and hydroponics. 

Ken Rust is a native of Louisiana and a graduate of LSU with a degree in aquaculture and fisheries. He has been in the water business for more than two decades. 

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard in Baton Rouge. You can see photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website. And here's more lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge's ongoing struggles with water.

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Ashley Shelton has answers to these questions. Ashley is founder, president and CEO of the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, a statewide 501(c)3 organization in Louisiana that uses a broad-based strategy of community organizing, issue advocacy, and civic action to give underserved populations a voice in the halls of power. They specialize in in focusing on workers' rights, community health and criminal justice reform. 

Ashley has led several  nonprofit advocacy organizations over the years, where she has made a significant impact on policy at the state and local level. She also served as executive vice president at the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, which was created to help improve the quality of life for all Louisianans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Prior to that, Ashley served as Director of Grant-making at the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, one of the most impactful organizations in this region. 

Chris Meyer is CEO of New Schools for Baton Rouge, an organization that was created by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation in 2010 to help attract and grow the most successful non-profit-run public charter schools to Baton Rouge.

In the years since, New Schools has helped attract two-dozen high-performing charter schools that are on track to serving half of public school students in Baton Rouge. Under Chris’ leadership, the organization has raised and deployed more than $70m in its first two Excellence Funds, and spurred more than $150 million in new school facility investments.

Chris began his educational career at Teach for America, where he taught social studies at a public school in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, Chris led over 200 students who had evacuated to a rural parish to achieve significant academic gains. More recently, he served as deputy superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District and, prior to that, as Director of Policy in the Louisiana Department of Education. 

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at our website.

Here's more conversation about mentorship and education in Baton Rouge.

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Jay Babb has a solution for you. Jay is the owner of Secure Shredding and Recycling, a local company that provides document destruction and shredding services on site at your office or home, as well as at its plant-based facilities in North Baton Rouge and, since 2019, Lake Charles.  

Jay founded the company in 2009 and has grown it over the years. Today they shred some 250 tons of paper per month for clients that include government offices, businesses and individuals.

As its name suggests, Secure Shredding and Recycling recycles all that paper it shreds, into alternative fiber products. So the company is protecting the environment while also protecting its clients from information theft. Jay has a background in information management and was involved in several successful ventures before founding Secure Shredding and Recycling, which was listed in 2019 on the LSU 100 list of fastest-growing Tiger-owned business. 

Ryan Greene also has a hate/hate relationship with paper. Ryan is founder of I Hate Receipts, a new app that, as its name suggests, enables users to snap pictures of their paper receipts and store them in a secure, cloud-based “vault,” where they can be easily accessed, tagged and categorized.

Once digitized, the data in your I hate Receipts account can be used in several ways. It can help you better understand your purchase history and manage how and where you spend money.

The app can also be used to electronically submit receipts for reimbursement, cutting down on the time and hassle that employees spend filling out expense reports for employers.

Ryan, who is a commercial real estate broker, conceived of the idea for the app while walking through the Atlanta airport in 2018, saw a kiosk that offered a scanning feature for paper receipts and thought, there must be a better way. 

“There’s gotta be a better way” is the mindset that drives many successful startups, if not all of them. It wasn’t all that terribly long ago that Apple started out as a simple idea: to build a better computer than the then dominant IBM PC. So it’s worth paying attention to our local entrepreneurs as they grow their businesses. You never know where the next big thing is going to come from. It just might be Baton Rouge. 

Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website. And check out Stephanie’s conversation with ex LSU and NFL quarterback Matt Flynn about his startup, MyHy.

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Matt Flynn was a football player who first found fame as a quarterback for the LSU Tigers. Unless you’ve been living under a rock or just moved here, you’ll know that in 2008 Matt led LSU to a BCS National Championship, and to the number one rank in national polls. Matt went on to the NFL where he was on the Green Bay Packers team that won the superbowl in 2011, and he played for a number of other teams in the NFL, including the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks.

Typically, star athletes who graduate from professional sports go on to be a spokesperson for a product, or buy into a local business like a bar where their name and face appears on the awning, but that’s about the extent of their involvement in business. That is not Matt Flynn’s story. Matt has his sights set on the business equivalent of football stardom – the big leagues.

Matt has founded a company called MyHy. MyHy makes a liquid electrolyte drink mix formula to keep you hydrated when you’re working out or working hard or just sweating a lot on a hot day.

As a professional athlete, Matt’s interest in hydration is understandable, but there’s a big difference between enthusiasm and the scientific knowledge and business acumen required to take on the likes of Gatorade. To that end, Matt has partnered with nutrition experts and spent two years developing MyHy.

MyHy uses clean, all-natural ingredients, no unnecessary sugars or flavors, and is formulated to match the user’s specific concentration of sweat, which means it  gives everyone the closest thing to a tailored hydration. You might think of it as smart hydration.

Photos by Jill Lafleur. Check out Matt Flynn’s last visit to Out to Lunch, with his mom who introduces her candy company.

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Diane Baum is owner of Baum Environmental Group, a contract and consulting firm that specializes in helping commercial and governmental clients secure environmental permits dealing with things like storm-water runoff, while also providing services to make sure their clients stay in compliance. Baum helps its clients not only with the planning and the paperwork but also the technical work, silt fencing or hydroseeding, for instance. The company also helps companies determine their environmental risk, and helps commercial and residential customers design more eco-friendly buildings and homes.

Diane is an engineer, who founded the firm in 1995 after leaving the Louisiana Department. of Environmental Quality with a vision of creating a firm that would help small businesses navigate the maze of environmental compliance regulations affordably.

Scott Ricca is owner of Clegg’s Nursery, a locally owned garden center that has been something of an institution in Baton Rouge since its founding in 1955 by Scott Clegg. Over the years, the business grew, and in the 1980s, Clegg sold it to his son, Marshall Clegg, who in 1999 sold it two of its longtime managers – Tom Fennell and Scott. In the more than 20 years they’ve owned the nursery, Scott and Tom have continued to grow the business, which now has four locations.

Clegg’s has also branched (if you’ll pardon the pun) into a wholesale growing operation, with the creation of a 40-thousand square foot green house that cultivates plants and flowers for local retailers to sell. Scott Ricca is a native of Baton Rouge, who got his degree in forestry and wildlife management at Louisiana Tech before returning to Baton Rouge and joining Clegg’s in the 1980s.

Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website. And here’s more lunch table conversation about conserving our environment with Nicole Waguespack from Martin Ecosystems.

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James Newkirk is operations manager of Ride Gotcha by Bolt, an app-based electric bicycle rental company, that began operating in 2019 and has 500 GPS-enabled e-bikes and 50 mobility hubs across Baton Rouge.

The local Baton Rouge operation is part of a national company, Gotcha, which operates its app-based mobile bike rental service in 25 states and over 50 cities.

James is something of a natural to be heading the local service. He’s a native of Baton Rouge and has worked in bicycle shops and raced bicycles for most of his life. He also was a volunteer for the non-profit Front Yard Bikes, which we featured on this show a few months ago, and he managed the Front Yard Bikes shop before joining Gotcha in 2019. 

Chuck Daniel is owner of Geaux Ride, a local company that rents glow-in-the-dark bicycles for nightly bike rides and bike tours of downtown Baton Rouge. The tours are a great way to get out and see the city and stay in shape and they're popular with groups looking for themed parties and events. 

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Chris Tricou at our website.

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Influence

Chenese Lewis is an entertainer, entrepreneur and multimedia success story, who is one of the original plus size influencers in the country. Chenese is a Baton Rouge native, who moved to L.A. to launch her career in the early 2000s and, not long thereafter, won a plus-sized beauty pageant. She went on to become a plus size model, and an advocate for women’s positive body image and self-esteem.

Chenese was an influencer before most people even knew what that was. She launched the first podcast focused on plus sized women in 2008, before most people knew what podcasts were. In 2014, Chenese returned to Baton Rouge, where she is based today and continues to grow her company, hosting virtual events and making headlines in national publications.

Outfits

Paula LaFargue is founder and Designer of The Maybe Collection, a Baton Rouge small business that ethically makes comfortable, functional, beautiful women’s garments produced with minimal environmental impact for an accessible cost.

Paula started the company in 2016, after spending 10 years designing clothes for nursing moms, children and utility workers – not all at the same time. She strives hard to have the smallest possible environmental impact in every aspect of The Maybe Collection – from the materials she sources, to internal operations, to packaging.

Paula is a mother of two young children, and a native of Baton Rouge, who attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and cut her teeth in the fashion industry in New York then Chicago before returning home in 2009.

Chenese Lewis and Paula LaFargue are not only assets to the Baton rouge business community, they’re also touching the lives of so many women around the country in important ways.

You can learn more about Out to Lunch Baton Rouge at our website.  And here’s some more lunch table conversation about Baton Rouge influencers and retailers

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Camm Morton is an expert on this transition. Camm is President of VR Business Sales Baton Rouge, a business brokerage service that facilitates mergers and acquisitions. Camm is also a certified exit planner and family business advisor, who helps companies figure out their succession plans, which is no small thing.

Camm brings a lot of business experience to the field. He spent much of his career in commercial real estate, where he developed and managed hotels, shopping centers and mixed use developments throughout the South the and Atlantic seaboard. He came to Baton Rouge in 2002 to head Commercial Properties Realty Trust, the BRAF’s real estate company. Nearly two decades later, Camm still calls the Capital Region home.

Robert Webb is CEO of Helix Aviation Academy, a charter school opening in August 2021 at the Baton Rouge Airport that will help prepare high school students for a career in aviation.

Robert is also CEO of the Helix Mentorship Steam Academy, a charter high school in downtown Baton Rouge that Robert founded in 2010 in an effort to close the achievement gap for students in grades 9-12 by focusing on STEAM-based learning – that’s Science, technology, engineering, arts, and math.

Robert also has plans to open Helix Legal Academy which, like the aviation academy, will help prepare young people for a career in the legal field. 

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On The Boulevard. You can see photos from this show by Chris Tricou at our website.

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Perhaps at no time has the need for nonprofit organizations that help vulnerable and underserved populations been greater than it is today. And, as more people rely on them, they face ever greater challenges.

George Bell is President and CEO of the Capital Area United Way, which serves 10 parishes through programs focused specifically on early childhood education, income stability, health and basic needs.

George is a retired healthcare executive, originally from Thibodeaux, who took over at the agency in 2015, after a 30-year career in health care management with private physician practices including most recently, Baton Rouge General. George is also a community volunteer and a trumpet player, performing at his church, local schools and, even the Manship theater. 

Vicki Ellis is Founder and Executive Director of Heritage Ranch, a Christian Children’s Home located on a sprawling 53-acre campus in Zachary outside of Baton Rouge.

Heritage Ranch provides residential care, counseling, and educational and emotional support to boys between the ages of 10 and 18.

Vicki founded Heritage Ranch in 2004. Initially, it provided its programming through the school systems in East Baton Rouge and West Feliciana parishes. In 2015, she opened the residential facility in Zachary, which is staffed by husband-and-wife teams, who model parenting for the at-risk students and help them improve peer communications and relationships, while providing life skills training and academic remediation. Vicki does all this while also raising five children!

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard in Baton Rouge. You can find photos from this show by Chris Tricou at our website. Talking of which, completely unrelated, but we just came across this show from 2017 and thought you might like to check it out - it's all about 3 Baton Rouge business women who have gotten their products and themselves on QVC.

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Green

Jeffrey Carbo is a landscape architect with over 35 years of experience in professional practice, and the founding principal of CARBO Landscape Architecture in Baton Rouge and Alexandria. The range and scope of Jeff’s concerns include environmental conservation, the historical and cultural context of local and regional landscapes, and the attention to design detail in the numerous places and gardens that the firm has created. Jeff is a graduate of the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture and his firm’s projects have a unique design perspective that have influenced decision-makers to follow the themes of historic and cultural influences in design and construction detailing, with reference to the French, Spanish, Creole and American cultures

Clean

Kelly Hurtado is co-founder of the Louisiana Stormwater Coalition, a nonprofit organization established in 2021 with a mission of helping to clean up Baton Rouge’s polluted watershed, which is littered with bottles, cans, and trash. The organization is trying to help come up with a long-term program for stopping littler at its source and trapping it before it enters the creeks and bayous that make up the area’s watershed, which flows into the Gulf. Kelly is a Baton Rouge native and LSU graduate who has worked in philanthropy as a fundraiser for Our Lady of the Lake Foundation and, prior to that, as a publisher of InRegister magazine. 

You can see photos from this show by JT O'Neal on our website. Out to Lunch is recorded over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. And you can check out more lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge's green spaces and organic farming.

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LUMCON

Dr. Craig McLain is Executive Director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, or LUMCON, a research institute based on the coast that promotes, facilitates and conducts research in marine and coastal sciences relevant to the sustainability of coastal and marine environments in the Gulf of Mexico. That includes areas dealing not only with coastal loss and restoration, but the impact humans have on coastal and marine systems, and the intersection between the physical, chemical and biological environments.

Craig has been at the helm of LUMCON since 2016, and is a nationally recognized marine, ecological and evolutionary biologist with more than 60 published articles  to his name and a top-rated ocean-themed blog and social network, Deep Ocean News, which has been featured in local and national media outlets. 

CPEX

Camille Manning Broome is President and CEO of the Center for Planning Excellence, a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2006 to coordinate urban, rural, and regional planning efforts in Louisiana and promote a smart growth approach to development, which means advocating for things like walkable communities, bike lanes, mass transit and access to fresh food. Under Camille’s leadership, CPEX has shifted its focus toward issues related to climate change, and what that means for Louisiana’s vulnerable sinking coastline and vulnerable population. Camille has been at CPEX for more than a decade. She became president and CEO in 2018 and has strengthened the organization’s focus on the intersection of climate change, equity and health.

Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website. And check out more lunchtime  conversation about conservation.

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Diana Raffray is co-owner of The Modern Debutante, a Baton Rouge-based business that rents hedge, flower and shimmer walls. If you’ve been to a wedding or a big event lately, you know are all the rage. The trend has been growing in popularity for the past several years and though it’s not clearly exactly who came up with the idea, it’s a safe bet the concept caught on big time after Kim Kardashian and Kanye West exchanged vows in front of a wall of white roses in 2014.

Dianna got her MBA degree in 2017, was in pharmaceutical sales, and never envisioned herself in a specialty niche of the event planning market, until 2018, when she bumped into one of her sorority sisters from Southeastern, Danielle Whatley, while walking her dog. They reconnected, started hanging out and looking for a business idea that combined something that Baton Rouge needed and something that would make them happy. The idea of The Modern Debutante was born! 

Melanie Bennett is the owner of the Hostel of Baton Rouge, a project that has been in the works for five years and is projected to open some time in 2021 in a former day care center in mid City. Melanie is bringing the first hostel to Baton rouge because she gave up her conventional lifestyle more than a decade ago to become a world traveler and became something of a self-schooled expert on hostels, staying in them as she traversed the globe. 

Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. Photos by Chris Tricou are at our website.  Here's more lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge businesses shooting for the stars.

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Cure for Cancer

We often hear stories from successful entrepreneurs that contain the sentence, "Everybody told me I was crazy when I started out." The reason we only hear from a handful of successful entrepreneurs is because a lot of people's ideas for a new business are in fact crazy. If you're an entrepreneur with an idea that has no clear predecessor, when nobody knows what you’re talking about, where there is no proven pathway to making money, how do you know if you're a genius, or just misguided?

In the case of Paige Miller, if she's right about her crazy idea, she's going to change the world. She's going to cure cancer. From right here in Baton Rouge.

Paige is President of Oleander Medical Technologies, a company based at LSU’s Innovation Park that is truly a pioneer in developing a treatment for advanced stage cancer that not only appears to be effective, but it's quick, easy to administer and doesn’t ravage the body in the process, like Chemo. The process is called Targeted Osmotic Lysis and it basically destroys cancer cells by causing them to explode while preserving the healthy cells in your body. 

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