Among them is the observation that everything contains the seeds of its own destruction. A current example of this is the way the internet is changing. Every single day there are 14 Billion – with a “B” – Google searches. Most of these searches lead the searcher to a website.

If you own a website and a business, and you want people to find you online, you use a science called Search Engine Optimization. Or SEO. SEO makes sure that when someone’s searching for what you’re selling, your website comes up first on a Google search.

Brian Hong has spent hours, weeks, months and years building websites and manipulating SEO for clients at his New Orleans company, Infintech Designs.

Then along came the seed of the internet’s destruction. AI. AI doesn’t search the web the way a human does. But every day more and more people are using AI to do web searches.

So how does Brian adapt? He gets into the AI business. He creates three AI companies, BigEasyData.ai, Flowbots.ai and Thorbit.ai.

In one way or another, each of these defeat the death of SEO and instead use AI to grow a business. Any kind of business. HVAC. Plumbing. A medical practice. A law firm…

To demonstrate his confidence in his AI tools’ ability to grow any business, instead of taking a fee, Brian will take a small stake in each company. And, but the way, in case you’re wondering, this is not theoretical, it’s actually working.

In another example of Marx’s seeds of self-destruction – one of the ironies of the of the so-called “Information age” - is the death of information itself.

We started publicly sharing written information as early as 59BC. That was the first newspaper. Almost continuously throughout human history since then, and certainly since the invention of the printing press, newspapers have played all kinds of functions in our communities. From a record of small-town births, deaths and marriages, to uncovering national political scandals and covering international wars, the newspaper has been a cohesive element of almost every literate community, everywhere.

The demise of newspapers has been well documented. And news of the shrinking of the news industry continues. Which is what makes an organization called Deep South Today so interesting.

Deep South Today is a nonprofit network of local newsrooms that includes The Current in Lafayette, The Garrison Project, Mississippi Today, and in New Orleans, Verite News.

Warwick Sabin is President and CEO of Deep South Today. Among his varied past occupations Warwick served three terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives, he was a press secretary on Capitol Hill, he has a graduate degree from Oxford University in the UK, and from 2008-13 he revived and was the publisher of the equally prestigious Oxford American magazine.

You’ve probably heard the expression, “When one door closes another door opens.” If that literally happens, you’re probably in prison. But as a metaphor it applies to both Brian's and Warwick's businesses. They're both in fields where the traditional way of doing things doesn’t work anymore, and they've both created original and unique pathways out of what has looked to most people like a dead end.

Frankly, most people who care about these issues in this country are not looking in a southerly direction for solutions. It’s pretty amazing what these guys have accomplished already. Watch this space!

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nobody gets married planning to one day get divorced. But, somehow, around 40% of people who get married for the first time find themselves at some point in that position.

For people who get married a second time, 60% of those end in divorce. And if you’re brave enough to try it a third time, your chances of getting divorced go up to 70%. 

Add ‘em all up and that’s a lot of people. It may well include you. If not, it has almost certainly included either your parents, your kids, or somebody close to you. So, you probably know how difficult it can be to navigate this period of your life.

One thing everybody in this situation has in common is, they need advice.  Who do you turn to for help? You could ask a friend who’s been through it. You could Google “Divorce attorney near me.” Or, you could get yourself a Divorce Coach at a website called Divorce Plus.

Divorce Plus has been around since 2023 and they cover every possible angle you could think of – as well as a few angles you may have never considered. Like, “Building Mental Strategies For a Healthier Divorce Process”  and “Am I Married to a Narcissist and How To Cope.”

The Co-Founder and CEO of Divorce Plus is New Orleanian, Richard Perque.

Whether you’re married, single, divorced, or any variety of parent with young kids, you need help. Whether it’s every day or just occasionally, if you don’t have a built-in helper in the form of a family member, you’re going to need daycare.

And if you happen to be a daycare provider, you’re going to need kid clients.

For both parties, what would be the simplest possible solution to this? And I mean the absolute simplest. Could it possibly be, do you think, Daycare.com? It couldn’t be that easy, could it?

Yep, it sure could. And it is. Daycare.com has over 250,000 daycare providers across the country. They’ve been dedicated to matching parents with daycare providers since 1997.

The Co-Founder and President of Daycare.com is New Orleanian, Ryan North. 

One lesson most of us learn at some point in our life, is humility. No matter how smart, accomplished, good-looking or even rich and famous we are, we can’t do everything alone. Every single one of us needs help at one time or another.

You can be the nicest, kindest, most generous, loving and caring person – or at least you can think you are – and still end up in a marriage that doesn’t work, for any number of reasons.

You can be the most devoted parent, but have no alternative but to depend on daycare.

Neither of these observations are all that revelatory. What is surprising, though, is that the solutions to both of these universal issues are coming out of New Orleans.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. Andrew Ward sits in as host for Peter Ricchiuti.

You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The seen world is the world of everyday reality in which we live.

The theory of the unseen world attempts to explain some events in the real world - like love, happiness, and talent - in terms of the intangible. These explanations might range from suggestions of the existence of a soul, to past lives and karma.

There is, of course, no substantiated evidence of the existence of an unseen world. Unless you’re talking about the restaurant business.

In a restaurant, a diner’s real-world experience of sitting down at a table, enjoying a drink and a professionally prepared and served meal, is undeniably affected by a complex web of unseen causes.

The interpersonal relationships in the kitchen... Whether or not the staff have health insurance... And chains of events like the restaurant’s ability to secure a minimum order of fresh shrimp from a supplier at a decent price - the profitability of which depends on the number of customers who show up and order the shrimp special - which itself is dependent on server education and a successful social media marketing campaign.

At a big and successful restaurant, these demanding complexities are handled by a range of personnel – typically as many as 20 people – employing a range of complex systems.

Here in New Orleans, Elizabeth Tilton realized if smaller restaurants – which most restaurants in the United States are – had access to these same personnel and systems, they would greatly increase their chances of success. That’s why, in 2019, she founded her company, Oyster Sunday.

Oyster Sunday provides restaurants with concept development, financial strategy, project management, branding, marketing, PR, human resources, operations, and much more. Their clients are scattered all across the United States, and even around the world.

The comedian Steven Wright has a great line: “It’s a small world. But I wouldn’t want to paint it.”

When you step into an actual small world - like a music festival or a convention - you’ll notice there’s typically a whole other reality. It ranges from functional construction – like stages or booths - to decorations. These elements create both the infrastructure and the vibe of events. And despite Steven Wright’s trepidation, somebody has to not just paint all of that, they also have to design and build it.

Here in New Orleans, and across the country too, the fabrication of those worlds is the work of a company called Downtown FabWorks. The Founder and President of the company is Daniel Krall.

if there are two things we know something about in New Orleans – better than probably anywhere in the country – it’s eating out, and getting out and having fun. So, perhaps it’s not surprising that two industry leading, innovative businesses in these fields are the creations of two New Orleanians.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Typically, the definition of business success is how much money a company makes. And that can be a function of market share. Both of my lunch guests today are executives of major New Orleans companies. Each of these companies has 100% market share. Yes, 100%. Meaning, everybody in New Orleans who uses the products they sell uses their products.

One of the companies supplies water, and removes sewerage. It’s called The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans.

At this point if you’re saying, “Wait up, that’s not actually a private company,” well, you’re kind of right. Kind of. What the sewerage and water board isn’t, is a simple city department, like you find in New York City, Chicago, and Houston. Neither is it a wholly private company contracted by the city, like in Los Angeles or Phoenix.

Instead, it’s a hybrid. It’s largely controlled by city politicians – the Mayor automatically serves as the board president – but it operates independently. It is not meant to make a profit, but it has its own revenue separate from city departments, and contracts with for-profit companies to provide some services. In short, it’s a public utility that’s run like a political board but expected to perform like a professional infrastructure company.

And sitting on top of this complicated setup is the Executive Director of the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, Randy Hayman.

If your house or business is hooked up to gas, sometime in 2025 you stopped paying Entergy for it and started paying a company called Delta Utilities. Nobody asked you if you wanted to switch your gas supplier from Entergy to Delta, Entergy just decided to sell off its gas division and Delta Utilities was the company that bought it.

Delta Utilities is what’s called a “regulated utility.” Its operations, rates, service quality, and infrastructure investments are regulated by the State. But it’s a private company. Delta Utilities is owned by a private equity firm – Bernhard Capital Partners. It’s set up to serve customers, and to make a profit for its owners.

One of the people responsible for administering this complex structure is the Chief Administrative Officer of Delta Utilities, Jeremy Turner.

If you live in New Orleans, you’re 100% certain to have a relationship with the Sewerage and Water Board. Even if you have a septic tank in your back yard and you get all your water from your own well, you’re still going to be dependent on the infrastructure that keeps the city’s streets – and your house – free of flood water.

And if you don’t have gas at your house, you can be pretty sure your favorite restaurant does.

So, one way or another, the Sewerage and Water Board and Delta Utilities are woven into fabric of the everyday life of every person here in New Orleans. 

In the immortal words of Leslie Neilsen in the movie Airplane, “Good luck. We're all counting on you.” In the movie, that was a running joke, delivered even as the plane was in severe danger of crashing. In New Orleans, we often feel like we’re on the brink of disaster, but unlike Airplane, it’s not a joke. We are, in fact, all counting on Jeremy and Ryan.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John and his business partner, Mickal Adler, would certainly like to end up making money at some point – that is the end goal of their company, Boot 64 Ventures. 

It’s the word “venture” that’s the key to what’s going on here. Boot 64 is a venture capital company. The money they’re giving away as investments is partly privately raised capital, but it’s also funds that come from a federally created program called SSBCI, which stands for State Small Business Credit Initiative.

We’ll get into the nuts and bolts of how this all works, but the general requirement for the fund is that businesses have to boost the state’s economy. Boot 64 Ventures is investing in diverse sectors that include AI, energy, food, tech, and healthcare.

And now the story of another John who set out to make an investment. This John is John Stubbs.

John started out life in Lafayette Louisiana and found himself spending 30-plus years in Washington DC, working in international trade and public health.

John and his wife bought a house in New Orleans so they could spend some time here. John also made an investment in a restaurant here, called Jewel of the South. It took a long time, a lot of effort, and too much money to get the place open - which they accomplished just in time to get closed down by the Covid pandemic.

When the restaurant re-opened, John decided for better or worse, with no restaurant experience, he was not going to be a passive investor, he was going to be an active owner. How did that work out? Well, if you live in New Orleans you might know it worked out pretty well. And if you live anywhere else in the US, you might know that too. In a prestigious and much-respected ranking of North America’s 50 best Bars, Jewel of the South was named Best Bar In The South for 3 straight years.

In 2024, Jewel of the South won a James Beard Award for “Outstanding Bar.”

If there was a simple formula for success, we’d all know it by now. The reality is, everybody’s path to success is different. There are so many bars in New Orleans, you can’t even get an accurate total number. One normally reliable source says there are 265. Another normally equally reliable source says there are 800. Whatever the actual number, if there’s one thing New Orleans didn’t need when John Stubbs opened Jewel of the South, it’s another bar. But it's not just one of the greatest bars in the city, but one of the greatest in the country.

Over the next decade there are going to be a whole bunch of success stories of unique local businesses who have done something amazing, and Boot 64 Ventures might just be the reason for their very existence.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

That was 2011. We’ve recorded a new episode of Out to Lunch almost every week since then. And we still haven’t run out of guests. In fact, there are so many people doing interesting things in New Orleans business that we rarely have anyone on the show more than once.

But, once in a while, we like to check in on some of our earliest guests and see what they’re up to.

Back in 2012, in our first year on the air, we met a young man by the name of Kenneth Purcell. Kenneth had some ideas that bridged the gap between the real world – that most of us lived in in those days – and the virtual world, that was beginning to stagger to its feet.

To put this in context, in 2006 Apple launched a music player called the i-pod. In 2007 they launched the iPhone. In 2010 they launched the iPad. Locally, before all that, in 1999, Kenneth launched a company called iSeatz.

iSeatz wasn’t a device, it was a then-revolutionary new way of making a reservation at a restaurant: Online. I won’t go through every twist and turn in the story, but basically, Kenneth’s company, which is still called iSeatz, went on to pioneer the back-end of online travel and financial services.

Among other accomplishments, iSeatz was the company that came up with the idea of using air-miles to buy things other than air tickets. Today, iSeatz creates and provides the online travel engine for companies like Amex, IHG Hotels & Resorts, and Qantas..

In 2014, at the Idea Village Entrepreneur Week, we met a young woman called Catherine Todd. Catherine and her partner had founded a business called Where Y’Art that had just won Idea Village’s entrepreneur prize for an arts-based business pitch. It was a then-innovative online art gallery: A curated marketplace where selected local artists would be introduced to people who buy art.

Today, the company is called Where Y’Art Works and is focused on providing local art to organizations that want to decorate.

Where Y’Art Works collaborates with interior designers, facilities teams, set designers, and industry professionals to put original art by local artists in spaces in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, North Louisiana, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. To date they’ve completed over 325 commercial projects - including putting art on the walls in the Sheraton Hotel, Fidelity Bank, and Ochsner and LCMC facilities. In the process, they’ve paid local artists, framers and installers over $6.5m.

If we had to pin an exact date on the birth of New Orleans and give it an astrological sign, the city is probably Gemini. The twins. I say that because there seem to be two co-existing versions of the city. One is the city that never changes. You can leave for years and when come back, your favorite people and your favorite dishes at your favorite restaurants are still be here. The other New Orleans is the city that is constantly changing. New brass bands, new Mardi Gras parade groups, new types of king cakes, and new businesses that are growing, or getting bought and sold.

Catherine and Kenneth have a foot in both camps. Their businesses are still growing, they’re changing and adapting, but they've been at it now for long enough to become local institutions. And even though they're still both young, they’re the entrepreneurial OG generation – the inspiration for a whole new generation of entrepreneurs.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is not a scientific survey, but I’ve asked enough people this question to be fairly confident that most people cannot tell you the names of their great grandparents. It doesn't take very long for us to lose track of our history. And that's just in our own family.

For something as complex and large as the City of New Orleans, we have a repository of our collective memory. It’s called the Historic New Orleans Collection. It opened its doors as a small museum in the French Quarter in 1970. Today, under the current leadership of President and CEO Daniel Hammer, HNOC has  grown to 14 historic buildings spread over 3 blocks in the Quarter. It houses over 1 million artefacts, it publishes books, and a quarterly magazine.

When you go to a transportation museum, you see cars, boats, and planes. When you go to a music museum, you see musical instruments and hear songs. When you go to a history museum, you can't actually see history. What you do see is representations of history, usually in the form of documents and photographs.

History is a retrospective ordering of what were at one point live events. Museums of the future will be able to display historical events of today as they happened in real time - in the form of video. Not only do we record and post countless hours of human activity on video, we also live stream it.

If you'd like to see human history being made right now, from pretty much any place in the world, you can do that, at a website or app called Who’s Live.

Who’s Live is an aggregator of live streaming video from around the world and across the country, categorized into sections like News, Sports, Education, Gaming, and many more. There is literally something for everyone, 24 hours a day, on Who’s Live. And it’s the brainchild of New Orleanian, Nate Voerhoeven.

When someone tells you, “That was then but this is now,” it’s generally not good. It’s typically a shorthand way of saying, “Things have changed and you need to keep up.” But, when you think about it, “Then” and “Now” is all we’ve got. As far back as The New Testament, we’re warned that we’re not promised tomorrow. So we need to make the most of the present moment.

There’s probably nobody on earth who is doing more than Nate Verhoeven to channel every human current event into a single present moment. And there’s nobody in New Orleans doing more than Daniel Hammer to preserve the most significant of those events for future generations.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ironically, the one person not on any official list of healthcare providers is “you.” A local wellness entrepreneur is changing that.

Kwame Terra is Founder and CEO of bEHR Health Systems. The company’s principal product is an app directed specifically at Black Americans. The app doesn’t replace professional healthcare providers, but it aims to put the user front and center in directing their own health outcomes.

The app store summary says, “At bEHR, we aspire to create a healthcare resource free from the shackles of racism that infect our current system and seamlessly integrate health into Black culture. This isn't just a health app for tracking and enhancing well-being; it signifies the initiation of our enduring commitment to stand as Black America’s health partner for life.”

With roughly 14% of Americans – 48 million people - identifying as Black, and a 2024 Pew Research finding that 51% of Black Americans say they believe the U.S. health-care system was designed to “hold Black people back a great deal or a fair amount,” there would appear to be a ready market for this product.

When it comes to the traditional provision of healthcare, the consistently best-regarded group and most trusted providers of medical care, are nurses. Patients and doctors alike typically regard nurses as critical to patient safety and care.

There’s also a critical shortage of nurses.

According to a recent report from the Louisiana Board of Regents, the state is projected to face a shortage of roughly 6,000 registered nurses by 2030. That’s about 40% short of the workforce needed, if nothing changes. One local institution that’s working to change that outcome is The University of Holy Cross, on the Westbank. Among its other courses, UHC has a dedicated Department of Nursing.

RegisteredNursing.org – a nationwide organization of registered nurses – has rated UHC as the best nursing school in Louisiana. And UHC’s nursing department is one of the principal focuses of the school’s President, Dr. Stanton McNeely.

If we did a simultaneous scan of every news-talk radio station and every TV news channel right now, it’s pretty likely we’re not the only people talking about healthcare. But it’s very likely we’re the only people talking about a Catholic-college-driven solution to the nursing shortage, and an African-American-focused entrepreneurial venture aimed at sidestepping healthcare racism.

Even in something as ubiquitous as the healthcare debate, New Orleans manages to be, well, New Orleans.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Starting in the 1970’s, photographers like Mike Smith and Lee Crum started celebrating the exteriors of barrooms, along with other street scenes, finding an almost romantic beauty in depicting decadence and decay in black & white.

The next iteration of uniquely New Orleans artistic reverence for our bar rooms comes from a company called We Might Be On Fire, a creation of textile manufacturer Shaun Watson.

Among Shaun’s collection of rugs, knitwear and pillows with bold prints that include alligators, birds, and flowers, there’s a collection of blankets that feature the exteriors of bar rooms. These aren’t artistic impressions or airbrushed glow-ups, they’re true-to-life, blanket-sized depictions of the outsides of bars, like Snake ‘n Jakes, F&M’s, Pal’s Lounge, The Saturn Bar, Buffa’s, Big Daddy’s, and many more.

Talking of barrooms, whomever keeps records of these things maintains we’re drinking less alcohol these days. Maybe they don't include New Orleans in the collection of this data: W\we’re without a doubt one of the most alcohol-centric cities in the US, if not the world.

You might think that in 300 years of drinking we’ve created every variety of alcohol known to man. Well, Paul Kelly has added one more chapter to the story of local booze brands by creating vodka using Louisiana sweet potatoes and cane sugar.

Paul distills his distinct sweet potato vodka at his distillery in Bogalusa. With the label Paul Kelly Vodka, it’s available at over 60 stores across the state, including Total Wine, Rouse’s, and a wide range of bars and restaurants.

Every evening, as the sun goes down in New Orleans, we’re faced with a decision. Do we stay home tonight? Or do we go out? If you decide to go out, there are a lot of places you can try Paul Kelly Sweet Potato Vodka. If you stay in, you can make a Paul Kelly Sweet Potato Vodka drink at home and curl up with a good book under your We Might Be On Fire blanket that features your favorite local bar. Is that the most New Orleans sign-off sentence in the history of radio? It might be.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well, guess what? Like pretty much everything else on earth, it’s not that simple. And by “it” I mean getting into Harvard, and the human brain itself. Let’s start with the brain, then move onto Harvard.

Judy Weber is a Registered Nurse at a company called Cingulum Health, in New Orleans. Cingulum Health specializes in a kind of neurotherapy called TMS – Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.

TMS has been around for some time. It’s an FDA approved therapy which consists of giving a patient non-invasive electrical stimulation to the brain, to treat what is technically called “treatment resistant depression,” or OCD, or migraines. What separates Cingulum Health from other TMS providers is the range of conditions they’re treating beyond depression, OCD and migraines, and the course of treatment they offer. Each course begins with the patient getting a Functional MRI, then having this brain scan interpreted by Cingulum’s proprietary software which then maps out an individual course of neurotherapy treatment.

And the conditions they’re treating include Alzheimer's, Parkinson’s, stroke, tinnitus, and addiction.

Now, as promised, we turn to Harvard. We all know that natural intelligence alone isn’t enough to get through high school and into a good college. Not only do you have to study, but the final arbiter of admission to a good college is getting a high score on the ACT.

For a long time there’s been general acceptance that, like other tests, the ACT has an element of unwittingly systemic bias that makes it more difficult for certain sub-sets of students to do well. But even knowing that, it’s extraordinary to discover what Angelica Harris is up to.

When Angelica first took the SAT she got a score of 16. Which is not high enough to get anywhere near an Ivy League school. She went to a test prep course, and raised her score by 2 points. Still not too good. Figuring that the problem was, she was the only Black girl in a predominantly white environment, Angelica developed her own prep system. The next time she took the test she got 32.

That got Angelica into Washington University in St Louis. On graduation with a masters degree she turned her own college success into a college admission prep system for Black and Brown high school students, called Top Tutors For Us.

With a business whose success can be proven by easy-to-digest numbers, Top Tutors For Us is being adopted by a growing number of school districts. Significantly, not a single school district that has adopted the system has dropped it, so business is booming.

There’s two ways of looking at the path of scientific discovery. In one perspective, one small discovery leads to an incremental change, which taken together with lots of other small contributions, leads to advancement. The other perspective is, the status quo rolls on for years or decades, then someone comes along who completely changes the game and revolutionizes everything.

Of course, both of those are true. Whether or not Top Tutors for Us and Angelica, and Cingulum and Judy are incremental contributors or game-changing revolutionaries, only time will tell. What we do know for now, though, is that they’re both making a significant difference to their respective fields, and to the lives of New Orleanians.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

And then there are entrepreneurs like Peter's lunch guests on this edition of Out to Lunch who both had ideas for very different businesses, went ahead and opened their doors without any drama, and were instantly successful.

Troy Bergeron spent 30 years in the music transportation business, driving tour buses for rock musicians like the late Ozzy Osbourne and transporting equipment across the country. When he quit all that and came back home to New Orleans, he was wondering what he was going to do with himself when he overheard a woman complaining there was no doggie transportation option here.

And that’s when Doggie Bus was born.

Doggie Bus is Uber for dogs.You book your dog’s ride on the Doggie Bus app; Troy shows up in his specially converted passenger van; on the app you track where your dog is, when he gets where he’s going, and when he’s on the way home.

Troy launched Doggie Bus in New Orleans in January 2024 and he’s already franchising the business to other cities.

Samantha Weiss had never lived in New Orleans. In New York City she’d put her MBA and job in financial services on hold and started pursuing a career in food. Then the Covid pandemic derailed those plans.

Samantha and her friend Kelly Jacques came up with an idea - open a bakery, in New Orleans.

30-seconds of online research will tell you, New Orleans already has 40 bakeries - twice as many per capita as your average city in the US. Nonetheless, Samantha and Kelly moved to New Orleans and in 2022 took over a space that used to be Santa Fe restaurant in the Marigny, and they opened Ayu Bakehouse.

If you live in New Orleans, you may know the rest of the story. Ayu Bakehouse was an instant  success. Since opening they’ve been featured in numerous national publications - including Vogue, The New York Post, USA Today, and Bon Appetit - which named Ayu one of the most exciting bakeries in the country - and you’ve probably either tried or heard about their King Cake which has been voted Best in New Orleans in the Times Picayune readers’ poll.

You’d have to be living under a rock these days not to be impacted by a seemingly endless onslaught of stressful developments - from international conflicts to national politics to local scandals, and even the daily war between your car and potholes. But, no matter what else is going on around us, there are at least two things that are universally bright spots in all of our lives. Puppies. And pastries.

Besides running successful businesses, Troy and Samantha are making the world a brighter and better place for humans, dogs, and Kevin the cat.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you have any doubt that AI could do my job and conduct a 30 minute interview with local business people, today’s show is going to remove that doubt. In fact, it won’t take the whole show, you’ll probably be convinced in 5 minutes.

Step one: meet Rich Simmerman. We first met Rich a few years ago when he launched a breakfast cereal company. Then, in 2024, Rich started up another company. This one is called Cantaloupe. It’s the same name as the fruit, but this company’s product is people. Specifically, people in the hospitality and construction industries.

Cantaloupe is an AI tool for interviewing people looking for a job in a bar, a restaurant, or on a construction site. Cantaloupe’s proprietary interviewer - an AI bot  called Clio - interviews prospective applicants then analyzes their responses according to the parameters an employer lays out, and decides whether the applicant would be a good fit.

Cantaloupe’s research says it’s more accurate than a human reading a resume and reduces turnover caused by early quitting by 40%. Cantaloupe’s technology has won awards and Clio is working for all kinds of companies, including multi-location restaurant groups.

I recently had a doctor’s appointment, and for the first time in memory, my doctor paid 100% attention to me. While I was talking, he wasn’t typing anything into my records, like he usually does.

When I mentioned it, he said he was part of an evaluation group who were trying out an AI-based system that would record our conversation and write it up for him as consultation notes.

The pressure is on healthcare systems to incorporate AI into its daily functions, to provide better patient care, and do a wide range of back-end tasks, from accounting to reading X-Rays. The problem is, if you manage a big hospital, or a small medical clinic, whatever skills have gotten you to your current position, they probably do not include a sophisticated knowledge of AI.

So, who do you call about that? The answer is a company called Benzait. They’re dedicated to implementing AI into medical practices, hospitals, and other parts of the healthcare industry.

Benzait’s Founder and CEO is New Orleanian Ralph Whalen.

If you went to sleep in 2020 and woke up today and needed a job on a building site and a doctor appointment - to discuss your sleep disorder - you’d barely believe the changes that have taken place in the last few years.

Your job interview is with a non-human. And the notes from your doctor appointment, along with recommendations for further consultations and a detailed treatment plan, are all available through your patient portal online before you even get home.

Ralph Whalen and Rich Simmerman are ushering us into a whole new world.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But wait up. Read the email. This team building exercise is a whole other thing. It’s a workshop led by life coach Jaclyn McCabe and you get to choose whether you go to the workshop called “Dream It. Create It,” “Tame Your Inner Critic” or others that are a long way away from a ropes course.

Jaclyn’s workshops are based in creativity and self-expression, and they’re not just about making your work-life better, they’re about making your whole life better.

The nexus between business and creativity is also the wheelhouse of Kerrie Ann Nauseda.

Kerrie Ann is Founder and CEO and Chief Editorial Officer at a company with the enigmatic name, Good Coterie. Good Coterie isn’t a publisher. And Kerrie Ann isn’t an author. She’s kind of a life coach for authors.

Good Coterie works with publishers of books about business – mostly Forbes publishing – to  shepherd an author and a book through the many stages of its creation, from an idea on a napkin to a book on a shelf.

There are any number of encouraging words written and spoken about success being a team sport. “There’s no “i” in team.” “A rising tide lifts all boats.” And many more.

And most successful people are quick to acknowledge the role of others who have helped them along the way.

Having said that, achieving success in business takes, struggle, hard work, perseverance and determination. And when it all comes together and pays off – they’re typically the successful people we get to meet on shows like this. It's less often that we get to meet the people who these folks mention, the team members who helped make success happen for them. People like Jaclyn and Kerrie Ann.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For a business case study let’s take a look at a lighting company that was founded in the UK in 2015, called Tala.

Tala designs and sells lighting fixtures that are elegant, environmentally friendly, focused on sustainability - they’re able to be repaired, and if they have to be discarded they’re recyclable – and they’ve been featured in Architectural Digest. The company has an international reach, is widely admired, and is financially successful. The Halo Effect would have us believe their lighting fixtures must be exclusive and expensive, and the company must have its eye firmly on profit.

Well, the truth is somewhat different. Tala is what’s called a B-Corp – it’s a registration given to companies that focus on using business as a force for good, striving for inclusive, equitable, and sustainable economic practices. And Tala’s lighting fixtures are inexpensive – you can find them online at Wayfair.

And, to complete the expect-the-unexpected list of circumstances at Tala, the Chairman of the Board of this innovative and progressive company is New Orleanian, Anthony Robins.

We can make incorrect Halo Effect type generalizations about other businesses too. For example, when we hear “Wedding Reception Venue” we typically picture a high-school-gym kind of vibe, with a stage for a band or DJ. When we hear “Hotel,” we expect it to be something between a Holiday Inn and the Ritz Carlton – the only difference being the amenities and the cost. A local company called Workshop WDXL (pronounced in speech, "W.D 40") is challenging all of these assumptions.

The W.D. part of the name is the initials of the team’s principals, Jessica Walker and David Demsey, and XL is forty is in Roman numerals.

Some of the Halo-Effect-busting, non-traditional, New Orleans businesses Workshop WD 40 have created are, the wedding venue, Felicity Church, and the hotels and villas, The Syd and The Mitzie. All of these projects have won prestigious architecture and design awards.

When we talk about the environmental impact of human activities, we’re generally talking about burning fossil fuel, the use of plastics, pollution from factories and farms, and even the use of AC systems and aerosols. The one thing that does not seem to show up on these lists is lighting.

And yet, every single home on Earth that has electricity has multiple light fixtures and lightbulbs. And we know that inefficient bulbs burn more fossil fuels, light pollution reshapes ecosystems, and discarded light fixtures add to the world’s growing mountain of e-waste. One of the core values of Tala is to address these issues - and to package the solutions as elegant, attractive, and affordable light fixtures.

Most architects dream about designing cool, quirky, inventive buildings. Most commercial property developers are focused on budgets – bringing projects in on time and as cheaply as possible. Most real estate developers are looking for bells and whistles that will pitch a property as high up the price range as a market will bear. These three goals are often at odds with each other but Workshop WDXL, is juggling all 3 of these balls.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Blake Langlinais at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My lunch guests today are coming at AI from a whole different angle.

As he sits here eating lunch, Daniel Crowley’s AI employee, Chuck, is hard at work, manning Daniel’s business, Hello Gravel. Hello Gravel isn’t a dating app. It’s a gravel delivery business. You know, gravel. Little rocks. Actually, there are all types of gravel. And before you order a truckload, you’re going to need to know exactly what you want. Chuck can help you with that.

Chuck – who, just to be clear, is not a human being - can also tell you how much gravel you need and answer any and all questions you might have about gravel. He’ll also take your payment and schedule your delivery. AI Chuck is closing gravel sales every day. Last month he brought in $150,000.

Dave Maher is part owner and Chief Digital Officer at a marketing company called Zehnder that’s headquartered here in New Orleans and has offices in Baton Rouge, Nashville, and Rosemary Beach, Florida.

Two things about that sentence:  One, Dave is part owner of Zehnder along with his 64 colleagues. Zehnder is what’s called an ESOP - a business classification that stands for Employee Stock Ownership Plan, in which all of the employees own the company. And, two, having an office in Rosemary Beach Florida is a little unusual. So here’s the skinny on that:

Rosemary Beach is primarily fueled by tourism, and it’s not the kind of place you go for a budget vacation. So, you’ve got a bunch of people with a significant amount of spending power, and there’s only so many hours a day they can spend on the beach. The rest of their vacation they’re looking for something to do that suits their personal interest. They might want to discover a good bookstore, a great yoga class, tennis lessons, or other activities they would enjoy doing on vacation, if they knew where to find them.

That’s where Dave’s AI creation, Ask Seemore, comes in. Rosemary Beach is in Walton County, Florida, and Seemore the turtle is the logo of Walton County Tourism. Dave Maher’s AI version of Seemore is on your phone. He’s on vacation with you. He knows where you are, what you like, what you probably want to do next, and where to do it. Ask Seemore is like going on vacation with a local who totally gets you.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Those of us who live here know there are so many good restaurants and so much good music in New Orleans, we could make every episode of Out to Lunch about food and music and never exhaust the list of great places to eat, and great music to listen to.

We’re not going to do that. But to make some sort of headway we’ve come up with an efficient idea: talk to someone who owns seven restaurants, and to someone who makes ALL of New Orleans music.

You might be saying, “Wait up. How does one person make ALL of New Orleans music?” Scott Borne does, simply by owning New Orleans Record Press. It’s the city’s first and only independently owned and operated vinyl record manufacturing plant. And these days almost everybody puts out an O.G. vinyl record when they’re releasing new music.

Rami Bader,  along with his brother, owns seven New Orleans restaurants. They’re grouped under the banner of the Oceana Grill Group, and they include The Oceana Grill, Bobby Hebert’s Cajun Canon, Olde NOLA Cookery and Mambo’s Restaurant and Rooftop Bar.

One thing Scott and Rami have in common – besides both being involved in fundamental planks of the New Orleans economy – is, the market for both of their products is, literally, insatiable. No matter how much we enjoy a meal today, you can guarantee we’re going to be hungry again tomorrow. And no matter how much we enjoy listening to a record, you can guarantee we’re going to want to listen to another one.

Even with all the changes and challenges in music and hospitality, the rewards of their hard work are shared by all of us who take away the memory of a great meal, or a record that lives forever.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Suppose you worked hard, have a great job in a competitive field, are well paid and highly regarded, but you’re not really happy…  Would you have the courage to walk away from your success and take a chance doing something that might bring you very little, except, possibly, happiness?

That was the question Skye Jackson answered with, “Yes.” Skye was an entertainment lawyer in Hollywood. She had a great job at The Walt Disney Company. Until 2024. That’s when Skye traded her well-paid job dealing in the precise meaning of words in legal contracts, for a low-to-no pay job dealing in the ambiguous meaning of words, as a poet.

Today, Skye is a published and well-recognized poet, a professor of creative writing, literature and poetry at Xavier University, and Chairwoman of the New Orleans Poetry Festival Board.

When it came time for Crystal Burke to make a change, she wanted something different not just for herself, but for every other woman in the country.

As a registered nurse practitioner for over 15 years, mostly in the fields of oncology and palliative care, Crystal knows a lot about the functioning of the human body. But when she started experiencing symptoms of perimenopause in her 30’s, she was blindsided. Finding that her symptoms were influencing almost every aspect of her life, and simultaneously discovering that doctors, even OB-GYN’s, didn’t seem to know how to treat her, or other women in her position, Crystal decided to do something to change that.

In 2024, Crystal and her medical doctor husband, Steven Youngblood, founded The Menopause Clinic. It’s a tele-health-based clinic where any woman with an internet connection can consult with medical providers who specialize in recognizing and treating perimenopause – which is a phase of pre-menopause - and menopause.

You’ve no doubt noticed there are a lot of memes out there encouraging  women to empower themselves. “You Go Girl.” “You Do You.” “Live Your Best Life.” And plenty more. One of the reasons these women-centric slogans exist at all is, in many walks of life, things are still predominantly male dominated.

There are women though – Skye and Crystal are two of them – who are – for want of a better expression – taking the bull by the horns. Crystal's The Menopause Clinic is a revolutionary idea for women’s healthcare that seems way overdue. And Skye has a voice that resonates with a lot of people, especially young Black women - Skye's poetry seems to give them both her perspective and a vocabulary to reflect on themselves.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In telling these histories, entrepreneurs will talk generally about setbacks, but they don’t typically elaborate on specific obstacles. Like, for example, this scenario:

Suppose you’re a startup entrepreneur with a new product, and you get the call you’ve been waiting for, from Walmart, with a giant purchase order.

Now, instead of spending $10,000 on raw materials, you’ll need $200,000. Your shipping costs are going to go from $5,000 to $50,000. And you’ll need 10 more people to pull this off, which is $1m in new salaries.

You can borrow this money, no problem, right? You’re going to be able to pay it back - you have the Walmart purchase order to prove it. But you discover that no traditional lender, like a bank, will lend you money unless you’re (a) profitable and (b) have 2 years of receipts. You don’t qualify in either of those categories.

So, what do you do? Well, one option is you go to a national company that’s headquartered here in New Orleans, called Republic Business Credit.

Republic Business Credit specializes in what’s called Accounts Receivable Finance. Basically, they will loan a company money based on a purchase order – up to $20 million. Or, in a practice called "factoring," they’ll buy the purchase order off a company – minus a fee – so the company gets cash immediately and when the purchaser pays the invoice, the payment goes to Republic Business Credit.

Leigh Guglielmo has been helping companies finance their business at Republic Business Credit since 2011. Today she’s the company’s Senior Vice President of Business Development.

Another thing you hear a lot about in a typical startup success story is, the Power Point pitch.

Andres Barcelo and his wife, Ashley Webb, moved to New Orleans in 2017 to be closer to Ashley’s family. Three years later, when they had their lives derailed by the pandemic, Andres and Ashley started gr owing vegetables in their 9th Ward neighborhood. When they discovered that okra, beans, cucumbers and peppers grew well, they grew more of them. Till they had so much that someone suggested they could start a farmers market. So, they did.

Then they began adding products from other local folks - like bread, hand pies, candles, soap, pickles and jam. And before you know it – without a single Power Point presentation – Andres and Ashley had built a business.

Today you can find Barcelo Gardens Fresh Market most days of the week in varying locations, including their flagship location on Piety Street in the Upper 9th Ward, and at pop-ups and markets in The Irish Channel, The Marigny, Harahan, and Napoleonville.

There’s a saying people use in general conversation to describe how today is pretty much like every other day: “Business as usual.” Interestingly, you don’t hear a lot of people in business saying that. Mostly because business is typically anything but business as usual. There’s almost always an obstacle, a wrinkle, a problem to solve.

Leigh is in the business of solving the biggest problem of them all for most businesses – operating capital. And Andres' business is dependent on the most fickle of all fundamentals – the weather. One thing they have in common is, without a lot of fanfare, they’re both doing something vital for our local business community, and community in general.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You might think those two mundane observations are devoid of any kind of potential entrepreneurial re-invention. After all, whether your mom cuts your hair or you go to a salon, a haircut is, well, a haircut. Right? And whether you pick your own flowers or buy them from a florist, a week later they’re dead and you throw them out. Right?

Wrong on both of those.                                              

When you go to a hair stylist and you sit in the chair, most of your time is spent with the hair stylist snipping at your hair with scissors. Actually, hair stylists don’t use plain old scissors. They use specially designed and sharpened types of scissors, referred to as shears. To cut hair, the stylist moves the shears on all kinds of subtle angles. They continually adjust the angle by very fine, delicate, flexing movements of their hand, wrist, arm, elbow, and shoulder.

Everything flexes. Except the shears.

For 25 years a hair stylist in New Mexico, by the name of Bill Brenton, along with his buddy and partner, Murray Roth, a hair stylist in Madisonville, Louisiana, worked on designing shears that would flex. Bill died in 2008. But Murray kept the dream alive and today Murray Roth manufactures and sells Flex 360: ergonomic, patented shears used by hair stylists across the country and around the world.

The engineering trick to the flexing shears is - the loop you put your thumb through is on a swivel.

And so, to flowers. Sometimes you pick a few flowers or buy them from a florist or supermarket, to brighten up your living or work space. But other times, that bunch of flowers is more than just a dash of color on your coffee table. They might be the bunch of flowers you held at your wedding. Or flowers from the funeral of a loved one. Or flowers from any number of other occasions that mean something to you.

If you’ve ever wished you could keep those flowers forever, now you can.

Stephanie Tarrant is a florist and an artist. She combines her talents by taking flowers and preserving them. They look as real as the day they were picked, and they retain their same vibrant colors - forever.

Stephanie preserves whole bouquets in resin. She takes flowers and incorporates them into pieces of jewelry. And into dishes and trays.

Steph’s company is called, The Crypt Flowers. Its slogan is, “All flowers deserve forever.”

Innovation is often born out of frustration. Most of us, when we’re frustrated, complain about things being the way they are. Successful innovators, though, are people who don’t just complain, but decide to do something to change the status quo.

At either end of the spectrum - whether it’s something that grows continually, like hair, or something whose life is fleeting, like flowers, both Steph and Murray have been able to improve on what appears to most people to simply be the way of the world.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You take most of these cues in at the same time and your decision about how you feel about the place can be almost instant. But the creation of an intentionally designed interior space can take months of planning and execution.

Chad Graci is a native New Orleanian who spent years creating interiors around the world and across the country – including 6 years in New York – before returning home and founding Graci Interiors in 2009. Today, Chad still works across the country, and  you can see his designed spaces in both homes and businesses locally here in New Orleans.

While Chad is working on creating subtle visual cues, Nate Shaeffer, is doing the exact opposite. He’s looking to make an instant impression on you that’s bright and colorful.

Pretty much all you have to know is the name of Nate’s company for you to get the picture. It’s, Big Sexy Neon. Nate is an artist and craftsman who hand-crafts neon – both signs and works of art. He’s one of only 300 neon artists in the US who work in neon.

There’s definitely something magical about neon. Maybe it’s the vibration of the light, maybe it’s the association with something exciting, like the Vegas strip or Times Square, or cocktails, donuts, or beer… Whatever it is, Nate is doing everything he can to keep it alive here in New Orleans.

Chad is likewise making the city a brighter place, but with less red and green amd more cream and white. That very balance - a bright exterior and sophisticated interior - is both a metaphor and literal description of life in New Orleans.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Orleanians tend to think of these two populations as distinct – even at odds with each other. But in fact, our local economy is entwined with our tourist economy in ways you might not expect.

A great case study is a business called Chateau Sew.

Chateau Sew is a fabric store on St Charles Avenue. They sell sewing patterns, supplies, and specialty fabrics. The owner of Chateau Sew, Laura Fenner, also teaches sewing classes. There’s no bar at Chateau Sew. You can’t get  a hurricane. Or a muffuletta. Or a New Orleans T-shirt. But when it comes to customers, tourists outnumber locals. Apparently, they’re mostly a lesser-known sub-genus of tourist, called “quilters.”

When out-of-town quilters visit Chateau Sew they’re looking for unique fabrics they can’t get anywhere else. Fabrics like the creations of New Orleans fabric design company, Marillyn In The Moon.

Marillyn In The Moon’s fabrics are in stores in New Orleans, across Louisiana, and in Mississippi and Alabama.

The designer and manufacturer at Marillyn In The Moon is native New Orleanian, Robin Brou Antin.

Robin’s fabric designs are rooted in New Orleans culture, inspired by her family’s history of 9 generations in the German Coast of Louisiana, and her fabric is manufactured by a specialist in high-quality production in South Korea.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It turns out that’s an okay strategy for students who start out with reasonable financial resources. But, not so good for those who don’t. For low-income students who get into college, only 12%  graduate with a 4-year degree.

That’s the statistic that largely motivates an organization called College Beyond. College Beyond works with low-income students to assist them with finances, coaching, and navigating college to stay in the race to the finish line. Each year they work with over 350 New Orleans college students.

Clara Baron-Hyppolite is Executive Director of College Beyond.

If you go to college and get a degree in arts, communication, or journalism, you might want to go work for a newspaper.

The reason we still call it a newspaper is that it was originally news printed on paper. Today, most of us read the newspaper on a digital device, but there are still people who like to read the newspaper in its original form, on paper.

For those folks, they can subscribe and get the paper delivered. Or, here in New Orleans, they can pick up a copy of The Times Picayune by slipping quarters into a slot in a metal box, open a hinged door, and take a newspaper off the stack inside.

If you’re one of the people who gets your paper this way, have you ever wondered how the paper gets into the box? The answer to that question for 60 boxes around New Orleans is, Hector Garcia. Hector is an independent contractor who buys papers from the publisher of The Times Picayune, puts them in the boxes, then collects the quarters.

College Beyond is never going to be Apple or Amazon – but they just might be helping someone graduate who goes on to change the world.

And Hector is never going to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, but without people like him nor would anybody else, because the news would never get disseminated.

It’s true, we typically reserve accolades for people who are visibly successful, but the intensity of the spotlight is not a measure of true worth. In Hector and Clara's cases, the forgotten middle is a noble place to be. 

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For example, you could be wandering down Oak Street at night and unintentionally hear music coming out of The Maple Leaf. It might sound great, but it sounds a whole lot better if you intentionally go into the club and stand in front of the stage.

Likewise with heat and humidity. Living in New Orleans you no doubt gain some benefit from unintentionally sweating in the sauna-like weather - but it’s not the same as the health benefits you get from intentionally stepping into a real sauna.

Eric Trombly is the owner of Luxe & Leisure Saunas. He designs and builds custom saunas and steam rooms. Yes, in New Orleans.

If you don’t want to commit to putting a sauna in your home or business, you can go take a sauna   - and do a lot more for your health and wellness - at Uptown Wellness + Aesthetics on Magazine Street.

Uptown Wellness + Aesthetics is a health spa where you can get a wide range of services including cryotherapy, cold plunge, IV therapy, red light therapy, and cryo-sculpting.

Jacob Tramontin is the owner of Uptown Wellness + Aesthetics. Jacob is a recovering attorney who was president of Go Auto Insurance before discovering his calling in the wellness industry and investing north of $1m to create his Uptown wellness spa.

It can take a long time to figure stuff out. 

As a society, it’s taken us decades to come to the realization that what we regard as “health care” isn’t actually taking care of our health. Getting medical attention when there’s something wrong with us is actually taking care of illness or disease.

More and more we’re coming to realize that taking real care of our health means taking preventive care - and each of us individually has to seek that out. There are lots of things you can do to stay healthy. Among them, sauna and the services you can get at a health spa are legitimate options.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. This week, air conditioning problems in our regular meeting room chased the show lout of its regular spot into a delightful hotel room, Room 17 to be exact.

You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A local New Orleans company, American Safety, combines both of these elements in its day-to-day business: it consults on workplace safety, provides employee safety training, and it also finds and provides skilled, trained industrial employees.

Corey Rosales is President and CEO of American Safety.                

On occasion, companies run afoul of OSHA. Usually it’s unintentional. Factories and refineries know they have to be OSHA compliant so for the most part they’re not setting out to cut corners or cheap-out on their employees’ safety. But things go wrong. Accidents happen.

When they do, companies have to answer to OSHA. To help them navigate through that process and to set them up for a compliant, safer future, companies typically turn to lawyers who specialize in labor and employment law.

One of our major sponsors at Out to Lunch is the law firm of Jones Walker. We’re taking advantage of that relationship today by inviting Jane Heidingsfelder to lunch.

Jane is a partner at Jones Walker and a specialist in labor and employment law. She started at the firm in 2004 and to date she’s written over 50 articles about various aspects of labor law. As a leading legal authority on OSHA, Jane has clients all over the country.

most of us, when we hear the term “Workplace safety” might react like we do during the safety instructions on a plane before take-off: We know it’s important, but we tune it out because we’ve heard it all before, and we hope it’s never going to happen.

Indifference, denial, and hoping are not strategies for creating a safe and healthy work environment. When an incident occurs that you’re not prepared for, it can plunge a great job - or a great company - into a healthcare, employment, financial, and legal nightmare.

Corey Rosales is dedicated to making sure that workday doesn’t come. Jane Heidingsfelder is also dedicated to heading off disasters before they happen, and to mitigating their after-effects when they do.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To put on a play, publish a newspaper, learn dance, or most other musical and artistic pursuits, the funds required generally come from fundraisers, or parents’ pockets.

Now, when you get to a public high school like NOCCA – the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts – where education and excellence in the arts is the very reason for its existence – it would be impossible to expect bake sales or parents to foot the bill for those expenses.

So where does that money come from?

It comes from an organization dedicated to raising the funds that help power NOCCA, called the NOCCA Foundation.

Adonis Rose is a NOCCA graduate who has gone on to a successful career as a jazz musician. Adonis has won a Grammy, he’s played on every stage that matters - including Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center - he’s accompanied legends like Dianne Reeves and Wynton Marsalis, and since 2024 he’s been Executive Director of the NOCCA Foundation.

One of the arts your high school kid might like to study is film. If they do, maybe they’ll graduate and go to film school. And then, if they want to be in the film business they’ll have to move to someplace else where they make movies. Because everybody here seems to agree that apart from a few brief and wonderful years when we were known as “Hollywood South,” there’s no way to have a career in the film business in New Orleans.

Don’t tell that to Kenny Morrison.

Kenny has been making a nationwide career for himself as a New Orleans-based film-maker since 2001. He principally makes high-end and big-budget commercials – many of which you have certainly  seen - for the likes of banks, shoes, hospitals and insurance companies.

Kenny is what’s known in the film business as a triple threat – director, cinematographer, and an entrepreneurial film technologist, pioneering cutting-edge visual effects through his virtual-production company, Lucy XR.

It used to be generally accepted that there were real jobs – like lawyers, doctors and plumbers – and then there were b.s. jobs like actors, musicians, and film makers.

We don’t think so much like that anymore. Maybe it changed because an actor, Ronald Reagan, became one of the most popular Republican presidents of the 20th Century.

Jay Z had a successful career as a musician before creating a music business empire. Artists have made millions of dollars selling works of art in the crypto space as NFT’s. Online content creators clean up collaborating with fashion houses and sneaker manufacturers. The demarcation line between art and business has gotten blurred. Locally, Adonis Rose and Kenny Morrison continue to demonstrate that creativity and commerce can happily co-exist. And that’s a lesson we need to take to heart here in New Orleans, perhaps more than any city in the country.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans.

Andrew Ward sits in hosting for Peter Ricchiuti. You can find photos from this show at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If I did that, what would you say Patrick is supposed to do?

He could do nothing. He could call 911 – to get an ambulance for Conway and a cop to arrest me. Or he could intervene – try and subdue me before I hurt Conway or other people.

That is, in fact, more or less what Patrick Young actually does. Every day.

For 3 years Patrick was the Director of Gun Violence Prevention for the City of New Orleans. In 2024 he founded 4 Social Peace. It’s the first organization in the country dedicated solely to digital community violence intervention.

4 Social Peace focuses on the links between threats and aggression on social media, real world crime, and the struggles of people trying to re-integrate after being released from incarceration. It's rooted in Patrick’s lived experience.

Well, the good news is, I didn’t stab Conway Solomon, so I can tell you - he’s Co-Founder and CEO of a company called Wrstbnd.

We first met Conway in 2020 when we were doing Out to Lunch on Zoom because of the pandemic and Conway had plenty of time on his hands because nobody was going to a live event where they’d be needing a hi-tech electronic wristband to get in the door.

That was then. Today Wrstbnd is a real-world applied technology success story. It’s – as the name suggests -  a wristband - that’s also an integrated event organization gadget and platform - kind of like a live event version of the Apple Watch or the Oura Ring. A person attending an event gets an electronic wristband that, first of all, allows people to flow into a big event in almost real time without stopping to have a ticket checked.

The Wrstbnd knows whether people are VIPs or have special needs and tracks their whereabouts. It can be used for super-fast transactions – think,  speeding up the lines for drinks, food or merch.

Wrstbnd partners with international event promotion company AEG, one of the producers of New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Claus Sadlier grew up in Old Metairie. It’s possible you don’t know who Claus is. If you’ve stopped at a coffee shop to grab a cup of joe to go - Claus is the guy who invented the paper cup you got your coffee in.

Back in the early 90’s, when to-go coffee was still sold in Styrofoam cups, Claus created an insulated paper cup. And sold the design to Dixie Cups for $170 million.

Claus went on to invent other stuff as well. Then in 2013, having conquered the world, he followed his heart back to New Orleans. He bought a home in the French Quarter and decided to use some of his good fortune to celebrate a singular New Orleans neighborhood and its claim to fame: prostitution.

In September 2024, after years of research, planning and design, Claus Sadlier opened The New Orleans Storyville Museum.

It’s been many years since New Orleans had a legal sex-worker district. But we’re still a city that proudly runs on our reputation for fun - from restaurants, bars, and  drinking on the street, to music festivals and corporate conventions.

A lot of this hospitality and tourist industry – and its allied occupations like security, sanitation, and infrastructure maintenance – is powered by people who don’t make a lot of money.

As the city gets more prosperous, these folks, who are the heart and soul of New Orleans’ economy, don’t benefit from gentrification if they don’t own a house. And if they’re renting, they can end up being priced out of their neighborhood.

That’s where Oji Alexander’s business, People’s Housing Plus, comes in. People's Housing Plus is a property development company. They buy land, build houses, and sell or rent them. But only to low and moderate income New Orleanians.

By controlling every step of the process, from financing through construction, houses are affordable. And with a stewardship program that continues after a sale, continued maintenance is affordable too.

It’s sometimes hard to describe to people who don’t live in New Orleans exactly what makes it such a unique place. Yes, it’s physically beautiful to look at, the food’s great, there’s always good music, it’s relatively affordable, and the climate is – with a few exceptions – mostly pleasant. But none of that adequately explains the actual experience of living here.

The next time you’re looking for a way to explain what that’s like, you might point to this episode of Out to Lunch. You could describe it  like this:

“In a historic building on the most exclusive tree-lined avenue in the city, as streetcars rattle by, a successful design engineer who invented the paper coffee cup and built a museum celebrating jazz, gambling and prostitution, has lunch with a property developer building houses for low income citizens – and nobody’s in a hurry to get anywhere when it’s over.”

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It sounds simple. But when you dig a little deeper, delivering a successful pitch to investors is not quite as straightforward as describing your business as “The Uber of dating” or “Air BnB for pets.” Financing a startup requires convincing investors or lenders they’re taking a worthwhile risk.

Crafting this calculated risk into a convincing sales pitch - which can be in the shape of a business plan or a presentation known as a “pitch deck” – is a special skill. And it’s what Camille Terk does at her company, Terk Consulting.

Tey Stiteler came up with her idea for a business after she and her partner bought 4 acres of land near Poplarville, Mississippi.

Tey was looking for a reason to quit her desk-job and work outdoors. With absolutely no background in farming or horticulture, Tey started growing flowers. She grew a lot of flowers. And started meeting other people who grew flowers.

Tey began selling her flowers at markets and pop-ups around New Orleans. Then in 2024 when she went all-in and opened a brick and mortar business on Camp Street. It’s called, The Secret Spot Flowers.

There’s a question I’ve heard interviewers ask people. It’s, “If you could go back in time to when you were starting out, what would you tell your younger self?” I don't ask either Camille or Tey this question but there’s no doubt that if they, and most people, knew what roadblocks and curveballs and just downright weird, unexpected things were going to come up when they started down the path of founding and running a business, they might question their optimism and the wisdom of blind faith.

On the other hand, when things work out, as they have so far for Tey and Camille, the ups and downs become a bunch of great stories.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People have tried to explain how the joy of living here triumphs over everyday things like dysfunction and potholes, with slogans like “The Big Easy,” and “The city that care forgot.”

One of the locations you can witness this triumph of the spirit is the corner of Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas Street. No, not Rouse’s. Across the street. At Tipitina’s music club.

Keith Spera from the Times Picayune has called Tipitina’s, “a sacred space.” Dr. John called it, “The church of the funky saints.” And Jazz Fest co-founder Quint Davis has referred to it as, “The Vatican of New Orleans music.”

Tipitina’s was founded in 1977 by a bunch of young people who knew nothing about business, music promotion, running a restaurant, a bar, or a radio station – it was the original home of WWOZ. These folks just wanted a place that celebrated New Orleans musicians and gave them a stage to play on - and a guarantee they’d actually get the money that people paid to come see them.

In 2018, history repeated itself when the members of the New Orleans band Galactic bought Tipitina’s.

Musicians are not typically known for their firm grasp of the music business, but the doors are still open and the revenue streams have diversified, including a record business called Tipitina’s Record Club.

Robert Mercurio is the bass player in Galactic, part owner of the legendary Tipitina’s music club, and Co-Founder of Tipitina’s Record Club.

Besides music, there’s another strand of New Orleans where art meets commerce, and where, literally, the rubber meets the road. Motorcycle design and manufacture. It’s a lot less celebrated than our place in the history of music, but if you know a thing or two about motorbikes you’ll know my other lunch guest today, J.T. Nesbitt.

J.T designed and was part of the team that produced motorcycles called The Wraith, the G2 Hellcat and The Magnolia Special, for Confederate Motorcycles, and later an electric bike, The Curtiss One. They’re all elegant works of art and powerful machines.

Today, JT is designing and building a new line of bikes under the banner of his own company, Bienville Studios. Currently he’s building a bike called the Magnolia 4. We find out all about it in this edition of Out to Lunch but for now all you need to know is Jay Leno has one on order.

The Tipitina’s logo with the half-peeled banana is a New Orleans icon. For locals and live music lovers everywhere it’s as recognizable as the Nike swoosh or the Mercedes hood ornament. Nike and Mercedes spend millions of dollars each year to keep their brands in front of people. Tipitina’s brand is spread mostly by people paying them – to buy a T-shirt or baseball cap. The lesson being, when you have a product  people genuinely care about and cherish, it sells itself.

The same philosophy can be applied to the motorbikes coming out of Bienville Studios.

Robert Mercurio and J.T. Nesbitt are both at the helm of very different but equally unique and valuable New Orleans pieces of art and commerce.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Was Thomas Edison a genius? In response to that question Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

Meaning, you can have a great idea, but you also have to have the tenacity and work ethic to bring it to life.

So, how do you do that?

New Orleans’ two most recently successful companies, Lucid – which sold for over one billion dollars, and Levelset, which sold for 500 million -  were both founded with assistance from business accelerator, The Idea Village.

Today, a lot of entrepreneurs owe their foundational steps, and their growth, to business accelerators and incubators.

Okay, but what if you have a great idea for a business, and you don’t get accepted to a business incubator? Or maybe you live in a place where there is no incubator, accelerator, or even anyone who can give you any business advice at all. Then what do you do? 

Then, you ask Solomon.

Solomon is an AI-powered business accelerator. But the business guidance you’re going to get from it is not generic AI advice pulled off the internet. Solomon’s business advice is drawn from the experience of real humans, who Solomon refers to as “Luminaries.” One of these luminaries is Chris Meaux.

Chris is the grandfather of Louisiana startups, the founder of the revolutionary food delivery app Waitr. At Waitr Chris came up with the technology that took food delivery beyond pizza and Chinese food to all restaurants, and paved the way for a generational change in dining in.

Today, Chris is Co-Founder of a company called QiMana. It’s the company that created Solomon.

Peter's other lunch guest, Chuck Perrett, had an architectural inspiration. Chuck is not an architect. He grew up in a family business that printed architectural blueprints. With the advent of the internet, architects started relying less on printed blueprints and instead started emailing contractors and sub-contractors.

Now, if you’ve ever tried to organize anything more complex than dinner for two by email, you know what a cluster that can turn into. So, imagine how unwieldy an email chain gets when you’re trying to communicate about construction and design issues with contractors and sub-contractors.

That’s why Chuck Perrett was inspired to create Centerline, a 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.

There are only so many hours in a day. You can fill them doing any number of things. You can go to work, you can come home and relax, maybe go see a movie, watch TV, write poetry, play sports...  Or you could invent an online business consultancy Or reinvent architectural communication.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Peter's lunch guests today don’t have shows on Netflix, but they both have unique stories and successful businesses that maybe you know all about, but in Peter's orbit they’ve flown under the radar. Until now.

Haley Saucier is the owner of Espiritu Mezcaleria and Cocina. It’s a Mexican restaurant. But it’s Haley’s focus on Mezcal that sets her business apart  - not just from other New Orleans restaurants but from bars and restaurants everywhere.

With over 100 types of Mezcal and tequila, Espiritu offers a specialty Master Mezcal Certification program that’s the only school of its type recognized outside of Mexico. It’s so legit that if you take the Mezcal course at Espiritu you get Mexican college credits. And that’s just one aspect of Haley Saucier’s intriguing business and life story.

Danielle Smith has an equally intriguing story and business. 

Danielle is the owner of Elektra Cosmetics. The company specializes in glitter.

Danielle was working in healthcare when she bought Elektra Cosmetics for $5,000 off a person she met at a burlesque conference. That was 2016. When Danielle moved to New Orleans she started selling glitter to burlesque performers and cheerleaders. Then she realized she’s living in a city where women don’t quit glitter when they age out of shopping at Claire’s.

Today Danielle calls Elektra Cosmetics, “glitter for grownups” and her average customers are women from 30-60, including soccer moms and sports fans.

Elektra Cosmetics has over 100 different types of glitter gels. They’ve supplied glitter to corporate clients like Nike, Crown Royal, and Dr Pepper. And, probably needless to say, Danielle has left her career in healthcare to dedicate herself to brightening the world with glitter.

People have various explanations for why things happen the way they do. Haley was  kind enough to cover a couple of bar shifts for a friend - and that led eventually to her becoming an authority on Mezcal and owning Espiritu.

Danielle's unplanned encounter with a person who was selling a glitter company led her away from a life in healthcare and into a career in cosmetics.

Whether you put these inciting incidents down to the Universe having a plan for you, sheer chance, or simply a series of bold decisions, there’s no doubt that the hard work that both these entrepreneurs have put in since starting down these paths is what has turned these intriguing ideas into booming businesses.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here’s the first one: Around 50% of the population in the US are women. You probably knew that one. 

Here’s another one. Women-owned businesses. According to the National Association of Women Business Owners, 42% of existing US businesses are owned by women. So, pretty good. Right?

Now, we move on to entrepreneurs. This one’s not so good. Of all the people who start up and run a new business – only 20-25% are women.

So, now we get to - the percentage of venture capital invested in those startup businesses. What percentage of venture capital goes to women startup entrepreneurs? You’re probably picking up on the trend here: downward. We’ve gone from around 50%, to 42 to 25. So, if this downward slide were to continue steadily, you might expect women entrepreneurs only receive 15% of all investment capital in the US. That would be pretty dismal. Wouldn’t it? Given that they make up 25% of the startup population. The actual statistic is 2%.

As extraordinary as it may seem going into the second quarter of the 21st century, women entrepreneurs in the United States receive merely 2% of all venture capital. That’s why, here in New Orleans, Jane Cooper and her colleagues run an investment company called Flamingo Funders.

Flamingo Funders are a group of women investors who invest in women founders. They started in 2022 and so far they’ve invested close to quarter of a million dollars in 6 companies.

Tiffany Langlinais started her business, Freret Napoleon, in 2014. Back then Tiffany was making handmade jewelry out of oyster shells. She went from selling a few, to getting featured in several fashion shows, and soon her jewelry was available in 55 stores across the country. Tiffany figured if she could take her own product and market it successfully, she could probably do the same for other people’s products too.

That’s why today Freret Napoleon is a marketing firm that offers a wide range of services and boasts an impressive list of clients as interesting as Cane River Pecan Company and Piety & Desire Chocolates, and as diverse as Brennans and The Bulldog.

The namesakes of Tiffany's company, Freret and Napoleon, were both men who had an impact on New Orleans. William Freret was mayor of New Orleans in the 1800’s, and Napoleon was… well, without the Louisiana Purchase who knows what the fate of New Orleans may have been?

Throughout the history of New Orleans there have also been a number of significant women, including Marie Laveau, Ruby Bridges, Mahalia Jackson, and in business the colorful Norma Wallace.

Flamingo Funders may well find and fund the next successful woman to come from New Orleans, and Freret Napoleon may well get to represent them. That would be a certain kind of poetic justice.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cathy Deano is the founder of Painting With a Twist. It’s a pretty simple concept: you get one or two friends together, you go to a Painting With A Twist studio, you get given a canvas and paints, and with the gentle guidance of the resident artist, you sip wine and paint a painting.

Cathy lives in Mandeville and founded the company in 2007. When her local studios started getting popular, Cathy started franchising the concept. Today, there are over 230 Painting With A Twist franchises, in 38 states. Over 5 million people have created over 10 million paintings. 86% of Painting With A Twist customers have gone more than once, and 51% have visited 6 times or more.

Painting With A Twist is a genuine franchise success story. And its corporate headquarters is still in Mandeville.

Sami Khan is a graduate of Tulane Business School, and the creator of an online game called Atlas Earth.

The world is divided into two kinds of people. Those who say, “Wow, Sami Khan is here?” And those who say, “What the heck is Atlas Earth?” If you fall into the latter category, Atlas Earth is the number-one ranked, top-grossing gaming app in its category in the United Sates - and in every other country where it has launched.

It’s a digital re-creation of the real world in which players buy digital real estate that corresponds to real estate properties on earth. You can’t buy just anything though, you have to be in actual real-world proximity to what you’re buying.

Players buy and sell properties using digital currency called “Atlas Bucks,” which they can also earn by buying real-world products at participating vendors like Sonic, Popeyes, and Jimmy Johns.

Atlas Earth is a hybrid digital-real-world experience, like Mark Zuckerberg was envisaging when he launched Meta. Except Atlas Earth has over 850,000 monthly users, three times more than Meta’s Active Universe had at its peak.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

However, if your idea for a new creation is a business, well, things are a bit more complex. If you grew up in a community or a family who were not business-people, or you didn’t get a business education, you might have little idea of what is even required to launch a business.

On top of that, if you’re a member of a minority community you may find there are other layers of difficulty that present even more obstacles. And this is where a New Orleans organization called Camelback Ventures comes in. Camelback Ventures describe themselves as “a rigorous venture accelerator, providing capital, coaching and community for innovative entrepreneurs.”

Because, they say, genius is equally distributed, but opportunity is not, they’re here to right the balance. The CEO of Camelback Ventures is Shawna Young. 

Once you’ve got your business up and running, a big problem you come up against is growth. You need to hire people. You need to pay them. And you need to keep them happy, so they don’t leave. Each one of these steps is more challenging than you might think at the outset.

Hiring requires finding the right people, and knowing how to interview them, so there are no surprises later. Paying employees requires complying with a maze of taxation and accounting procedures. And holding on to good employees requires knowing something about incentivizing a workforce.

You probably didn’t get into business to do any of this. And if you don’t want to deal with it you can turn to a local payroll and HR company, called Crescent Payroll and HR. The founder and president of Crescent Payroll and HR is Sanders Offner.

There’s a difference between a great idea and, well, everything that follows. Getting married is a great idea. Being married is a whole other thing. Similarly, starting a business, though far from simple, is largely exciting and fun – it’s a challenging process of discovery.

Running a business, on the other hand, is an exercise in constant problem-solving that ranges from coping with the mundanity of office supplies to the grand vision of growth. Shawna is focused on starting businesses. Sanders is focused on running them. These two processes are inextricably interdependent in a manner that’s best expressed by Frank Sinatra and lyricist Sammy Cahn: “You can’t have one without the other.”

Andrew Ward sits in for Peter Ricchiuti on this edition of Out to unch, recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans.

You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After you’ve spent it on necessities like food, housing, and education, if you’ve got money to spare you can buy stuff.

Or, you can use your excess money to make more money.

There are fundamentally two ways of doing this. Investing. And gambling. There are people who will argue that those two are actually the same. It’ll be interesting to see if my lunch guests today draw any similarity between their two occupations – which are, investing and gambling.

On the investment side, Mike Eckert is Chairman of an organization called Gulf South Angels. The word “angels” refers to angel investors. These are people who put money into very early-stage businesses where there might be little more to invest in than a concept, a business plan, and an enthusiastic founder.

The last time we met Mike was 2014. At that time he was launching a New Orleans angel investment group called NOLA Angel Network. That was to become the nucleus of the current, much larger organization. 

Gulf South Angels network is spread across 12 states. There are around 135 angel members. And to date they’ve invested over $20m in a diverse range of companies, from aerospace to pet food.

And so, to the other method of using your surplus capital to generate more money: gambling.

If you’re a certain age you may remember a time when there was no legalized gambling in the state of Louisiana. The state legislature eventually figured out a way to compromise between the anti-gambling faction and the pro-gambling folks, by allowing gambling, without actually allowing it. They achieved this seemingly impossible feat by permitting gambling only on riverboats, not on land. But they also allowed riverboats to tie up to a dock, and didn’t require them to actually sail anywhere.

One of these gambling vessels was the Treasure Chest Casino Riverboat, tied up to a dock in Kenner.

Well, as they tend to, times change. Somehow, the non-gambling folks were won over and today Louisiana has a number of what we still call, “land-based casinos.”

In June 2024, just over the levee from the riverboat, a much bigger, land-based casino and entertainment center, called The Treasure Chest, opened in Kenner’s Laketown neighborhood. The Director of Marketing at Treasure Chest Casino is Rodney Miller.

In the 1980’s, a book about deal-making called “Getting To Yes” popularized the concept of “win win” – conflict resolution in which both parties feel they have benefited, rather than one side winning at the expense of the other.

This same feeling - that everybody benefits - is the core belief of both casinos and angel investors.

At the casino, the theory goes, even if you don’t come out ahead financially, you’ve had a good time. And, like any other pastime, hopefully you only spent discretionary capital, not your rent money.

With angel investing, the theory goes, you’re risking your own money by sinking it into somebody else’s dream - but if it works out, everybody wins.

Whether this is how you think the world works, or whether you’re more of a cynic with less of a Pollyanna perspective, there are always going to be people with discretionary income looking for a way to invest it. Whether that’s gambling or angel investing, for Mike and Rodney it’s win-win.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Numbers that denote height, weight, and temperature, are culturally neutral. Numbers that measure years are not. We give select numbers of years special  significance. 18, you can vote. 21, you can buy alcohol. 65 you can collect social security.

We regard numbers that measure decades as milestones. One hundred is the big one. 50 years - half-way there – and 25 years - a quarter-way there - are big deals too. So, when 2025 rolled around we went looking for businesses for whom this quarter century point was significant. We found two.

Café Reconcile was founded in 2000. Their 25th birthday is 2025. They’re a restaurant and a workforce development program. They hire kids aged 16-24 who are at risk or might have already made regrettable decisions. They train these young people in all aspects of the hospitality industry, with the goal of graduating them into careers in New Orleans restaurants, hotels, and other places of employment beyond hospitality.

And talking of the significance of the number 25, Café Reconcile has been recognized by no less than the New York Times as one of New Orleans’ 25 best restaurants.

Our other business for whom 2025 is a significant milestone is a small Mid City ice cream store and bakery with a giant reputation and massive following, simply named after its founder, Angelo Brocato.

Angelo opened his store in 1905, making 2025 the business’s 120th birthday. Today, Angelo’s grandson, Arthur, owns and runs the business.

If you had $10 for every time someone said, “New Orleans is known for its food” you’d be able to pay for a lot of meals at Café Reconcile and buy a lot of Angelo Brocato’s ice cream.

But that sentence is a little misleading.

If you live here, you know it’s not our food we’re known for. It’s the history, the culture, the time, the love, and the intangible elements that create this unique city that somehow find their way into the food. It's not the catfish at Café Reconcile or the Mint Chocolate Chip gelato at Angelo Brocato’s… Well, okay it is that – but it’s also people like Kheri and the quarter century of caring at Café Reconcile, and like Arthur, his  family and 120 years of joy at Angelo Brocato’s that make New Orleans New Orleans.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Co-working spaces are typically modeled after the re-imagined office that was born back in the day when Google and Facebook were startups. It’s a mashup of an office, coffee shop, private club, and event space. And the best part is, the boss is never going to walk in – because there is no boss. You rent the desk yourself on an annual or monthly basis.

Peter's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch both have co-working spaces – one on the Northshore in Covington, the other in New Orleans, in the Arts District.

In Covington, Bradley Cook is Co-Founder of Palette Northshore, modeled to some extent after sister Palette co-working spaces in Florida and New York. In New Orleans, Hugh Breckenridge is Community Manager at The Shop Workspace in The Contemporary Arts Center on Camp Street. The Shop also has locations in Salt Lake City and Brooklyn, New York.

If you listen to podcasts and radio shows about business, or keep up with the finance punditocracy on TV, you’ll hear people pontificate about “The Future of Work.” 

Like everything else about the future, nobody knows anything. Not for sure, anyway. What we do know, though, is the tyranny of the office cubicle is a relic of the past. Multiple studies find a significant majority of white-collar workers prefer some form of remote work, and over 30% say they would quit a job if they were compelled to show up at the office every day.

This demand for the freedom to work out of the office will more than likely ensure the popularity of co-working spaces well into any foreseeable future.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here in New Orleans, you have less than a week till the next round of society-sanctioned excessive eating, drinking and socializing begins. January 6th is 12th night, the official beginning of Mardi Gras. That’s when the first parades begin. And, traditionally, when bakers start selling king cake.

Since 2019, it’s also opening day of a king cake lover’s paradise: King Cake Hub.

King Cake Hub is Jennifer Samuels’ 2-month a year business. It’s a single location where you can get practically every variety of king cake available in New Orleans. Currently there are 80 of them. They’re baked by 25 different bakers. And the King Cake Hub collection is curated - meaning Jennifer tastes and approves every king cake.

New Orleans - a city on the banks of the Mississippi River - takes its name from Orléans, a city on the banks of the Loire River, in France.

We can argue about who New Orleans’ most famous citizen is – probably Louis Armstrong - but undoubtedly Orléans’ most famous citizen is The Maid of Orleans. Her name was Jeanne d’Arc and she became known to the English-speaking world as Joan of Arc.

Joan of Arc’s birthday is January 6th. Which is also, as I mentioned, 12th night, the first night of Mardi Gras. It was that fact, and the feeling that 12th night wasn’t being celebrated with enough inclusive diversity in New Orleans, that led Amy Kirk Duvoisin to found the Joan of Arc Project.

The flagship activity of the Joan of Arc Project is the Joan of Arc Parade, on 12th night. It’s a walking parade set in Joan’s era, the 1400’s, with medieval costumes, music, characters on horseback, and roving entertainers like jugglers and stilt walkers. The paraders have Medieval throws – and king cake.

If you don’t know anything else about New Orleans, you know we’re the home of Mardi Gras – the biggest, rowdiest, annual street party in the country.

If you live in New Orleans, Mardi Gras is more than just a party. It’s more than just a whole lot of parties. It’s part of the fabric of the city – from our culture to our economy. And, like other aspects of culture and economics, it’s not static. It changes. And evolves. These evolutions are mostly the result of innovations that come from the creative minds of New Orleanians, like Jennifer Samuels and Amy Kirk Duvoisin.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As knowledge-based industries have grown, so has the demand for a higher-educated workforce. Today, over 60% of US high school graduates go on to college. That’s almost twice the number of other OECD countries including Japan, Germany, and France.

This has created a segment of the finance industry that loans money to students. Students who then graduate with debt significant enough to prevent them from doing other things, like buying a house. At the same time, we have a housing crisis in the US. According to NPR’s reporting, right now we have a shortfall of up to 7 million houses.

Education, debt-distribution, and the housing shortage might seem like huge, intractable macro-economic issues. But, locally, right here in New Orleans, Aaron Frumin is doing something to correct them.

Aaron is founder and CEO of unCommon Construction. It’s a construction company that builds houses. And it gets a significant portion of its workforce from high schools. High school students spend 100 hours each semester as apprentices, learning all aspects of construction, from swinging a hammer to team leadership.

We first met Aaron back in 2018, when unCommon Construction was just getting rolling. Today, unCommon Construction has filled 500 apprenticeship positions, distributed over half a million dollars in scholarships, and over 80% of kids who graduate from their work-skills program go into the construction industry.

Also back in 2018, we first learned about an atypical property development company, Alembic Community Development. Alembic partners with non-profit organizations, or like-minded for-profits, to develop real estate in typically disadvantaged communities. In other words, they build houses, community and commercial properties, in neighborhoods that are unattractive to most investors.

Starting out in New York, Alembic opened its doors in New Orleans in 2007. In 2008 Mike Grote joined the company as Director of its New Orleans office. It’s a position Mike still holds today.

There are a lot of things in New Orleans that are different from most other cities in the country: Gumbo, Bourbon Street, second-lines, muffulettas, Mardi Gras, the list goes on. But our much-vaunted fun-first lifestyle doesn’t immunize us from the problems that afflict the rest of the country - especially around the issues of affordable housing, and alternatives to debt-laden college education.

While the public image of New Orleans focuses on frivolity, and while Aaron and Mike enjoy Mardi Gras and live music as much as any other New Orleanian, they’re both making significant contributions to solving serious, nationwide problems. We're always happy when Out ot Lunch can shine a light on New Orleanians like Aaron and Mike and businesses like unCommon Construction and Almebic Community Development whose contributions to our city and country are overshadowed by the brighter lights of food and fun.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Generations of legendary New Orleans piano players became identified with the places they played. Fats Domino at the Dew Drop Inn. Professor Longhair at Tipitina’s. James Booker at The Maple Leaf. Today you can hear masters of New Orleans piano like Jon Cleary, Tom McDermott, Joe Krown, and others at clubs around town, like Chickie Wah Wah, The Bon Temps, and Buffa’s.

Or, you can hear them at your place. 

You can have an A-list New Orleans piano player show up at your place - with a grand piano - and play your birthday party, wedding, or just a random Friday night,  thanks to Jacques Ferland’s business,  Piano On A Truck.

Piano On A Truck is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a grand piano on the back of a yellow, 1972 International pick-up truck.And it comes with, or without,  a piano player.

In our seemingly never-ending attempt to place order on a chaotic world, we like to categorize things into twos - either/or. Tall or short. Black or white. On the rocks or straight up. Today, for a lot of white-collar occupations, the either/or distinction is either working in the office or working from home.

Well, like so many things in life, it turns out there’s a 3rd way.

Billy Schell describes himself as CEO, owner and van driver of an apparel company called NOLA Shirts. NOLA Shirts designs and manufactures New Orleans themed Polo shirts, T-shirts, and hats, and sells them online or at various brick-and-mortar stores around New Orleans.

The “van driver” in Billy’s job description is a reference to the company’s headquarters which are also Billy’s living quarters – a Mercedes Sprinter van that’s been his principal home and office since 2021.

Around 5,525 years ago - it was probably a Thursday - in ancient Mesopotamia, the wheel was invented. To say it was a revolutionary invention is not just a bad pun, it’s also the understatement of several millennia. And just when you think every possible use of the wheel has already been thought of, along comes the 21st Century - and hashtag-van-life and Piano On A Truck, two New Orleans entrepreneurs discovering yet more places the revolutions of a wheel can take us.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Orleanian Bruce Spizer is not a musician. He’s a lawyer and an accountant. But, not only has he occasionally thought how great it must have been to be in The Beatles, he’s written 16 books about them.

Bruce is a world-renowned Beatles expert. He’s been a guest on practically every major American TV news show. He’s made countless TV appearances around the world. He’s a Beatles consultant for Universal Music Group, Capital Records, and Apple Corps – the Beatles’ own label – and he wrote the questions and answers for The Beatles edition of Trivial Pursuit.

In case you’re wondering why any of this would make Bruce Spizer a guest on a business show, his book sales alone have earned over $3m. One of his books is selling on Amazon for over $4,000, and there are more books in the works.

If you live in New Orleans and you like festivals and live music – and if you don’t, you’re probably planning on leaving – you’ll be familiar with the work of Stephen St. Cyr.

If you’re trying to place his name and wondering what band he’s in, or whether he’s maybe a celebrity chef, nope, it’s none of that. Stephen is President of a company called Vivid Ink.

Vivid Ink makes visual artwork for festivals and events – like stage banners, sponsor signage, practically everything that’s not food or music, at events like Jazz Fest, Sugar Bowl, Hogs For The Cause, Tales of the Cocktail and a long list of others.

There are two branches of Stephen’s company – a Baton Rouge office that works with corporate clients, and the more fun New Orleans division - a big building on Poydras Street where a staff of 29 creates all the live event stuff.

It’s kind of nice at this point in their respective careers to talk with Stephen and Bruce about the extraordinary successes they’ve both accomplished. But none of this success was handed to either of them. Their own creativity and hard work has made all of this happen. And it doesn’t look either of them are taking their foot off the gas any time soon. Their future achievments may turn out to be as notable as their histories.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here’s the situation: It’s morning. I get ready to leave the house. I pick out an outfit, get dressed, I look great. Then my wife says, “You can’t go out looking like that. That shirt doesn’t go with those pants. That tie is hideous. And 1998 called and wants its jacket back.”

So, here’s my question. If I think I look great, do I look great? Or is there such a thing as objective, universally agreed style, and could I, in that case, actually look terrible? Not just to my wife, but to everybody. What do you think?

On this edition of Out to Lunch, I put that question to Tracee Dundas. 

Tracee is founder and Executive Producer of New Orleans Fashion Week. She’s the Fashion Correspondent at WVUE-TV, Fox 8, she’s the Program Coordinator at Dress For Success, and for the past 22 years has worked as a freelance fashion writer and editor at Renaissance Publishing. Tracee also produces fashion shows and other fashion events for regional clients, including Essence Festival.

If you’re a woman of color with larger breasts, and you want to wear certain fashion-forward clothes you see in stores, or on Instagram, you might run into a snag. And that is, getting your breasts to work with that dress. You can do it - but a bra is not going to work. You’re going to need something called boob tape.

There’s a good chance you already know what boob tape is. If you don’t – it’s tape. That holds breasts in place. It looks a bit like duct tape. But when you’re done with it, it peels off your breasts without peeling your skin off with it.

When Kaelin Bass went looking for boob tape, all she could find was tape that was too small to do the job for her breasts. And it was all made to match skin tones that weren’t hers. So Kaelin created her own boob tape. And in 2020 she started her own company, KM Boobies. Today you can find KM Boobies Boob Tape all over, including on Amazon and at Walmart. Kaelin is selling up to 4,000 rolls of boob tape a month.

In business – like pretty much everything in life – you enjoy the greatest security when things are predictable. When you know what’s coming around the corner, when you know what tomorrow’s going to look like, you can plan for a known future.

Well, fashion is the exact opposite of that. The only way fashion moves forward is by changing. And the only way to stay relevant in the fashion business is to stay ahead of the trend and embrace the unpredictable. It's not a business lifestyle for the faint of heart.

Tracee and Kaelin are both carving out successful careers in this world: they're both creating businesses and products that weren’t there before they came along. And they're both doing it from here in New Orleans.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The origin of the term, “the bottom line,” is business accounting. It refers to the literal bottom line of a financial statement - a company’s profit or loss. This literal bottom line is what we typically regard as the sole point of a business: the bigger the profit, the better the business.

But today there are also businesses we refer to as Triple Bottom Line. These companies have three equal categories of success: profit, people, and purpose.

Both of Peter's guests on Out to Lunch today have founded triple bottom line companies here in New Orleans.

Along with his partner, Charon Flowers Maple, Spencer Davis co-founded Bypass Lines in 2020. Bypass Lines works with local restaurants, caterers and retailers. It promotes them to customers who support non-profit causes. Each time Bypass Lines delivers food or products to these customers, they give a portion of the proceeds to the customer’s chosen charity.

As of right now, Bypass Lines report they’ve supported over 100 catering businesses, delivered over 1,000 online food orders, and over $1m has been processed through their platform.

Lauren Darnell founded her company, Porch & Okra Consulting, in 2023. Porch & Okra’s clients are mainly restaurant owners and other hospitality industry leaders looking to expand diversity, and improve conditions for employees in the hospitality and restaurant business - one of the most vital sectors of the New Orleans economy. 

How many of us care enough about other people to devote our professional lives to helping them? Not many. Spencer, Lauren and their companies, Bypass Lines and Porch & Okra Consulting, are exceptions to the rule. Making other people’s welfare the focus of a business - and putting people and purpose on an equal plane as profit - is ambitious. It’s hard work that requires multiple levels of planning and execution.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Online, you can play a first-person-shooter game with other people. In real life, you can join the US military and learn to use an M4 assault rifle. It’s the standard issue weapon designed to shoot and kill enemy combatants. It doesn’t get much more IRL than that. Right?

Well, not exactly. You see, it turns out that buying guns and ammo to train soldiers for combat is expensive. Training soldiers on simulated weapons is cheaper. And you can hook up a simulated weapon to digital equipment that gives trainers all kinds of information about the trainee’s performance.

Here's the thing, though. You can make a fake gun that looks, feels and makes a noise like a real assault weapon, but it doesn’t actually perform like an assault weapon. Because when you fire it, it doesn’t kick back.

Or at least it didn’t, until Hahnville High graduate Kyle Monti invented and wrote the patent for the Electromagnetic Recoil System. This technology now forms the basis of Kyle’s New Orleans company, Haptech. Haptech creates warfighter training technology. In 2023 the company was awarded an $11m contract to develop weapon simulators for the US Army and Marine Corps.

The entertainment industry also seems determined to blur the line between the digitally delivered universe and IRL. In the movie theater, and in what we now call home theater, visual effects and sophisticated sound systems are designed to give us an immersive experience. The creators of the content and the hardware want to make us feel like we’re really there - whether that’s on a football field or another planet.

It hasn’t always been this way. If you’re old enough, you might remember going to Blockbuster and renting a movie on videocassette, which you’d bring home and play on a small TV with a single small speaker. If you were immersed in anything back then, it was the fun you were having watching the movie with your friends or family.

Eden Chubb is trying to bring that kind of immersive experience back. Her Garden District store, Future Shock Video, has over 2,000 titles on VHS and DVD that you can rent by the week.

Kyle's digital weapons business and warfighter training technology might tempt us to say, “This is not your grandfather’s New Orleans.” But, actually, Haptech's office is on Andrew Higgins Boulevard. Whether that’s coincidence or intentional, it makes the point that New Orleans is no stranger to innovative military design and manufacturing.

And when we’re talking about Eden's movie rental business, there’s no doubt - it’s intentionally your grandfather’s New Orleans.

These two folks couldn’t be in much more unrelated types of businesses, but they’re both making equally unique contributions to the economy and lifestyle of our unique city.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Coca Cola came along, nobody who was enjoying a long, cool glass of lemonade was clamoring for a sweet, syrupy, brown drink. When Uber came along people weren’t fantasizing about getting into a car with a total stranger. And when Jeff Bezos started selling books online, nobody in their right mind would give their credit card number to a person they didn’t know on the world wide web.

At the end of the day, it wasn’t Bezos’ ability as a salesman that convinced people to trust Amazon, it was the invention of a piece of software called “encryption” that made it safer to give your credit card to Amazon than to a server in a restaurant.

Today there are other online companies poised to capitalize on the next technological change to e-commerce. One of those is a local startup called Cucuron, an online art gallery based in New Orleans, founded by Megan Manning. 

You might ask, “How many people are going to pay $2,000 for a piece of artwork based on a photo on a phone?” Maybe not a whole lot, but… When augmented reality and virtual reality become a part of our device’s operating system – which they definitely will at some point – looking at a piece of art online will be exactly, in every way, like looking at a piece of art on the wall in a gallery.

Whether or not Cucuron becomes the Amazon of art is unknowable. But it’s building the architecture ready for the day when buying art online is as second-nature as buying the shoes, furniture, and mattresses people at one point said they would never buy online.

Over 55% of e-commerce shoppers say the reason they buy online is, “home delivery.” Maybe it’s the legacy of the pandemic, maybe it’s the influence of Gen Z., but more of our lives these days seem to be home-centric.

Very few New Orleanians know more about the many notions of “home” than Kristin Palmer. Kristin was Executive Director of an organization called Rebuilding Together. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Kristin led over 10,000 volunteers who rebuilt hurricane-damaged structures so New Orleanians could come home.

In 2010 Kristin was elected to the New Orleans City Council. She represented District C which includes the French Quarter, the Marigny, Treme, Bywater and Algiers.

In 2014 she founded Bargeboard, a home renovation and restoration company whose goal is to keep Old Algiers affordable and accessible through historic renovation, recycling and reuse. Bargeboard is a culmination of a lifetime of Kristin’s New Orleans-centric personal and professional passions.

In the 1940’s, Abraham Maslow, a psychology professor, came up with a pyramid-shape explanation of human existence which has come to be known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. On the bottom level of the pyramid are the most basic needs, including shelter – a home. At the top is something Maslow called Self Actualization, which includes creativity, like producing art.

Maslow’s interpretation of human existence has become a foundational teaching in understanding human motivation and behavior. But, if any place on earth was to challenge Maslow’s conventional wisdom, it would be New Orleans. Here, our homes are of course vital, but an equally vital part of our lives - that makes New Orleans New Orleans - is music, beauty, and art.

So, although both Megan's and Kristin's businesses – Bargeboard and Cucuron – theoretically represent the extreme poles of human existence, our lived experience here in New Orleans rates them as equally essential to our everyday lives.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fear is a natural response to a perception of danger. All creatures on earth have it. We use fear to spur us into action - to run or take other steps to save our lives.

There are many studies listing specific fears of different societies. Believe it or not, here in the United Sates, one of our greatest fears is public speaking. In numerous studies, the fear of public speaking ranks number one – higher even than the fear of death.

I’m not a psychologist, sociologist or neuroscientist so I’m not about to embark on an exploration of why that is, but I do know there are ways to conquer this fear. And it is worth conquering. The inability to express yourself when you have something to say can severely impact your career.

In New Orleans, Chris Trew is an improv comedian who, alongside his comedy career, has turned his talents toward teaching communication skills. Chris conducts workshops for people in business. His goal is to help a business person become a better communicator, a better leader in their field, and to learn to embrace and enjoy attention rather than fear it.

In the world of New Orleans comedy, comedian Nicolo Giardina is known as “Pickle.” The name was inspired by a rap song and cemented by fellow inmates when Pickle spent time in jail, the result of a decade-long career in sales - in the drug business.

Today, rather than sit around and wait for the phone to ring to be booked at a local comedy club, Pickle has crossed over to the other side of the microphone and produces comedy shows. These shows are principally called Roast Beefin’. 

Roast Beefin’s are comedy roasts where two comedians battle each other in a kind of cutting competition. You can see Roast Beefin’ mostly at the Hi Ho –Lounge - where it’s been anchored since 2020.

Although producing comedy shows in what is principally a music venue and bar in St Claude might sound like a fun way to make a living, Pickle describes the local comedy industry as “competitive and ruthless.”

In 1946 a show opened on Broadway called Annie Get Your Gun. A number of songs from that show have survived to this day. Maybe the most well-known is a song called “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” On the one hand the song is a love letter to the world of live performance. And on the other, it’s a wry observation of the kind of addiction behavior that seems to underlie the world of entertainers.

This verse might say it best:
“Even with a turkey that you know will fold
You may be stranded out in the cold
But still you wouldn't change it for a sack of gold
Let's go on with the show”

Chris and Pickle, as producers of comedy in New Orleans, have both chosen a tough path. But although it might sound trite, it’s true – somebody has to do it. We need comedy, and comedy demands comedians. 

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Coca Cola model is called Mass Marketing. The targeted approach is called Niche Marketing.

Sometimes businesses say they have a niche market as a euphemism for the fact that very few people are buying their product. But there are businesses whose products are legitimately very niche. Like, for example, human breast milk.

Human breastmilk is intended to be consumed orally by human offspring. But it also has other applications. For example, it can be an ingredient in medicinal soap.

When Shay Franklin had a baby, she discovered she was an over-producer of breast milk. When her 4 month of old daughter, Nova, was diagnosed with psoriasis and eczema, Shay used her surplus supply to make breastmilk soap.

The soap worked miracles for baby Nova’s skin condition, and Shay started selling her bars of soap to other people in need, on Tik Tok and at local farmer’s markets. But even an over-producer only has so much breast milk. So, Shay came up with other recipes. Today her company, Shay’s Organics, has a line of skincare products including soaps, scrubs, cleansers, body butter, and more.

It seems popular these days for people who care about their diet to eat what is called a “plant-based diet.” If there’s a growing number of people who predominantly eat plants, in a sort of horticultural revenge, there’s also a growing interest in plants who eat meat.

Beyond the well-known Venus Fly Trap, there are in fact a whole range of carnivorous plants. And there’s a niche market of folks who love and care for them. Locally, these folks shop at a business called, We Bite Rare & Unusual Plants.

The owner of We Bite is Carlos Detres.

One of the knocks against living in a small city like New Orleans – compared to, say, Los Angeles or New York - is the limited range of goods and services available in a smaller place.

The logic is, with a smaller population you have a smaller market to sell to. At some point the scale just gets too small to sustain a business for products that aren’t in great demand.

But when your whole reason for existing at all is a niche market – say, Black and Latina women with discerning organic skincare tastes, or self-identifying strange and peculiar people looking for carnivorous plants and fellow travelers – traditional market logic ceases to apply.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After each one of these disasters, affected homeowners make a claim with their insurance company. Now, I don’t like to generalize, and I don’t have any statistical information to back this up, but I’m pretty sure you’ll agree with me on this… Even though insurance companies are technically in competition, the ones who are still writing policies in Louisiana seem to have adopted increasingly sophisticated justifications for reducing the amounts of money they pay out after a disaster.

Most of us who make claims and get denied throw up our hands and say, “What can you do?” But Jonathan Frazier is not taking “denied” for an answer.

Jonathan is Co-Founder of Forefront 360, a company created by a team of former insurance adjusters whose aim is to provide tools and services to property owners to get their property insurance ducks in a row before a storm hits.

So that when it comes time to make a claim, the insurance company doesn’t have a way to wriggle out of it.

When we’re not dealing with the preparation for, or aftermath of, a disaster, we New Orleanians are justifiably well-known for our propensity to celebrate the pleasures of life. 

One of those pleasures is going out to eat. When it comes to your favorite restaurant, you might be familiar with who owns it, the names of the chefs, bartenders, and your favorite servers. But one question you probably can’t answer is, “Who built the kitchen?” 

There’s very little more vital to the operational success of a restaurant than it’s kitchen. In New Orleans - and around the country too - a company called The Kitchen Guys has been designing and building commercial kitchens for 50 years. One half of their nationwide business is here in New Orleans, so there’s a pretty good chance The Kitchen Guys had a hand in building the kitchen at your favorite restaurant.

The President of the Kitchen Guys is Dustin Bennett.

In most places, people like to categorize things into groups of two. Black or white. Tall or short. Rich or poor. And so on. In New Orleans, we have our own pairs of things we use to bracket life here. But you’ll notice we don’t use the word “or” to differentiate elements. We use the word “and” to amplify them.

Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. The Marigny and The Quarter. The Saints and The Pelicans. Although it might seem slightly less obvious, two other significant, quintessential New Orleans experiences are hurricanes and restaurants.

Although one is something nobody wants to experience and the other is something we all love to experience, they’re both woven into the fabric of life here. Living in New Orleans means at some point in your week you’ll be considering a restaurant, and at some point in your life you’ll inevitably be affected by a natural disaster. So it's good to know Dustin and Jonathan have our back.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We spend a portion of our adult lives trying to recover from the ones that scar us. But there are also positive experiences. Joyful times and meaningful relationships stay with us. They come to define happiness.

For Brittney Hawkins Dobard, one of her happy-place emotional touchstones was with her grandmother in her kitchen, baking cookies.

As a kid, Brittney called her grandmother, “MoMo Gerald.” As an adult, Brittney was in car sales.

When you’re a car salesperson, your customer spends a bunch of time waiting around. To make the wait less painful, Brittney started bringing her customers homemade cookies. Like MoMo Gerald used to bake.

In 2019, Brittney realized her cookies were so popular - and she enjoyed making them so much - that she quit selling cars and started up NOLA Cookie Co.

Today NOLA Cookie Co cranks out up to 800 cookies a week. They sell them from their website, ship them across the country, and supply the Virgin Hotel with 300 cookies a month.

Margie Tillman Ayres called her grandmother, “Granny.”  But she started out following her in grandfather’s footsteps, as a jewelry designer.

It was only when Margie was struggling and out of necessity took a job in the art department at Jazz Fest that she discovered how much she enjoyed recreating her childhood days with Granny, painting, making sculptures and puppets.

In 2014 Margie made it official – she become an artist, muralist and illustrator, starting up her own company, Margie and The Moon.

You’ll see Margie’s work all over New Orleans – from murals at places like the restaurant Mr. Mao and music venue The Broadside – to her scenic work in movies and TV shows that are shot here. You’ve probably also seen her commercial work as an illustrator and her graphic designs for companies as diverse as Pyrex and Trader Joe’s.

Margie’s style is immediately recognizable. It’s a unique whimsicality executed with realist perfection. Margie is currently committing this style to canvases as she moves away from illustration and toward selling her pieces as fine art.

When you’re a parent or grandparent, you know that your kids or grandkids are constantly observing you. And absorbing everything. At least until they’re teenagers, when that totally flips. But when they’re young kids you never know what seemingly inconsequential thing you say or do is going to stick with them and resonate through their lives. And maybe even form the basis of an entire career.

Brittney and Margie's grandmothers, MoMo Gerald and Granny, might be  surprised at the influence they’ve had on their grandaughter's lives and careers, but they’d certainly be proud. 

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At least, you don’t believe anything on the channels they subscribe to. And they don’t believe anything anyone says on your side.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an organization that researched issues and published unbiased facts, without ideological partisanship or a devotion to page-views or ratings?

Well, guess what? There is! And it’s right here in New Orleans. It’s the Bureau of Governmental Research. The name might not have the zing of an exciting-sounding operation, but BGR’s reporting has a multi-million dollar impact, in New Orleans and beyond.

BGR’s President, CEO, and current Samuel Zemurray Chair in Research Leadership, is Rebecca Mowbray.

It’s hard to overstate the amount of time each of us spends doing research these days. We’ve shortened the term “research” to simply “search” and, if you’re like most people, you search e-commerce sites; you search restaurants to go out to eat, or delivery services to order in; you search for a plumber, you search the news, the weather, and the list scrolls on…

This is mostly time you spend alone. But when you look up from your computer or your phone, maybe you’d like to discuss your opinions with another person. Or, maybe you’d like to learn from an expert – an actual human - whose knowledge comes from education and experience, beyond the internet.

If you’re a woman in New Orleans, there’s a place where you can do all of this. It’s called Salon22. Salon 22 is a professional women’s club and idea hub, co-founded by 4 women - one of whom is Salon 22’s CEO, Fay Kimbrell.

Because in our regular lives most of us tell the truth most of the time, we tend to believe other people are telling us the truth most of the time, too. But, when it comes to news or information sources, it’s a different story. According to Pew Research, 86% of Americans get at least some of their news online. But only 7% of us trust that what we’re seeing is true. So, the cliché complaint, “Nobody believes anything anymore,” is actually pretty accurate.

Here’s another interesting statistic. Do you know what the most trusted online news site is? The Weather Channel.

So, if you want trusted, reliable information, other than the weather, where do you go? One answer is, the Bureau of Governmental Research. And if you’re looking for a place to sit and absorb this information, or people to network with, to learn from and discuss things with, you can go to Salon 22.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Manufacturers wholesaled products to retailers, and retailers added a profit margin, which became the price consumers paid.

When e-commerce came along, some manufacturers realized they could cut out the middleman - and the term “direct to consumer” was born.

Because consumers are used to paying retail, manufacturers who sell direct-to-consumer charge retail prices - substantially increasing their profit margin. If this model works for furniture, electronics, and sports shoes, why couldn’t it work for art?

Artists typically get paid nothing at all for their work, until their artwork sells, at which time they give the retailer – typically a gallery owner – 50% of the sale price.

New Orleans artist Amanda Stone Talley is rewriting that business model. She cuts out the retail middleman by having her own gallery. And she’s built a website with an e-commerce function that offers a direct-to-consumer experience that’s as easy as shopping on Amazon.

 If you don’t like business as usual, start your own business, and do it your own way. That was Michael Newcomer’s response to moving to New Orleans. He was planning on working as an actor in what he thought was going to be a thriving, well-paid theater scene.

When he got here - after being an actor in Los Angeles and New York - Michael found the New Orleans theater scene was neither thriving nor well-paid. So, in 2022 he co-founded, and today is Executive Director of, Crescent City Stage.

The company bills itself as Louisiana’s first fully professional regional theater, offering paid Theatrical Union jobs.

In the early days of the mostly tech-driven entrepreneurial renaissance of the early two-thousands, we heard a lot about “disruption.” Ride-sharing disrupted the taxi industry. Streaming disrupted the music industry. Food delivery services disrupted the restaurant industry.

When entrepreneurs went looking for financial backing back then, if investors didn’t see a potential for disruption, they didn’t see potential for success. Today we don’t hear much about disruption. Not so much because everything has been disrupted already, but because this kind of up-ending, innovative business thinking has become normalized.

So, when people like Amanda set about disrupting the commerce of art, or Michael set sabout disrupting the landscape of local theater, we no longer look at it as revolutionary. But, actually, it is revolutionary. And it takes the same level of vision and courage as it always has to forge a new path.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What you have to do is convince a consumer that when they need to replace whatever-it-is, they need to try your product. Because your product is different. This difference is what’s called “differentiation.” Pretty simple. And obvious. It’s what differentiates your hopefully ubiquitous product from everybody else’s.

When it came to Jacob Lawson’s flooring company, he decided that what makes his, mostly industrial, polished concrete flooring different from everybody else’s is, his floors are extraordinary.

That’s why he changed the name of his company from Big Jake Affordable Flooring, to Extraordinary Flooring.

That was in the early two-thousands. If I was to read the names of companies Extraordinary Flooring has made floors for, it would take up half of this show.

Suffice to say, if you live in New Orleans, or even visit here, you’ve almost certainly walked on an Extraordinary Floor. Here are just a few examples: The Superdome. The Convention Center. The World War II Museum. Hilton Hotels. Ochsner Hospital. Touro Hospital. Rouse’s Supermarkets. French Truck Coffee. New Orleans Original Daiquiris. Southern University. Lockheed Martin Stennis Space Center… You get the idea.

Jacob Lawson is also the author of the how-I-did-it book, “Make It Extraordinary: 27 Life Changing Lessons That Will Elevate You Beyond The Ordinary."

Now we’re going to apply this same differentiator principle to women’s underwear.

I’m not going to presume to be an authority on this statistic, but I’d hazard an educated guess that most women wear underwear. So, that seems like a good place to start if, like Mindy Christie, you’re going to start up a new lingerie business.

Mindy launched her lingerie business in New Orleans in 2020 under the brand name, Furious Viola. In 2023 she re-branded, as undergoodies. (The all-lower-case spelling is a marketing decision.)

The undergoodies differentiator is, these undergarments don’t look like anything you see at Victoria’s Secret. They’re not skimpy thongs - nor are they designed to necessarily disappear and be invisible under clothes. They’re not in traditional white, neutral or black - they’re brightly colored.

A generation-or-two ago these styles of lingerie were known as pettipants and pettislips. Undergoodies are retro, with updated designs that make them current fashion. People are buying them in stores in 11 states and online at the undergoodies website.

Mindy and Jacob are at very different points on the timelines of their businesses. Jacob is able to talk - and write - about the extraordinary successes he's had with Extraordinary Flooring. Mindy is in the building phase of undergoodies, but extraordinary success doesn’t seem to be too far away.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to music media company, Off Beat, and tourist authority New Orleans & Company, on any given night we have, on average, 100 places to hear live music. If New York City had the same per capita number of live music venues, they’d have 800. In fact, they have 1,100.

Ok, so we’re not beating New York, but we’re in the same ballpark, and that’s impressive for a medium-size city.

How about live theater? If, per capita, we had as many options to go see a play in New Orleans as they do in New York, we’d have 142 live theater stages. In fact, we have fewer than 20.

So, what’s up with that? In a city whose Mardi Gras parades are among the biggest live street theater events in the world, why do we have so little traditional theater? Rob DeViney might be able to shed some light on that question. Rob is Executive Director of Jefferson Performing Arts.

In New Orleans there’s a long-running intersection of theater and business – in the person of larger-than-life characters who own or represent businesses. Folks like, Al Scramuzza from Seafood City. The Special Man from Frankie & Johnnie’s Furniture. Restaurateurs Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse. Ronnie Lamarque the crooning car salesman. Al Copeland. Chris Owens. Morris Bart.

The list goes on. The newest addition to it, is Bougie Man Bourgeois. The Bougie Man is an import from Cajun country where he developed his meat product, Bougie Bologna.

Unlike other bologna, which is apparently made from the cuts of meat discarded from traditional butchering, Bougie Bologna is made from 100% pork shoulder. The slogan summarizing this differentiation was originally, “Butthole free.” Apparently, the USDA frowned on that, so now Bougie Bologna is described somewhat more prosaically as, “no mystery meat or byproducts.”

The Bougie Man is the alter ego of Ross Brown, who is also the creator of Bougie Bologna.

In New Orleans business, like the rest of New Orleans, we’re no strangers to contradiction. The same local companies will sponsor the health-driven Crescent City Classic road race, and the Red Dress Run, an athletic event that’s also an alcohol-fueled celebration of cross-dressing.

We don’t think it’s unusual for a CEO of a serious business to also be an active member of a seriously fun-centric Mardi Gras krewe.

A great deal of our city’s revenue comes from tourists who come here to party. But we’re also on reputable entrepreneurial lists as one of the best cities to start a business.

In this New Orleans tradition of occupational antithesis, Rob and Ross are great representatives of both the business of theater, and the theater of business.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You know these folks when you meet them. They’re so obviously New Orleanian, you can’t imagine them living anywhere else. Like Brent Houzenga and Jensen Reyes.

Pop Art

Brent moved here from Des Moines, Iowa. He was such a larger-than-life character there, they made a documentary about him. Although to be fair to Des Moines, he’d make a good subject for a documentary anywhere, even here.

Brent is best described as a pop artist. You may have seen his work driving around. And by that, I don’t mean his murals or street art – although you can see those too - I mean you’ll see his art, literally, driving around. On cars. All kinds of cars. Painted with layers of colored squiggles, straight lines, polka dots, and stenciled faces.

At first glance these cars look like they’ve been randomly graffiti-ed. But when you look more closely, you see there’s definitely an artist’s hand at work. It's this kind of sly intelligence hiding in a punk rock aesthetic that runs through a lot of Brent Houzenga’s work.

Yarn

Jensen Reyes was living in Seattle. She worked as a hair colorist. And took up knitting as a hobby. When she moved to New Orleans in 2020, Jensen was able to combine both those skills. She started a business called Sugarplum Circus.

Jensen called it that so it would be a vague enough umbrella to cover any kind of creative output. Sugarplum Circus has turned out to be a micro-dyer. The company makes dyed-to-order fine yarns. You can buy their hand-dyed yarn at their website, and exclusively at a store in the French Quarter called The Quarter Stitch.

The Quarter Stitch is a destination for people from across the country looking for fashion yarn. And online there’s a population of millions of yarn users – many of them are young women who make their own clothes and congregate around #MeMade. In this universe, Jensen and Sugarplum Circus are stars.

You might remember, back in 2015 there was an online viral phenomenon called “The Dress.”

It was an image of a dress, and there was a massive debate as to whether this dress was white and gold, or blue and black.

What we learned from that was – if you’ll pardon the expression – color is not black and white. It’s not objective. It’s subjective. And can be uniquely personal.

Whether it’s the color of a piece of clothing made from yarn Jensen has dyed, or the colors of a painted car or piece of artwork Brent created, our responses to color, and to works of art, can shape our day, our mood, and even our sense of well-being. And they and their businesses certainly brighten up our city. 

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are similar types of people in business. Seemingly regular guys who are looking at the same business landscape we’re all looking at, but somehow, they see multiple opportunities most of us don’t. And they create multiple successful businesses in a way most business-people can’t.

For example, Jayson Seidman and Alex Pomes. 

Jayson Seidman is founder and Principal Managing Partner of a company called Sandstone. With offices in the Texas hill country and New Orleans, Sandstone principally develops boutique hotels and commercial mixed-use properties. They have hotels in Texas, New York, New Orleans, Costa Rica, and Australia.

Here in New Orleans, their properties include The Drifter, The Hotel Saint Vincent, The Frenchmen, and Columns – till recently known as The Columns Hotel – which is where Peter, Alex, and Jayson had lunch while recording this podcast. 

Jayson’s mother is from New Orleans. His dad went to Tulane. Jayson grew up in Houston, where he was a child actor at Theater Under The Stars, which calls itself “Houston’s home for musical theater.”

Alex Pomes is also a one-time musical theater actor turned entrepreneur. Alex is a New Orleans native who graduated from NOCCA in musical theater.

His first taste of business was cinnamon. In 2010, Alex was hired as website manager, social media point person and Brand Ambassador for a then small whisky company, called Fireball. 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that the marketing of Fireball Whisky is one of the most successful alcohol marketing campaigns, ever. In 2011 Fireball had under $2m in sales. By 2014, sales were $800m.

That experience gave Alex the confidence to launch his own alcohol label, Ghost Tequila. It’s tequila that’s actually made in Tequila Mexico, infused with Ghost Peppers.

Alex is also the founder of a local marketing company, RAPJAB, that specializes in creative campaigns for breweries, bars and events.

And Alex is the co-founder of NOLA Underground Pickleball, the no-frills community-driven pickleball league whose sponsors range from White Claw to Walmart.

If there’s one thing we’re not short of in New Orleans, it’s people with a story to tell. Whether you’re at a music festival, waiting for a parade to roll by, or just in line at the supermarket, the New Orleanian next to you is happy to talk to you. And - often without much encouragement - they’ll more-than-likely tell you something fascinating. But, even in this city of storytellers and stories, it’s hard to beat the variety of tales and business ventures from Jayson and Alex. 

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Only around 1% of the US workforce are artists. So, with limited availability and high demand you’d expect artists to be highly paid. Most of them, though, are not. The reason might be something to do with the business model by which visual artists get paid.

In the film business, actors, directors, and writers pay agents a commission of 10% of their income. Musicians pay booking agents 10% of their income. Directors of commercials pay their business representatives 18% commission. If you’re a visual artist, you’ll pay your business representative – typically a gallery owner – a commission of 50% of the sale price of your artwork.

How does an artist survive in this kind of financial setup? That's what we're asking Anastasia Pelias.

Anastasia is a New Orleans born-and-raised visual artist whose paintings and sculptures are in museums and in private and public collections across the country and around the world. In New Orleans you can see Anastasia’s paintings in the permanent collections of The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art and The Newcomb Art Museum. You can see her sculptures in St. John Park in Lake Terrace, and on Poydras Street as part of the Helis Foundation’s Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition.

In case you’re thinking all 50% commission art gallery owners must be hard-hearted blood-sucking mercenaries, meet Marguerite Oestreicher. Marguerite owned an art gallery in the heart of New Orleans’ art district on Julia Street, until Hurricane Katrina closed it down.

In part, Marguerite credits the skills she picked up running her art gallery with her ability to perform her current job as Executive Director of New Orleans Area Habitat For Humanity.

NOAHH, as it’s commonly known, has 65 full-time employees and builds around 25 homes a year. Their stated mission is, “To responsibly build communities where families can thrive in homes they can afford.”

For whatever reason – maybe because it helps bring order to a chaotic world - human beings like to divide by 2. We like to put things in one category, or another. Republican or Democrat. Employed or unemployed. Artist or Businessperson. Renter or Homeowner.

Marguerite's mission at Habitat For Humanity is defined by categories: moving people from one to another. From renter to homeowner. To survive as an artist, like Anastasia, you have to defy the categories of art versus business – you need to keep one foot in each world.

Across all these categories, the one thing most of us have in common is, we like to live in an affordable home where we can hang our art on the walls.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Blake Langlinais at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

And after you’ve had a few beers at whichever place you decided to meet, at some point somebody will suggest moving on and going to get another beer – or two – at someplace else.

The problem with this plan is, nobody should be driving a car at this point. And ride-sharing isn’t as cheap as it used to be. That’s why Elizabeth Bates launched her business, Beer Bus.

Beer Bus is a hop-on-hop-off bus line that serves New Orleans craft breweries on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. It’s been running since the end of 2023 and when you pay your $10 – or $30 for unlimited rides – you can check the Beer Bus website to see where the bus is and when it will be by if you want to hop on and try another brewery.

Elizabeth Bates is not just the founder of Beer Bus, she’s also the bus driver.

If you’ve spent any time in the UK or around British people, you’ll be familiar with the sentence, “What you need is a nice cup of tea.”

Whether there’s been a death in the family, your car broke down, or maybe you’ve gotten a giant bill you don’t know how you’re going to pay… Whatever the calamity that’s befallen you, the default old-fashioned British remedy is, “a nice cup of tea.”

Well, it turns out, like many pieces of folk wisdom, there’s actually some truth to the healing power of tea. That’s the basis of Portia Cooper’s business, NOLA Botanical Tea.

Portia makes specific concoctions of various strains of tea to treat particular physical ailments. There’s ginger root, elderberry, chamomile, hibiscus, and others that Portia says will remedy stress, reduce inflammation, boost your immune system, boost your energy, and much more.

Normally if we say we’re going around in circles, we’re implying we’re doing the same thing over and over again and getting nowhere. But when going around in a circle is a ride on the Beer Bus - taking us from one New Orleans craft Brewery to another - we may physically end up where we started, but the ride has been anything but unproductive.

On the other hand, if you have a recurring medical complaint that’s not life threatening but never seems to totally go away, you really do feel like you’re going around in circles. Maybe adding medicinal tea to your treatment would help.

Whether you’re drinking New Orleans beer or New Orleans tea, it’s a triple bottom line – good for the mind, body and local business.  

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Blake Langlinais at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whether it’s your income, your appearance, your career, or anything else in your life that can be improved, we’re trapped on what social scientists call The Hedonic Treadmill.  It’s why we buy new clothes, try new diets, take up new hobbies, why we travel, drink, take drugs… and you can list a bunch of other things that make you happy. Until they don’t.

Well, what if you could get off the hedonic treadmill? What if you could find something you liked so much – say, a piece of jewelry – that makes you feel so good that you can commit to wearing it forever.

That’s the concept behind a jewelry business on Magazine Street called Love Weld.  They sell what they describe as “permanent jewelry.”

In the store, a customer designs a bracelet, necklace, anklet, ring, or charms, and the people at Love Weld fit it and weld it, so it’s on forever.

The Sudio Lead at Love Weld is Sarah Sylve.

If permanent happiness sounds ambitious, a little further down from Love Weld on Magazine Street you can make yourself feel better for an hour - and for days after - at NOLA Massage.

NOLA Massage specializes in therapeutic massage, and you can also get a bunch of other treatments including detoxifying body wraps, a salt scrub, cryo treatments, and cupping.

The owner - and one of 4 massage therapists at NOLA Massage - is Amy Nicole Stewart.

Like a lot of things in New Orleans, it’s hard to put your finger on exactly what’s so special about Magazine Street. Basically, it’s nothing more than a relatively narrow street, not especially well landscaped, lined with stores. But, somehow, the street has a unique energy and a charismatic charm. It’s a street where locals shop, and tourists get a genuine taste of New Orleans and New Orleanians.

Anyone can open a store on Magazine Street. But not just anyone does. The street seems to attract store owners who manage to combine individual flair with general functionality. Amy's and Sarah's businesses, NOLA Massage and Love Weld, are two of the most recent to have opened on Magazine Street. They both make a unique contribution to the street’s rich retail mosaic.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

Check out Amy's children's book about Shotgun Kitties, a bunch of musical New Orleans cats, in their debut outing, Bill Bailey Please Come Home.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Except for the name of the company that used to be Facebook, we don’t have a similar term to “meta” in business. But we do have a similar concept. We have businesses that make other businesses do better business. And we have businesses that help individuals conduct business better.

One of the most common business contracts most of us navigate in everyday life is a rental or lease agreement - for a house or apartment. Signing a lease is a seemingly simple act of appending a signature. But it is in fact deceptively difficult, both for the renter and the manager of the rental property.

It gets especially problematic at the end of the rental period when the renter wants their deposit back and the manager claims they can’t refund it because of the damage the renter caused to the property during the term of the lease. This is precisely why Marco Nelson and his partner created RentCheck.

RentCheck is an app that a rental agency, a landlord, or a renter can use when they sign a new rental agreement. It records the rental details and, probably most importantly, photos of the property which can be compared to photos of the property when the rental period ends. There is definitive proof - in the date-stamped, cloud-based app - of what damage was there when the renter moved in, and what wasn’t.

Marco and his partner founded RentCheck in New Orleans in 2019.  Today they have 24 employees. RentCheck is used by 700 property managers in the US and Canada, and manages a total of 500,000 properties.

Marco and Peter first spoke in 2020 when RentCheck was getting rolling and we were doing Out to Lunch on Zoom because of the pandemic.

Kristen Dufauchard grew up in New Orleans - and left for 20 years. During the time she was gone, Kristen was Associate Director of Communications for New York University and Global Marketing Lead for the market measurement company, Nielsen, where she focused on DEI and multi-cultural consumer trends.

Kristen moved back to New Orleans in 2022 and discovered there are a bunch of folks back home who could use the kind of expertise she’d picked up over the previous two decades. So, she founded a corporate marketing, event planning, and training firm called aKrewe NOLA – krewe is spelled the New Orleans way – and a networking platform called The Business Exchange, where diverse professionals can make new connections, exchange ideas, and support each other.

In a statistic that might make the point about how much New Orleans changed while Kristen was gone, The Business Exchange has 1,500 members – entrepreneurs, creatives, and innovators who identify as Black, Brown, LGBTQ+, or women.

There was a time in New Orleans, and not so long ago, when the term “entrepreneurial ecosystem” sounded about as exotic as lobster rolls or bubble tea. Now you can get lobster rolls and bubble tea every day in New Orleans, and we most definitely have a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem.

RentCheck is a great example of the type of nationwide success that’s grown out of our entrepreneurial community, and helped shape it. And aKrewe NOLA and The Business Exchange are building on the city’s first-generation entrepreneurial foundation, taking it to more places and including more people.

Thanks to the efforts and talents of people like both Marco and Kristen and the success of their companies, New Orleans is continuing to be a great place to start and grow a business.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Even your most supportive parent can’t hide a fleeting grimace as they think, “You may see yourself becoming a great writer or actor but the only role you’re writing for yourself is a person whose actual career will be waiting tables.”

Jenni

Jenni Daniel started down this path. In fact, she went a long way down it. Jenni has an MA in Theater, from the University of London.

Before she got too far into table-waiting, Jenni got another post-graduate degree. This one was an MBA from the A.B.Freeman School of Business at Tulane University.

Today, Jenni is Vice President of Institutional Advancement at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. In an organization of 29 staff members who work to financially support access to arts, culture, education and history in Louisiana, Jenni’s responsible for private and corporate fundraising. And she manages the marketing team.

Jenna

Dr. Jenna Winston, went to Tulane too.

Jenna had the foresight to study a subject that leads to a professional career. She earned a Ph.D in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. When Jenna graduated from college, what did she do? She went into theater!

Jenna is the founder of New Orleans Youth Theater, made up of theater kids between the ages of 4-18. And it’s a rare type of theater company – nobody has to audition to get in. Any kid who wants to attend is accepted. If they can’t afford the approximately $400 per semester tuition, the theater will help with a needs-based scholarship.

Jenna founded New Orleans Youth Theater in 2022. Members of the company learn voice, dance and acting, and perform full-length musicals. And, despite what you might assume, New Orleans Youth Theater is not a non-profit. It’s a legit, for-profit business that makes legit theater.

Louisiana Chronicles

The relationship between New Orleans and Louisiana is unique. In most other cities in the US, people naturally append the name of the state to the name of their hometown. Austin Texas. Miami Florida. Denver Colorado. You very rarely hear anyone here describe our city as anything other than, simply, New Orleans.

That’s because, if there is a typical Louisiana city, New Orleans isn’t it. Actually, it’s hard to put your finger on what a typical Louisiana city or town would be. The lifestyles and culture in places like Alexandria and Shreveport are vastly different from other communities, like Eunice or Venice.

Celebrating these differences and weaving them into a commonality among all of us in the 64 parishes of Louisiana is what the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities is all about. And celebrating the differences among a vast array of New Orleans kids and melding them into a common purpose of artistic expression is what New Orleans Youth Theater is all about.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Part of the reason there’s no medication for neurological conditions like dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons is the way pharmacological research is conducted.

For obvious reasons, there are rigorous controls on the development of neurological drugs before they’re allowed to be tested on humans. The only new medications that are allowed to be trialed by humans are ones that have proven safe in trials on animals. But an astounding 94% of these neurological drugs fail - because preclinical results on animals can’t predict results in humans.

It’s with this is mind that Lowry Curley founded his revolutionary biomedical research company, AxoSim. AxoSim simulates brain cells, so drug developers can try out a drug on a human brain without having an actual human being attached to it.

We last talked to Lowry when this was all just getting off the ground, in 2016, a couple of years after the company was founded in New Orleans. Today, AxoSim has two laboratories, 30 employees, 3 separate research divisions, and a bunch of industry-leading patents.

The human brain is a delicate organ. That’s why it’s housed in a hard case: the skull. But there are some activities where even the skull and a protective helmet aren’t enough to prevent the brain from getting injured. One of those activities is military combat.

Veterans who lose limbs in combat have established pathways to recovery. But veterans with brain injury, spinal cord injury, or other neurological conditions can go undiagnosed. Veterans who struggle with these issues find themselves isolated and lonely – part of the reason for the high rate of veteran suicide.

Here in New Orleans a program called Headway is setting out to solve these issues by placing affected veterans in a purpose-built housing development, called Bastion Community of Resilience.

It's a $14m, five-and-a-half acre neighborhood of homes in Gentilly in which veterans with neurological wounds live among other veterans, and volunteers.

We spoke with the founder of Bastion, Dylan Tete, back in 2016 when the site was under construction. Today Bastion is a living neighborhood and we’re joined by it’s Executive Director, Jackson Smith.

For a medium-sized city in the south of the United States, New Orleans gets a lot of publicity.

Most of it - even when it’s generated by our own city and state agencies - focuses on what a great place New Orleans is to eat, drink, and listen to music.

And, it is. But we’re so much more than that. One of these days maybe we’ll also be recognized for being the home of AxoSim, a company that’s revolutionizing neurological medical research, and the Bastion Community of Resilience, pioneering healthcare and the welfare of military veterans.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The two parishes are very different. The rivalry between them isn’t on the scale of the Saints and the Flacons, but it’s definitely real. If you live in Jefferson Parish, the basic perception is, “Sure, New Orleans has great restaurants and music clubs but it’s dangerous, dirty, and dysfunctional.” If you live in New Orleans, the perception is, “Sure, everything works in Jefferson Parish, but it’s sterile and soulless.”

Nothing illustrates the real-world differences between the parishes better than the business stories of this editon of Out to Lunch's two guests.

The Tale

In Jefferson Parish, the heart of the retail economy is Veterans Boulevard. There used to be a bowling alley on Veterans, called Paradise Lanes. In 1995 it was knocked down and replaced by a Barnes & Noble bookstore. The owners of the bowling alley retained a retail space in the New Barnes & Noble building. They called their new store Paradise Cafe & Gifts.

21 years later, in 2016, two of the owner’s granddaughters, sisters Jenny McGuinness and Jessica Woodward, along with their mom, Linda Dalton, transformed the store into a home accessories and gift shop, and called it Phina.

Next, they opened two more Phina stores – one on Metairie Road and another on Harrison Avenue. In 2023 they bought a company called The Basketry, that specializes in personal and corporate gift baskets. Today the combined companies have 50 employees and business is booming. 

Our story from Orleans Parish is equally successful. It’s based on a single word. A word that, if you live in Orleans Parish, has enormous practical and symbolic meaning: Potholes.

Nothing typifies the perception of the dysfunction of the city of New Orleans like the pot-holed state of our streets. In 2019, an anonymous person started an Instagram account illustrating the sorry condition of our streets. The name of the account is the sentence many New Orleanians say or think as they drive or bike around town, Look at This Effin Street. (On Instagram "effin" is the f-word. Because none of our podcasts are explicit we're sticking with "effin" to avoid the bot-police.)

The Look at This Effin’ Street Instagram account was an instant success. People started contributing photos of New Orleans streets and today the account has over 120,000 followers – including by the way, The City of New Orleans.

How do you monetize this kind of social media success? You can’t exactly sell potholes. But you can sell merch about potholes. And that’s what the anonymous founder of Look at This Effin Street did. He contracted with a local merch company, InkMule, to make stickers, baseball caps, T-shirts and other pot-hole merch.

The anonymous business-person behind this successful social-media driven venture is still anonymous. On this edition of Out to Lunch we referring to him as Effin Street.

Two Parishes

Next time you’re driving along Veterans Boulevard, Harrison Avenue, or Metairie Road, you might notice one of the three Phina stores. But you probably won’t think anything at all about the street you’re driving on.

If you keep driving east from there on surface streets, you’ll cross the parish line into Orleans Parish. At that point you may well find yourself remarking, “Look at this effin’ street.”

Jenny and Effin Street's respective experiences are model examples of the differences between Orleans and Jefferson parishes. But their histories and businesses are also representative of the synergy that exists between the two parishes and the people who live, work and play in both of them.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns on St. Charles Avenue in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Blake Langlinais at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In New Orleans, our first coffee shop opened in The French Market - in the late 1700’s. For a city not known for being on the cutting edge of business, we were 200 years ahead of the coffee game.

Today, we’re the country’s second biggest coffee importer, after New York City. In part that’s because we’re the home of coffee giant, Folger’s. But New Orleans has always been – and still is - a hub of green coffee markets.

Green coffee is raw, unroasted coffee beans. It’s the world’s second-largest traded commodity, second only to oil. One of the major players in the green coffee market is International Coffee Corporation. Besides importing and shipping beans, they do something called Q-Grading. Q-Grading is a specialized skill performed by people trained in the art of coffee tasting. People like Drew Cambre.

As Sustainability Manager at International Coffee Corporation, on an average day Drew will sample and grade 20- 40 different coffees. 

We drink a lot of coffee in the United States, but we drink around three times as much beer. The reason we drink all this beer is partly because it tastes good, but it’s also for the feel-good effect alcohol has on our brain.

Well, now, there’s another drink that’s competing with beer for both taste and mood-altering, and it’s not alcohol. It’s cannabis. THC to be exact. THC - tetrahydrocannabinol - is the chemical in cannabis that gets you high.

One of the country’s fastest growing manufacturers of THC sodas is a New Orleans company called Crescent Canna. Crecent Canna was already manufacturing and selling THC-based products when it launched its drinks division in 2022 - and saw its fortunes radically improve.

Today, Crescent Canna has a lab and brewery in North Carolina, a head office in New Orleans, sales in over 1,000 locations in 20 states, online sales in all 50 states, and the company’s CEO, Joe Gerrity, says the company is negotiating with major distributors with the goal of becoming the Budweiser of THC drinks.

Few of us have advanced degrees in medical science, but we all know that for survival, human beings have to stay hydrated. We could conceivably just drink water, but we long ago abandoned mere survival as the benchmark of human success. And that’s why we have flavored drinks.

Hundreds of years ago New Orleans was one of the earliest American cities to import and sell coffee. Today we’re becoming one of the earliest American cities to manufacture and export THC infused sodas.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s the same with “above and beyond.” When we say someone has gone above and beyond, we mean they’ve exceeded our expectations. Whether or not my lunch guests today, or their businesses, exceed your expectations will depend on your personal expectations, but what makes them unique is that they literally go above and beyond.

Let’s start with above.

One of the many things tourists – and a few locals – do in New Orleans is, go on a swamp tour. This typically entails sitting in a boat that chugs through the swamp with a tour guide who tosses bits of chicken or marshmallows overboard to attract alligators.

Tyler Richardson took a look at an 8 acre block of Maurepas swamp near LaPlace and decided to go above it. Tyler built the world’s first and only fully aquatic swamp zipline. It’s called Zip NOLA. It’s a half mile, 90 minute zipline journey on 5 separate ziplines, over 2 suspension sky bridges tethered to 100 year old cypress trees.

Ernie Foundas is co-owner – along with his partner Adrienne Bell – of Suis Generis. Suis Generis is a Latin term, meaning “in a class of it’s own” but in this case it’s a restaurant in the Bywater.

What puts Suis Generis in a class of its own is that it stretches beyond the walls of the restaurant, beyond the city of New Orleans, and beyond the state of Louisiana, into Pearlington Mississippi.

In Pearlington, Ernie and Adrienne have a farm where they use a German horticulture technique that layers logs, twigs and leaves on the forest floor to create a rich soil in which they grow crops for restaurant ingredients.

Back in the Bywater, the Suis Generis kitchen is organized around a culinary philosophy called Food Evolution. It’s a technique that uses every single piece of an ingredient – using the byproduct of one dish to create another. For example, using discarded crawfish shells to make bisque, and then using the byproduct of the bisque to make fish sauce.

New Orleans is not a big city. It’s not unusual to run into someone you know at the drug store, or discover your neighbor went to school with your  co-worker. In that way, New Orleans has a kind of small-town feel.

And then you discover there are things going on here you had no idea about. Like a Zip Line out in La Place, or an avant garde restaurant in the Bywater.

Zip NOLA is a departure from the typical tourist trek around the French Quarter and Suis Generis is a departure from the established eateries locals typically gravitate to.

Tyler and Ernie make New Orleans a more colorful and interesting place to visit, and live in.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Let me explain this as simply as I can” usually means you walk away scratching your head saying “Wait, what?”

“Nobody’s ever done anything like this” is typically the precursor to a business pitch you’ve already heard twice this month.

And then there’s this one – “I’m not in it for the money.” Pretty much every business is revenue-based, so, despite a passion-first perspective, it’s almost impossible to have a business and not find yourself compelled to be in it for the money.

So, it’s a pleasure to introduce you to two people both involved in tech-driven businesses who are both, genuinely, not in it for the money.

Jim O’Connell was a geophysicist working for Shell in the Gulf of Mexico till 2016 when he retired. That’s when he became “Captain Jim.” Today, Captain Jim uses his 52 foot long sailboat, Satori, to take folks out on Lake Pontchartrain for a 3 hour sail from his mooring in Madisonville.

Captain Jim says Satori is the only commercial sailboat in New Orleans. His customers get aboard by means of an app called Get My Boat.

Get My Boat bill themselves as the world’s largest boat rental and water experience marketplace, with over 150,000 listings in 184 countries. It’s kind of a combination of Uber and AirB’n’B, for boats.

Joshua Smith is a Library Associate at Algiers Regional Library on the Westbank; a branch of  New Orleans Public Library. So, right there, you can be pretty confident Joshua isn’t looking to get rich.

But he could. Because Joshua is also the creator of a music streaming platform. It’s called Crescent City Sounds. Basically, it’s like Spotify – it streams music. The difference is, all the music it streams is exclusively by New Orleans artists.

Masterminding and creating a music streaming service sounds like something with a lot of profit potential. But, if this does make a lot of money, Joshua’s not going to see it. Crescent City Sounds might be his brainchild, but he designed and operates it for the benefit of New Orleans musicians and New Orleans Public Library.

In most conversations about business, the unspoken assumption is, the more money your business makes the more successful it is. And the more successful a business, the greater the accolades heaped on the person or people behind it.

It’s unusual and refreshing to meet people like Jim and Joshua who are not just giving lip-service to an alternative perspective, but who genuinely have goals beyond our usual definitions of success.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Some of these lists have dubious veracity - and there are so many of them you probably have list-fatigue - but it’s instructive to talk about one list we don’t hear much about. The teen birth rate list.

We’re not in a good spot on this one. New Orleans has the third highest teen birth rate in the nation.

Why this is relevant for a show about New Orleans business? Because, being a teenage mom creates a challenge for a young woman that substantially limits her pathway to a successful career. If a woman has a baby before she’s 18, her chance of graduating college before she’s 30 is 2%.

An organization called Generation Hope is looking to change this trajectory. It provides financial and life-skill assistance to help teenage moms get through college.

Generation Hope started out in Washington DC in 2010. In 2023 they expanded into New Orleans - for no other reason than the founder and CEO of Generation Hope, Nicole Lewis, recognized the need here.

Making a difference to our economy and our society at an individualized level is also the function of another New Orleans organization, Global New Orleans.

Global New Orleans implements the U.S State Department’s International Visitors Leadership Exchange Program. What does that mean exactly? Well, when the State Department determines a leader, or future leader, from another country is worth cultivating a relationship with, they invite them to the US as their guest. While they’re here, Global New Orleans lets them discover what being a New Orleanian is all about - by arranging experiences to meet locals.

That might be an event at a local business. Or it might be a one-on-one red beans and rice dinner at someone’s home. Global New Orleans describes this as, “citizen diplomacy.”

The Executive Director of Global New Orleans is Laila Bondi. 

In most conversations about the economy, we’re talking about broad-brush-stroke measurements: inflation, interest rates, the stock market, and unemployment. If we break these statistics down, all of them are created one business, one household, one family, and one person at a time.

But, although individuals are the building blocks of the economy, it’s rare that we actually to get find out about the micro-economy from any kind of individual perspective. Nicole and Laila are working with individuals at very different ends of the economic spectrum and their insights are equally unique and illuminating.  

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Love. And happiness.

That’s the product platforms like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and other online dating services are selling.

According to the latest numbers out there, 5% of people on Hinge find a partner. It’s about 13% on Bumble. Tinder leads the pack with just under 30%. In other words, somewhere between 70 and 95% of people on dating apps don’t find a partner. So, is there another business model that can more successfully package and sell love and happiness? Apparently, yes, there is. It’s been around a long time and exists in various forms in lots of different cultures and countries. It’s called matchmaking.

New Orleanian Ann Parnes is a matchmaker. We met Ann back in 2020, during Covid when very few of us were going on dates and when she had a company called Match Made in NOLA. As the name implies, it was a local matchmaking business. Today Ann has a nationwide matchmaking business, called After Hello.

Okay, so you’ve met the love of your life. Now what? If you’re like most people, you’re going to put a ring on it. Along with psychological adjustment you’re going to have to make to commitment, you’re also going to have to solve the real-world problem of where exactly you’re going to put on a ring on it. And how you’re going to celebrate the biggest day of your life.

You need a wedding and a reception. Who do you turn to for advice about that? Well, how about somebody name Van Vrancken? The Van Vrancken family have been hosting brides and grooms at The Balcony Ballroom for 45 years. Since 1979 they’ve married 10,000 couples!

The Balcony Ballroom is currently owned and run by a second generation of Van Vranckens. One of them is Vanessa. Before joining the family business in 2011, Vanessa spent 16 years in New York as an actress. She’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild and its live theater equivalent, Actors’ Equity.

Whether you manage a single Chuck E Cheese franchise or you’re CEO of Apple, everybody running a business is doing pretty much the same thing – managing people, solving problems, and trying to make a profit.

It’s safe to say that most people with a business would also like to accomplish something else, something less tangible. And that is, in some way, make the world a better place. Business owners define that in all kinds of ways. For some it’s simply being able to employ people and give them an income. For others it’s controlling waste and preserving the environment.

There’s a wide range of contributions a business can make to the world. That certainly includes adding to the sum total of human happiness – which is what you do when you spend your professional life helping people find love, and get married. It’s rare to find businesses where creating and celebrating love and happiness is front and center.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here’s another New Orleans mystery that may have crossed your mind - when you’re driving down Tchoupitoulas Street. “What goes on behind that floodwall?” The Port of New Orleans is one of the most vital strands of the city’s economy, but to the average New Orleanian it’s the least visible.

And if you’re driving around New Orleans, at some point you inevitably find yourself stopped, waiting for a train to go by. On those occasions, a number of questions may cross your mind. Like, “How long have I been sitting here?” “Why is this train so long?” And “What the heck is in all these train cars anyway?”

Well, good news! Today’s the day we solve all of these mysteries about the port and the trains, courtesy of Brandy Christian, President and CEO of the Port of New Orleans and New Orleans Public Belt Railroad.

Here’s another difference between being a tourist and a resident of New Orleans. If you’re a tourist, you go shopping on Canal Street. If you live here, there’s a good chance you don’t. Maybe you haven’t even driven down Canal Street in a while. If that’s the case, let me reassure you about something: Rubensteins men’s clothing and shoe store is still on the corner of Canal Street and St Charles Avenue. Just as it has been since 1924.

Which brings us to the second New Orleans mystery we’re going to unravel here. And that is, with the radical shift in New Orleanians’ shopping habits, the advent of e-commerce, and the consistent decline in formal men’s fashion, how does Rubenstein’s stay in business? That mystery is unraveled by owner and General Manager of Rubensteins, Kenny Rubenstein.

To anybody who doesn’t live in New Orleans, it might seem strange to draw any kind of comparison between a port, a railroad, and a menswear store. But the sound of a train whistle blowing from somewhere near the river on a foggy morning, tugs pushing barges on the Mississippi, and the Krewe of Rex rolling by Rubenstein’s as the Mardi Gras parade makes the turn from St Charles Avenue onto Canal Street are all equally iconic New Orleans moments.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

99% of these videos are posted with gleeful pride. They’re testament to growth and progress. Wiping old buildings off the face of the earth to make way for newer, bigger, and better buildings.

Most cities in America regard this kind of change as positive. That is not how we define progress in New Orleans. Here, a house can be riddled with termites, or a commercial building poisoned by asbestos, and the only conversations we have are about how to save these buildings.

Our desire to save our houses, shops and commercial buildings means that people who work in construction here have to develop special skills. We expect a renovated or restored house to have all the benefits of new construction, but still look like a traditional New Orleans home. We’re not surprised when a new restaurant or coffee shop looks architecturally hip and modern, but retains the bones of its 19th century origins.  

You don’t find those types of construction skills just anywhere. They are, however, the mainstay of Ryan Mayer's Mayer Building Company. Mayer Building Company is responsible for an extensive portfolio of local commercial construction that includes cafes, stores, schools, office buildings, and hospitals.

It’s not like every building in New Orleans was originally fabulous and just needs a dose of TLC to be restored. We have our share of office buildings filled with asbestos, abandoned gas stations with buried storage tanks leaking oil into the soil, and homes that behind the sheetrock are Petrie dishes of mold.

How do you deal with construction and real estate issues like this? And when you do deal with them, how do you stay compliant with all the health, safety, and even geological requirements mandated by federal, state, and local regulations?

Well, one way of taking care of all of these issues is to turn to a local environmental consultancy company called Leaaf Environmental. Leaaf's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Marketing Officer is Jesse Hoppes. 

We hear a lot these days about “silos.” How we’re living in our own self-selected bubbles, getting our news and information from sources that just reinforce what we already believe.

For a lot of us that’s true.

But the one thing we can’t silo is the actual real physical world we live in.

Here in New Orleans, although we have our political differences about how to achieve it, we tend to agree on what our city should look like.

And we also agree that the mostly unseen environment beneath the buildings we’re working to preserve should be maintained in a way that promotes the health and longevity of both the city and its citizens. Ryan Mayer's and Jesse Hoppes' professional lives are dedicated to each of these respective goals.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

100 years later, in 2023, the company relocated the bulk of their operations to Jefferson Parish to what used to be known as The Avondale Shipyards and re-named it, Avondale Global Gateway.

The new name is no exaggeration. It is now, in fact, a global gateway. The facility is set up kind of like a food court, with individual vendors operating independent dock and shipping-related businesses.

Host employs around 450 people. Most of them here in Louisiana.

What do all these folks do? Well, when a ship ties up at Avondale - or any one of 93 ports in the US - Host takes care of everything - from the legal paperwork and logistics of getting cargo off the ship, to repairs and maintenance, restocking groceries, crew changes, and the hundred-and-one other things an international business and floating community needs.

The Chief Financial Officer at T. Parker Host is Matthew Mancheski.

You can find a similar food-court style arrangement of businesses at the other side of New Orleans, out in the east, at Michoud. That’s the home of the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility where NASA is building rockets that will take astronauts to the moon and mars.

It’s also home to a bunch of other space-related businesses, among them, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and a company called Vivace.

Vivace is an aerospace company that designs and manufactures cryogenic propellant tanks. They make two kinds of tanks – small ones and big ones. The small ones are used on space vehicles, satellites, rockets, and some missiles. The big ones are the structures used to build space stations.

The General Manager of Vivace is Vaughan Hart.

All local business stories are not created equal. There are the high-flying tech stories, about someone who dreams up a new app that changes everything. Like Hampr, the Uber of laundry. There are the more prosaic but nonetheless fascinating success stories like Fat Boys’ Pizza who make the world’s biggest pizza, created right here in Metairie. And then there are truly stupendous stories of local companies that most of us have probably never heard of but who are doing extraordinary and impressive things.

Companies like 100-year-old T. Parker Host that plays a vital role in international shipping, and Vivace, a relatively new company that is playing an integral part in mankind’s future in space.

Matthew Mancheski and Vaughan Hart and their comapnies are helping define New Orleans’ and Louisiana’s 21st Century economy. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You’ve probably had this happen: you’re thinking you’ve had a pretty good month, then you get your credit card bill and you get an unpleasant surprise. Somehow, you’d totally forgotten this was the month the dishwasher broke, you had to take your dog to the emergency vet, and you’re not doing nearly as well financially as you were thinking just 5 minutes ago.

The same kind of thing can happen with a business. When you’re running a restaurant, even a minimal gap between financial perception and reality can spell serious trouble.

Restaurants run on small profit margins – often as little as 2%. So, staying informed about multiple expenses like food, laundry, staff, and invoices, as well as knowing how you’re doing day to day with multiple revenue streams like reservations, delivery, and your bar program, is essential for staying in business.

But whether you’re a chef, or you run a restaurant because you love hospitality, collecting and analyzing data is probably not high on the list of things you enjoy, or are good at. That’s why Daniel Meth created an AI tool for restaurants that does all that. It’s called Ingest.

Owning a restaurant or a coffee shop is one of those aspirational dreams people sometimes muse about. However, most of us don’t dream about working in a restaurant or coffee shop. Being a server, a barista, or working in a kitchen is not most people’s idea of having made it.

But for some of the folks who work at Dragonfly Café on Jackson Avenue, getting to do this kind of work provides coveted access to a regular life most of us take for granted.

Dragonfly Café is part of Raphael Village, an organization dedicated to differently-abled adults. The café provides internships for members of The Guild, an adult day program that offers vocational and post-secondary educational opportunities to differently-abled adults. Guild members interning at Dragonfly Café learn vocational skills that can lead to work in the food and service industries, both in the front and back of house.

The founder and Executive Director of Raphael Village is Jackie Case.

Even as leaps in technology like Daniel's AI tool push us ever-closer to an error-free, perfect world, it’s work like Jackie is doing at Raphael Village that reminds us it’s our imperfections that make us human.

Efficiency and profit are important. But so too is leading a purposeful and enriching life. Both ends of that scale are equally essential. Daniel and Jackie's contributions from both ends of the scale taken together, literally create a work-life balance.  

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I use the pronouns “his” or “her” intentionally, because in most species this attention to appearance is connected to attracting a mate for procreation. 

For the human species, things are different.

Our interest in our appearance doesn’t need to be connected to mating, or even dating. It can be a form of artistic or self-expression. And there are whole industries - from hair dye to health diets - to help us out.

The connection between health and beauty is an age-old pursuit of balance between the art of appearance and science of health. It seems all throughout human history we’ve augmented our appearance with products distilled from nature.

In 69 BC, Cleopatra bathed in milk and honey. In the 1700’s, Marie Antoinette used a face mask made of white wine and crushed strawberries. Today, two Romanian women, Raluca Giurgiutiu and Diana Morari, have a body and skincare company called Madonna Lily that uses all natural, ethically sourced and sustainable ingredients.

You can find Madonna Lily’s products online, in stores, and wholesale via Faire. The company is based in New Orleans.

Humans have a way to present themselves to other humans in a way most species do not. With clothes. Clothes probably say as much about us as anything.

Although we are continually redefining what is fashionable and what isn’t, the one constant we all seem to agree on is, clothes ought to be clean, not dirty. So, given that almost every single human wants to look good in clean clothes, the art and science of keeping clothes looking good and clean is an indispensable industry.

Nobody in New Orleans knows that better than Dale Velez. Dale is the current co-owner of Young’s Dry Cleaning, a family-owned business that’s been cleaning clothes for New Orleanians for over 8 decades.

Back in the mid 1980’s there was an ad campaign for haircare products in which the owner of the company, Vidal Sassoon said, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”

That sentiment could easily apply to both Dale and Raluca's companies.

When someone compliments us by saying “You’re looking great” or “I love your shirt,” the first thing we think of to say in response might not be, “I’m using a new face cleaning product,” or “I just had this shirt cleaned and pressed,” but that might actually be what our complimentary friends are noticing.

Dale is keeping a business running successfully into its 8th decade and on the other end of the spectrum Raluca has successfuly navigated her business through its challenging first few years.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at istneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I stole that witty observation from a meme on Facebook, but it does point up a basic truth: whatever else you’re trying to achieve, you can’t start, run, or grow a business without money.

When you hear terms like “Venture Capital,” and “Series A Funding” you may find your eyes glazing over and your attention wandering, but these are just various ways of saying “money.” And if you have a local business here in New Orleans it can be hard to get your hands on enough of it to compete with businesses in capital-rich environments, like Silicon Valley.

My guests on Out to Lunch today are both in the business of funding local businesses.

Caroline Crumley is an investor at Benson Capital Partners, a venture capital firm founded by Gayle Benson, best known as the owner of the Saints football team and the Pelicans basketball team.

Van Hamilton Barbeau is Vice President of Evangeline Securities, a firm that facilitates mergers and acquisitions and capital raising services through their offices in New Orleans, Lafayette, and Boston, Massachusetts.

A lot of us have a love/hate relationship with money. We love having it, but we don’t love the effort, time, and risks we often have to take to get a hold of it.

Two wealthy and successful entrepreneurs in the 20th century, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, famously said, “Money can’t buy me love.” But like love, if money was easy to get and to keep, it wouldn’t be as highly prized.

Where you find love is a topic for a different podcast, but if you have a business in Louisiana there are places where you can find money. Not least among them, Benson Capital Partners and Evangeline Securities. As  investors and experts, Caroline and Van are providing literally invaluable tools and products for the development and growth of local businesses.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As societies became more stratified, we developed division of labor. Today, things are so specialized people over 60 comment this current generation can’t do anything for themselves.

Despite the fact that kids are writing code that powers the platforms these commenters are posting on, they nonetheless grumble that kids can’t read cursive. And, pointing at the proliferation of coffee shops, they complain, “Kids today can’t even make a cup of coffee!”

John Puckett may not subscribe to all of that, but John does have a coffee shop in Uptown New Orleans where he won’t make you a cup of coffee.

Green Beans

The Current Crop Roasting Shop on Magazine Street doesn’t sell cups of coffee. It only sells coffee beans. And what’s more, you can’t even take these coffee beans home and make yourself a pot of coffee. Because they’re green beans.

What you can do at Current Crop Roasting Shop is, roast the beans yourself. You pick the beans you like from a wide selection, and you use one of John’s coffee roasting machines to roast ‘em the way you like ‘em.

Onesie

Of course, even if you’re the handiest DIY person on earth, you can’t make everything yourself. Though Celia Isabel is doing a pretty good job of making a bunch of it. Celia’s company, NOLA Tawk makes home goods, gifts, tabletop decorations, pet accessories, and children’s clothing. NOLA Tawk’s top-selling items are children’s sleepwear and onesies.

They make all their products here in New Orleans. They sell some directly to consumers online, but mostly they wholesale them to stores and sellers across the country.

Onesie Green Beans

It’s nice to do something for somebody else. Giving someone a birthday or housewarming present, or buying a child a pair of pajamas - makes you feel good. On the other hand, it’s nice to do something for yourself. Like indulging your appreciation of coffee by roasting your own coffee beans.

There aren’t too many conversations that cover the ground between the two poles of human behavior – indulgence and altruism - represented by coffee beans and onesies.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today you’re more likely to ask, “What is pickleball?”

Pickleball

Like tennis, pickleball is played on a court with a net. The ball is a kind of wiffleball. And instead of a racket, a pickleball bat looks like a big ping-pong bat.

Pickleball is, reportedly, the world’s fastest growing sport. In 2021 there were 5 million players. By 2023 there were over 36 million. It’s growing about 300% a year.

Here in New Orleans, you can play pickleball at The Exchange Pickleball and Bar. Yes, because it’s New Orleans, it’s a sports complex with a bar. The Exchange - off of Tchoupitoulas Street, near Walmart - is a $3m development that opened in August 2023. And, like pickleball itself, it was an instant success.

The developer and owner of The Exchange Pickleball and Bar is Renee Melchiode.

Sailing

Sailing started out as a means of survival. To get to where the fish are. Or to migrate to other lands. Now, like pickleball, sailing is a pastime.

But getting out onto the ocean, or even Lake Pontchartrain, requires a financial commitment greater than a couple of pickleball bats.

Judging by the number of boats at South Shore Harbor Marina and The Southern Yacht Club, there are plenty of New Orleanians with enough discretionary income to get themselves out on the water. 

Walking around these moorings you might wonder, “Where do all these boats come from?” One answer to that question is Murray Yacht Sales. The boat brokerage was founded in 1974 by Tim Murray. Tim’s son, Stanton, took over the business in the early 1990’s, and today Murray Yacht Sales has brokerages in New Orleans, Houston, and St Petersburg Florida.

Beyond New Orleans, Murray Yacht Sales’ brokers, boats and clients are scattered across the Gulf South, in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

PIckleball Sailing

if you’ll excuse the irony, it’s generally unwise to make generalizations. Especially about people. But it's probably safe to bet that almost everybody reading this has either just put their phone down, is just about to pick it up, or maybe you have it in your hand right now.

There’s something liberating about an activity that gets us away from our screens,  puts us firmly in the real world, and requires a combination of 100% physical exertion and mental focus. Although they’re very different, sailing and pickleball are both in this category.

We can thank Renee for going out on a limb and taking a serious financial risk to bring the fun of pickleball to New Orleans, and in a lifetime dedicated to sailing Stanton's business continues to be a gateway to joy for countless thousands, in New Orleans and across the Gulf South.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are two types of polarization: political and financial. You can probably make a case they’re related, but we’re talking about the financial variety.

Most conversations about financial polarization tend to take the same shape. They begin with the observation that more wealth is becoming concentrated in fewer hands. Among the reasons, they say, are – big companies growing bigger through mergers and acquisitions; and systemic inequalities in the accumulation of personal wealth. The conversation typically continues with a description of how things are getting worse over time. As the financial poles move further apart, they’re pulling most of us toward the direction of declining spending power. Conversations about financial polarization tend to end with the same conclusion: there’s somewhere between “not-much” and “absolutely nothing” we can do about it.

Tamara Prosper and Daniela Rivero-Bryant don’t buy that conclusion. The interesting thing about Tamara and Daniela is, they’re not making academic observations about economic theory. They’re actually doing things in the real world to spread the wealth.

Tamara is Loan Steward at Cooperation New Orleans.

Cooperation New Orleans is an organization that develops worker-owned cooperatives.

A worker-owned cooperative is a business that is owned by the employees who work there. Rather than a single owner or partners reaping the rewards of the company’s profits - and other advantages of owning a company, like tax breaks – those benefits are shared by all of the employee-owners.

According to a 2021 study, at that time there were 612 worker cooperatives in the US. When we get more updated statistics the expectation is that the number of cooperatives will have risen dramatically over the last few years. They’re certainly catching fire in New Orleans.

Daniela Rivero-Bryant is co-founder and COO at Reimagine Development Partners. They’re property developers. And as their name suggests, they’re reimagining what property development 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.

Reimagine Development Partners’ focus is on smaller projects in rural areas. The kind of developments that are too small for regular investor syndicators, but that have a big impact on a local community.

In any conversation about the direction of the over-all economy, it’s worth making the point that Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, and every other CEO with a giant income, live in the same world we do. If we’re not doing well, their businesses are not doing well either.

So, an economy that’s on a polarizing trend - where more of us have increasingly less wealth and spending power – benefits nobody.

You won’t find an economist in the US who disagrees with the notion that a strong and expanding middle class is better for everybody. You’ll also have difficulty finding an economist who can tell you step-by-step how to actually reverse polarization and expand the middle class.

But thisis exactly what Daniela and Tamara are both in the process of actually doing. It’s remarkable that they’re both in New Orleans. The work they’re doing is impressive and potentially has enormous impact.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from htis show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworelans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But tastes change. Somewhere along the line fruitcake became relegated mostly to the holidays. 

In 2009, when Greg Sorensen took over his family business as its 4th generation co-owner, he reasoned if they’re going to make cakes for special occasions, why make a cake people eat once a year?

Every day is someone’s birthday. Why not make birthday cake?

That simple decision – along with a few others that pivoted the bakery toward other everyday items – has transformed Baker Maid. Today they’re a wholesale business that supplies layer cakes, cupcakes, and petit fours to grocery stores across most of the eastern half of the US.

The company has a staff of 70 here in New Orleans churning out cakes. On a typical workday, 20-30 of those folks are cake decorators.

Here’s another great New Orleans story.

Luka Cutura grew up on the Northshore. His dad was a Croation immigrant who went into oyster farming, and following in his father’s shrimp-boot footsteps Luka got his commercial captain’s boat license right out of high school.

That meant he was licensed to carry passengers. Luka started doing swamp tours  for a company called Cajun Encounters.

Now, Cajun Encounters is owned by Jeff Rogers. In 2016 Jeff and his wife Mary Anna decided to open a distillery and call it Seven Three Distilling, after the 73 neighborhoods of New Orleans.

One of Jeff’s boat captains, Luka, had spent his childhood summers in Croatia where he’d learned to brew his Croatian family’s traditional Balkans fruit brandy and wine. With a few courses at the American Distilling Institute to get up to professional speed, Luka hung up his boat captain’s hat and became the Head Distiller at Seven Three Distilling.

Today, under Luka’s leadership, Seven Three Distilling makes award-winning gin, vodka, rum, and a bourbon that’s so popular they literally can’t keep up with demand.

When politicians, economists and pundits are fond of telling us, “The key to growing the national economy is manufacturing.” they’re typically thinking of things like aircraft, automobiles, steel, electronics, and clothing. But because this is New Orleans, we do things differently. We’re manufacturing birthday cakes and bourbon.

Baker Maid Products and Seven Three Distilling company names might not make it into national politicians’ speeches or onto economists’ charts, but their contributions to the local economy are not insignificant.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Other people have taken the opportunity to move out of expensive big cities to places not known for advancing careers. For example, over the pandemic the beaches around Seaside and Panama City Florida grew by some 14,000 new permanent residents.

And then there’s a population of people who gave an even broader definition to the idea that you can work from anywhere. These folks are known as “digital nomads.”

In our own small business, INO Broadcasting, our web developer lives in Lisbon, Portugal. And our researcher, Maggie Mendel, who started her digital nomad life in 2018, has worked on Out to Lunch while living in 18 countries, including Colombia, Bulgaria, Spain, Turkey, Italy, Slovenia, Portugal, and Montenegro.

Today Maggie is in New Orleans. So, we’re taking advantage of her brief presence back home to learn something about Digital Nomadism.

There are many more employees in the world than employers. So, when we talk about the issue of work, we tend to – probably unconsciously -look at it through an employee lens. However, if you’re an employer you’ve got a distinct set of your own problems. Two constant employer problems are - 1, employing the right person for an open position. And 2, training that person adequately so they do the job successfully, are happy doing it, and stick around.

Companies in the same field are nearly always in competition with each other, so they’re not sharing information about solving these problems. Hiring, training, and retention is, therefore, typically a game of hoping, and finger-crossing.

That’s why David DeCuir’s company is doing so well. David is founder and CEO of iCan Technologies, a software company that creates technology to help employers do better than a human decoding a resume. The software gets at the hard cold facts about the true competency of a person applying for a job.

iCan also creates software for training employees. And for accurately tracking whether employees are achieving the goals they’re setting out to accomplish.

In 1932 Aldous Huxley published a book called Brave New World. In 1949 George Orwell published a book called 1984. Both these books set a benchmark for years to come in which futurists agreed about the machine-driven lives of alienation and disconnection we were all going to experience in a profit-driven big-brother style autocracy where power seemed to have no accountability and humans had no fun.

Thankfully, only some of this is coming true. We don’t really know where the technology that people like David is creating is going to take us, but so far anyway it seems to be working for us rather than against us.

And none of the futurists in the 20th century predicted a wholly unchained workforce who can provide research from North Macedonia for a radio show and podcast recorded in a brewery in New Orleans and heard around the world for free.

It certainly is a brave new world.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They might both be good ideas. But there’s a big difference between a good business idea, and a good business. That difference is execution. Even in a world increasingly influenced by AI and data systems, execution comes down to people.

My guests on Out to Lunch today are people who are building good ideas into great businesses.

In the early 2000’s, Chris White solved an engineering and logistics problem for Tabasco. He created a better way to pack and ship pepper mash, which is the basic raw ingredient of hot sauce. Chris patented his technology and in 2010 turned it into The Louisiana Pepper Exchange.

It’s a business Chris describes as “seed to table.” The company grows peppers, processes them, and delivers over 20 million pounds of pepper products a year to hot-sauce manufacturers, and to other companies that include McDonalds, Wendys, and PF Chang’s.

How about this for a good idea? Make the world’s biggest pizza. Not just one pizza. Hundreds of them. Every day. That’s the concept behind Fat Boy’s Pizza.

Fat Boy’s is a chain of pizza restaurants that started life in 2019 as a single store in Metairie. Their pizza pie is 30 inches, which they call “the world’s biggest slice.” But, as you may have heard in other contexts, size isn’t everything. What might appear to be the success of a simple gimmick is actually a technology-driven business employing sophisticated software to manufacture pizza, and to collect and analyze data dedicated to keeping every individual pizza-purchaser happy.

Before Casey Biehl took over as Vice President of Operations and part-owner of Fat Boy’s, he’d been Head of Food and Beverage at Harrah’s in New Orleans, and in Biloxi. And he was part of the team that opened Caesar’s Palace in Dubai.

There’s a fun New Orleans Facebook group called “Ain’t Dere No More.” It’s dedicated mostly to memorializing local companies that have gone out of business.

Beside reminiscing about McKenzie’s buttermilk drops or singing along with the jingle for Rosenberg’s appliance store, it’s interesting to note the wide range of reasons once-popular local businesses close down. The market changes. People retire. Competition kills them. Rents get too high. The list goes on. But there are far fewer reasons a business succeeds.

Beyond having a good product or providing a good service, the success of most businesses is ultimately traceable to the vision of its founders. And the execution of that vision by people who can translate it into a profitable operation.

Chris White and Casey Biehl are both great examples of this balance of vision and execution.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We could, conceivably, create spaces where we could go, solely to talk to other people. But the way our society is structured, everything has to be paid for. Would people pay to go to a place just to talk to each other? Maybe. But that’s not what happens.

What happens is, we socialize with each other while doing an activity we’re prepared to pay for. Like eating. Drinking. Listening to music. Or going to a yoga class. And, like a lot of things these days, we start young. Take for example Lolo’s Youth Yoga and Art Studio, Uptown on Magazine Street.

Lolo’s is New Orleans’ first yoga studio specifically for kids. Children - from three years old to teenagers - practice yoga, make art, do mindfulness exercises, and learn meditation in afterschool or full-day sessions.

The founder and owner of Lolo’s Studio is Laurie Azzano.

Two places that adults like to congregate are bars and coffee shops. We go to a coffee shop where we like the taste of the coffee they serve. Bars all serve the same alcohol, so they compete with each other by providing “added value.” For example, live music.

For a combination of these business models – coffee and live music – you could go to Catahoula Tattoo, on Broad Street in Mid City. The coffee is their own blend – Catahoula Tattoo Select. And if you drink it at the studio, it’s free. The live music is free too.

While you’re hanging out at Catahoula’s self- described “tattoo lounge,” you could get a tattoo, right? Not so fast. Catahoula has 3 tattoo artists, but they won’t give you a tattoo on the spur of the moment. Your tattoo needs to be designed ahead of time, and you need an appointment to get it inked into your skin.

And in further market-differentiation, the owner of Catahoula Tattoo, Dominic Srgo, says, Catahoula is “not the kind of tattoo shop where the tattoo artists look like they belong in a circus.”

If you ever go to a Saints Game when the dome is sold out, the sheer mass of humanity can be overwhelming. That’s around 70,000 people. Each one of those people is on an individual life journey. So is every one of the 7 billion humans who aren’t in the dome on any given Sunday. And, because we’re human, that individual journey we’re all on can be physical, and spiritual.

One of the oldest ways of creating an individual difference between ourself and everyone else on earth, physically, is body art. And one of the oldest ways of developing our individual non-physical self, is Yoga. The practice of both of those pursuits is ever-evolving. Laurie Azzano and Dominic Srgo might be merely two individuals in the 21st Century in a small city in the south of the United States, but their respective contributions to the arts of tattooing and yoga are a part of ancient traditions, and uniquely their own.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Human beings are different. We don’t grow out of playing. We come up with myriad ways for people of all ages to enjoy themselves.

Here in New Orleans there’s a whole industry devoted to creating fun things for adults to do. Sometimes it’s in the guise of work as part of a convention, and other times it’s simply, well, fun.

The industry is called the Event Production business. Sometimes known as Party Planning. As you’ll know from planning your own parties - from birthdays to Bacchus - organizing a successful fun gathering is a serious business. Like every type of business, it evolves. One of the newest local evolutions is a company called Raising Hell Events.

Raising Hell started life in 2022 and is responsible for giving birth to events like Asking For A Friend – a series of networking get-togethers at various locations aimed at letting screen-centric young adults find friends in real life; Swiftie Fest – a massively popular Taylor Swift dance party; and the Y2K Sleepover Series at The Broad Theater – a nostalgic look back at films you might have watched if you were at a sleepover in the early 2000’s.

This is not your father’s event production company. It’s not even your big brother’s. Raising Hell Productions is the creation of Founder and Creative Director Julia DeLois.

When we humans are not playing, we watch other people play. We watch them play sports. And we watch them play musical instruments. We’re so enthusiastic about watching people play music that when we can’t get to see them play live, we watch them on a screen.

When we first discovered this pastime could be a mass market business back in the 1980’s, Music Television – or MTV as it called itself – became a massive worldwide sensation. Today it’s all over for MTV, but memorializing music on film, and on places like YouTube and TikTok, is still a sizeable segment of the entertainment industry.

Locally, a New Orleans-based content creation company called Lavoi Creative made a movie called Roots of Fire, about current Cajun music and musicians, that has won all kinds of awards. They also produce a wide range of other film and video content, including the TV show My Amazing Cheap Date: New Orleans. And they have a branch office in San Francisco where they make filmed content for Google, Pandora, Netflix, Bank of America, and many more companies with household names.

The co-founder of Lavoi Creative, along with his wife Abby, is Jeremey Lavoi. 

People often talk nostalgically about how things were better “back in the day.” But even a diehard curmudgeon would have to admit that life is twice as much fun today. That’s because we now have two ways to entertain ourselves: the old-fashioned way – in real life - and the 21st Century way - on a screen.

Whichever way you prefer, having fun and being entertained is a serious business. That’s why we have a multi-billion-dollar industry, called, simply, “the entertainment industry.” Here in New Orleans, Julia DeLois is bringing us new and innovative ways to entertain ourselves in the real world, and Jeremey Lavoi is creating filmed entertainment that runs the gamut from intellectually informative to frivolous fun.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For example, Silicon Valley is known for tech. Software development is so lucrative for so many people there its driven the cost-of-living sky high. In Los Angeles, the TV and movie industry creates enormous wealth for actors, directors, and a large number of allied careers.

New Orleans is famous for its music. But, with literally one or two exceptions, you’ll have a hard time meeting a musician or anyone else in the local music business who’s getting wealthy. 

Why is that? 

Reid Wick, Senior Membership & Project Manager at The Recording Academy – the people who own the Grammy’s – says its because when we were at the pinnacle of nationwide musical importance in the 1950’s, nobody had the foresight to develop a music business infrastructure. And we’re still paying the price for that today.

How do we fix it? Reid has ideas. 

It’s not like Reid or other people in the music business are sitting on their hands, doing nothing to change the status of musicians in New Orleans. Take, for example MACCNO, Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans.

MACCNO was formed in 2012, spearheaded by musician Kermit Ruffins’ angry response to the city’s proposed crackdown on live music permits. The organization has been a highly visible and vocal advocate for musicians’ and other artists’ ever since. The Executive Director of MACCNO is Ethan Ellestad.

We know only too well that consensus alone doesn’t bring about change. We all agree, for example, that there should be equal pay for equal work. But women are still paid less than men. 

Similarly, you won’t find a single person in New Orleans who disagrees with the notion that musicians should be paid at a level commensurate with their importance as some of our most valued citizens. And yet, year after year, decade after decade, we’re still having this same conversation about musicians’ struggles to make a decent living here.

At some point this has to change. And when it does, it’s going to be because of the tireless efforts of people like Reid Wick and Ethan Ellestad.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can  find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

By and large that’s true, but might I suggest, there’s one thing we’re all judgmental about here. And that’s our position in the State of Louisiana.

We’re one of the most famous cities in the world. So, we tend to implicitly believe that if someone moves here from, say Lafayette or Lake Charles, they’re coming here because New Orleans has something to offer they can’t get at home.

Both of our guests on this edition of Out to Lunch challenge that preconception. They’re both bringing something unique to New Orleans.

Trip Goolsby moved here from Lake Charles. If I tell you he lives here but still keeps his original office open there, what business would you assume Trip is in? Oil and gas? Law? Actually, Trip is an MD whose clinic, Infinite Health Integrative Medicine Center, specializes in what they refer to as “age-reversal.”

The clinic employs progressive medical strategies that aim to treat a wide range of conditions from fatigue to debilitating pain. In some cases they claim they can eliminate chronic disease, like diabetes. This isn’t the kind of business we’d normally expect to see imported here from Lake Charles.

And so, to Lafayette. This story is a little more traditional. But only because it’s about food.

Manish Patel grew up in New Orleans. He moved to Lafayette for college, where he studied architecture and graphic design. After graduating, Manish stayed in Acadiana - in Lafayette and Carencro - for 10 years before moving to New Orleans. And this is where food comes into the picture.

Manish’s father had spent a career in hotel kitchens, first in Mumbai, India, and then in New Orleans, and when Manish came back home, he started making Indian food. Specifically, an Indian street food, called dosas.

First Manish sold his dosas at pop-ups. Then he moved to a space at the Auction House food court. And in 2018, he opened his own Indian street food restaurant, Tava.

Very little in life is absolute. Most things are relative. For example, if you expect to find $10,000 in your bank account and you discover there’s only $1,000 in there, you don’t feel good. But if you think you have $10 in the bank, that same $1,000 can make you feel rich. 

The point being, our expectations can define our experience. How far can you push this? If you don’t accept the generally-held expectation that time and age dictate your health, can you stay healthy longer? If you open a restaurant with no prior experience, can your expectation of success push you to create a real success?

Challenging preconceptions and expectations can be, well, challenging. In the words of the immortal Little Feat, “Time loves a hero, but only time will tell.” When you succeed at defying conventional wisdom, it’s groundbreaking and rewarding.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Even one of the most successful brands, Aveeno, which is owned by Johnson & Johnson, is on the lookout for new products. So much so, that they sponsor a new product search, and even have a business accelerator to help nurture up-and-coming skin care entrepreneurs.

Bea's Bayou

In 2022, the winner of the $100,000 Aveeno product search, and member of the Aveeno Accelerator, was a New Orleans company called Bea’s Bayou Skincare. The company makes a line of skin, scalp and hair care products that use fermented and herbal ingredients formulated to work with the skin’s natural microflora.

The founder and creator of the creams and potions at Bea’s Bayou Skincare is Arielle Brown.

Bomb Ass Fro

We’ve gotten so used to giant companies owning multiple brands that it’s kind of quaint these days to talk about a company that only makes one product. But it’s worth remembering, there was a time when Coca Cola only made Coca Cola. Ford Motors only made Ford automobiles. And Apple made a computer.

Sydni Raymond’s company, Bomb Ass Fro, only makes a single hair jelly. The product has no harmful ingredients, promises lasting results, is extremely affordable, and allows Black women to wear their natural hair without the added expense of multiple products or complicated application methods.

And, in case you’re skeptical about the comparison to Coke, Ford, and Apple, Sydni’s Bomb Ass Fro is so massively popular that she can’t produce enough of it to keep up with nationwide demand.

When You're The One-in-a-Million

Most people like to be encouraging. Especially in entrepreneurship where the going is tough and rewards can be a long time coming.

We’ve all heard the supportive cliches – “Follow your dreams.” “Never give up.” “Trust your crazy ideas.” “Somebody has to be the one-in-a-million; it could be you.” But, to be honest, most of us never believe any of that reassuring advice is any more than just magical thinking.

Then, along come Arielle Brown and Sydni Raymond. Apparently dreams can in fact come true.

If you believe in coincidence it's extraordinary that Arielle and Sydni are both from New Orleans, they’re both in business at the same time, and they’re both equally talented and successful. It doesn’t hurt that they’re also hard-working, and have developed real products that actually work.

Along with the rest of New Orleans - and the entire hair and skin care industry – we can only look forward to following their continued success.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

That’s the guiding principle behind an organization called Community Sailing New Orleans. Community Sailing owns a fleet of 50 boats and uses them to give lessons and make sailing accessible to young people whose economic background would typically preclude them from even considering going sailing. 

Community Sailing also has relationships with high school and college sailing clubs, and stages group outings and summer camps.

The organization is based at Lake Pontchartrain. They have 3 full time employees, around 15 sailing coaches, and the Executive Director of the operation is Jacob Raymond.

When you have a certain number of boats, their collective noun is no longer “fleet” but becomes “Navy.” Typically, a navy is a branch of a country's armed forces that is responsible for conducting military operations at sea. But, as is so often the case, it’s different in Louisiana.

Here, we have a navy that swings into action after a water-driven disaster. It’s The Cajun Navy, a more-or-less ad-hoc collection of boat owners who band together to rescue people trapped by floodwaters.

Beyond that waterborne force, there’s an allied but separate civilian rescue and recovery force, called The Cajun Navy Ground Force. The founder and CEO of the Cajun Navy Ground Force is Rob Gaudet.

The description "Ordinary people doing extraordinary things" refers to individuals who, despite not having any special advantages or resources, are able to achieve remarkable accomplishments through their hard work, perseverance, and dedication.

These people are often motivated by a strong desire to make a positive impact on their communities, and are willing to take risks and overcome obstacles to achieve their goals. Famous examples include Mahatma Gandhi, who led India to independence through nonviolent resistance; and Rosa Parks, whose dignified defiance helped spark the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things are not always famous, or looking to be. But when we have an opportunity, it’s nice to recognize them. Jacob Raymond and Rob Gaudet are definitely both in this category.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But, nothing lasts forever. When an off-shore oil well dries up, oil companies don’t exhibit quite the same zeal for plugging the well and dismantling and removing the massive drilling platform. That job is given to a third-party company. Off the coast of Louisiana, that company is likely to be The Couvillion Group.

The Couvillion Group is owned by the company’s President and CEO, Timmy Couvillion. Beside dismantling oil wells, Timmy and his 70 employees work on a wide range of ocean-based projects, including marine construction, port and vessel maintenance, and disaster recovery.

Timmy started the company after Hurricane Katrina. His first project was salvaging over 500 sunken boats that went down in that storm.

It’s not just hurricanes that cause disasters. In most workplaces, stuff goes wrong constantly. Hosting a podcast, it’s no big deal. I can apologize for mis-pronouncing your name or asking a dopey question. Other than a bit of embarrassment, the fallout is pretty minimal.

In healthcare, things aren’t quite so easy-going. If you’re a healthcare provider – a practitioner, a clinic, or a hospital – you have to take every possible precaution to eliminate every possible mis-step. But, if you’re a doctor or a medical administrator, you don’t have time to be constantly checking that the systems and people supporting you are working the way they should.

That’s where a company by the name of Performance Health Partners comes in. Performance Health Partners is a healthcare software company that specifically focuses on patient and employee safety.

For every single healthcare incident that causes harm, there are an estimated 299 near-misses. Performance Health Partners records as many of these 299 close-calls as possible, to determine their root cause and eliminate them before harm occurs.

The company was founded in 2015 here in New Orleans. Today they’re in 35 states across the country, in 16 different sectors of healthcare - from behavioral and home health to dialysis - and they’re moving into veterinary care.

The founder and CEO of Performance Health Partners is Heidi Raines.

When we record this podcast, our technical director, Eric Murrell, sits behind us with headphones on, quietly making sure we all sound good. The only time we hear from Eric is when something goes wrong.

Heidi Raines and Timmy Couvillion are both the Eric Murrell of their industries. If everything is ticking over the way it’s supposed to, it’s because they’re quietly going about your day-to-day business.

When we go to the hospital and leave happy because everything worked like clockwork, or we watch the news and there’s not a story about oil leaking from an abandoned well in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s because The Couvillion Group and Performance Health Partners are delivering on their obligations.

To the public, they’re never going to be the hero in the spotlight. But to people in their industries, and others familiar with what they do, they’re vitally important and enormously appreciated. And the number of people who appreciate them now includes of all of us who have gotten to meet them on this edition of Out to Lunch.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve got broad-brushstroke boundaries like Uptown, Mid-City and Algiers. Within those – and sometimes seemingly between them - we have areas with names like Black Pearl, Gert Town, Milneburg, and Desire. And if you want to get even more specifically local, you subscribe to the belief that no neighborhood is either “good” or “bad” with the uniquely New Orleans’ explanation, “It’s block by block.”

Normally, we use this yardstick to describe residential blocks. But the same calculus applies to opening a brick-and-mortar retail store. For example, one part of the French Quarter is very different from another.

Katie Schmidt launched her fair trade, sustainable clothing line, Passion Lilie, in 2013. But it wasn’t till 9 years later, in 2022, that she opened a French Quarter retail store on Chartres Street, just a stone’s throw from Jackson Square.

What made Katie choose that particular spot? She explains why she's on Chartres Street in the quarter and not Magazine Street, Uptown on this edition of Out to Lunch.

Aaron Newsome opened his store, The Bike Shop NOLA, on Freret Street, in 2011.  Back then, Freret Street and its surrounding residential neighborhoods, were very different from the gentrified homes and restaurant and retail row the area has turned into.

As the neighborhood has changed, Aaron’s clientele has changed with it. His customers started out as people with limited resources looking for a used bike, or coming in to get their bike fixed. Now he also has folks looking to buy new bikes, and at a decent price.

On top of that, in 2020 Aaron’s business was the recipient of more unexpected good fortune. The Covid pandemic and lockdown happened, and suddenly it seemed like every person in America wanted a bike.

Aaron’s business is doing so well he’s been able to relocate to a bigger and better spot. Employing the New Orleans block-by-block calculus, the new location of Bike Shop NOLA is a block or so up Freret Street, near Louisiana’s most stylish Rouse’s.

There are a lot of magical things about living in New Orleans. Like, being able to stroll around the French Quarter, get beignets, listen to music, and shop at a fair-trade designer clothing store that sells exclusive but affordable fashion.

And being able to saunter down Freret Street, sample all kinds of foods, from Creole to Greek, and go to a yoga class while you get your bike fixed.

These aren’t fantasy videos dreamed up by the people who run the Visit New Orleans Instagram account. This is how we live.

In another city, maybe you wouldn’t put a bike shop and a clothes store on a list of magical experiences, but other cities don’t have the French Quarter or Freret Street. And they don’t have people like Katie Schmidt and Aaron Newsome who have chosen to live here. The businesses they’ve built and the lives they’re living are all a part of the simple everyday reality that collectively is the magic of the city of New Orleans.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Then, early this century, the tide turned again. Among the many reasons for this new wave of migration was something we hadn’t heard in a long time: people were moving here to start a business. Both of Peter's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch today moved to new Orleans - one from Los Angeles, the other from New York - for very different types of businesses.

Courtney Williams grew up in Jamaica and moved to New York City as a teenager.

Courtney describes himself as, “Exhibit A for a great education.” After law school he became Director of Development at America Online. And then Vice President of Business Development at AOL Time Warner.

Courtney was a part of the $165B merger between AOL and Time warner. One of the biggest mergers in history, it was the first connection between tech and entertainment and paved the way for everything that was to follow, from iTunes to Netflix.

After his monumental success in corporate America, Courtney wanted to start a business that would utilize his knowledge and experience to make something more than money. He wanted to make a contribution to building a better world.

To that end, Courtney founded a tech-driven education business called TORSH, which stands for Today’s One Room Schoolhouse. 

TORSH allows school principals and heads of college departments to monitor and mentor teachers. It creates an online meeting place where all of a teacher’s records are collected and available. And it’s a cyber-meeting-space where teachers can share resources. TORSH’s clients include Notre Dame, Purdue, Johns Hopkins University, and many more.

Courtney founded TORSH in New York. In 2014  he relocated the operation to New Orleans.

Janna Hart Black grew up in Metairie. She moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the fashion industry. Like many people in LA, Jana became increasingly concerned at the overwhelming number of homeless people living on the streets.

Wishing she could do something to help these folks while at the same time looking for a way to move back home, Janna made both of those wishes come true. In 2015 she and her husband moved to New Orleans, and Jana founded a company called Bonfolk, that makes socks.

You may have seen Bonfolk socks, and more recently Bonfolk towels too. They have New Orleans-inspired designs - like potholes or beignets - and Louisiana designs, - like oysters or a swamp scene.

For every pair of fashion socks Bonfolk sells, they give a pair of specially designed resilient socks to organizations that distribute them to homeless people.

And for every towel they sell, they give a towel to a needy person, especially disadvantaged kids learning to swim.

When doctors graduate from medical school, they’re meant to be guided by the fundamental principle of medicine embodied in what’s called the Hippocratic Oath. Basically, it’s a declaration that says, “Do no harm.”

There’s no equivalent oath for small business owners. But it’s fair to say that most people today who own their own business want to feel that, whatever they’re doing, they’re in some way making the world a better place. There’s a name for this type of business philosophy. It’s called “Social Impact.”

Janna Hart Black and Courtney Williams are both great examples of entrepreneurs who build social impact consciousness into the very fabric of their business.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Normally, these assumptions are true. But, like all assumptions, there are exceptions. Both Peter Ricchiuti's lunch guests today are running businesses that are not, “all about me.” They’re for-profit businesses that are, uniquely, not all about their own profit.

Paola Barona is the owner of Del Alto Valle Coffee. Paola's company has two goals:

1, to provide New Orleans and the US with varieties of coffee from her native Colombia that are otherwise unavailable, or unaffordable.

2, to use all the profits from those sales to provide school supplies for children living on small farms in the isolated, rural communities in Colombia, where the coffee beans are grown.

Sabrina Short is founder and CEO of NOLAvate Black, a connection hub primarily dedicated to Black people in New Orleans tech sector. They also extend their services to Indigenous People and People of Color.

They’re a for-profit company that helps tech companies connect to talent. On the other side of the equation, they’re also a Talent Incubator. And they have a division that helps people land a first job in tech.

NOLAvate Black started out as an idea for a networking Happy Hour in 2018. It’s since grown into an impactful part of New Orleans’ tech sector.

Most of us are conditioned to think of business success in terms of “more” and “bigger.” The more money a business makes, the bigger it gets, the better it is. 

It’s easy to seem open-minded and say, “Your definition of success can be different.” But it’s very hard for anybody in business to actually break out of the bigger-is-better mindset. And it’s even more difficult to find people who genuinely put other people’s interests ahead of their own.

Paola and Sabrina are both talented business people who are devoting their talents to advancing other people’s lives and careers.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What this means is, the enormous might of the world’s most powerful military and globally dominant financial system, is powered by you and me, buying stuff.

That, in turn, relies on manufacturers making stuff we want to buy. And want is the operative word here. If we lived in a utilitarian society and only bought what we actually need, the wheels would fall off the US economy.

Peter Ricchiuti's lunch guests today are both great examples of how we all keep these wheels turning.

Cinched

If you wear pants, you could get away with owning 2 pairs. But if you’re an average American, you own many more than that. Reportedly, the average American owns 9 pairs of pants. 

Most of these pants have belt loops at their waist. You can only wear one belt at a time, so you could conceivably hold all of your pants up with the same belt. But, as you know, you don’t. Because the success of the country is depending on you buying stuff, you have a bunch of belts.

If you go down River Road and stop in at Torino Leather Company – or visit it online - you can choose from over 40,000 belts - made from regular cowhide or more exotic materials like lizard, ostrich, tiger shark, and python.

Tom Garner started working at what was then the Torino Belt Company in 1999. In 2006 Tom and three co-workers bought the business. In the intervening years they’ve built Torino Leather into a company with 30 employees and today they sell their belts across the country, in stores as wide-ranging as Dillard’s and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Sober

There’s nothing more basically utilitarian than drinking. Human beings have to drink to survive. We could drink only water. But what kind of consumer-driven economy would we have if we did that?

Over the span of human history we’ve come up with all kinds of different liquids to consume. Among the most popular is alcohol. Living in New Orleans, you might have a slightly skewed perspective on this, but across the country, a younger generation is turning away from alcohol.

A whole new industry has grown up to cater to these folks, making what are called “mocktails.” Mocktails are drinks you drink when you don’t want to drink. They taste like a cocktail, but they have extremely low or absolutely zero alcohol.

New Orleans is not only “the home of the cocktail,” we’re also the home of a growing brand of mocktails, called Mockly, the brainchild and growing business of husband-and-wife team, Tarik and Aimee Sedky.

When we talk about the US economy, there’s general agreement that we need to encourage and grow as much manufacturing as we can, rather than see it shipped offshore to other countries.

However, when we talk about the local New Orleans economy, we tend to focus on hospitality, tourism, conventions and music. 

It’s pretty rare to hear any conversation about growing the local New Orleans manufacturing sector. But there certainly is one. And its contribution to the general US economy is worth acknowledging.

Aimee Sedky and Tom Garner are great examples of local manufacturers. They have two very different products, and are at very different stages of development and growth, but Torino Leather and Mockly are both New Orleans companies with a nationwide impact.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For example, when you get married, the vows about sticking together from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health presume there’ll be rough times ahead. What you’re also assuming is, you’re not going to wake up one morning and discover your marriage and the foundation you’ve now built your entire life on is illegal.

Same-sex couples actually are going into marriage with that threat hanging over their heads. But that’s a decision based on love. People do crazy things for love. You wouldn’t do that in a business setting where you’re dealing in cold hard numbers.

Or would you?

Well, you might. It’s called “calculated risk” and it’s precisely what’s going on in the marijuana business. Marijuana is, at this point, federally illegal. But a number of states have legalized it to varying degrees, some totally, some partially. Those states, along with a healthy dose of optimism about the way the rest of the country might go in the future, is enough of a possible upside for a good number of businesses to bet the farm on a coming pot boom.

Among those in this modern-day gold rush is a local company called Jack’s Pre-Rolls.

If someday we’re going to go to the store and buy a pack of joints like we buy a pack of cigarettes, we’re going to expect uniformity. A consumer is going to want every joint in the pack to be the same. And apparently, we’re going to want to put the joint down and light it up again later, in a way that doesn’t waste a lot of its content. To get that kind of product is going to require a different kind of machine than rolls cigarettes. And that’s the kind of machine Jack’s Pre-Rolls is investing in and, pardon the allusion, rolling out.

The Chief Information Officer at Jack’s Pre-Rolls is Paul Gregory.

There is one part of the cannabis industry that is federally legal, and that is the production of hemp. Since Congress passed The Farm Bill in 2018, it’s been legal to grow, harvest, and process hemp into various products, including rope, bioplastics, CBD, and food.

Again, pardon the allusion, but without getting into the weeds, the difference between marijuana and hemp, is zero. At least as far as the type of plant. It all comes from cannabis plants. The difference is the amount of THC in any individual cannabis plant. THC is the ingredient that gets you high. A cannabis plant with less than 0.3% THC is legally hemp. If it has more than 0.3%, it’s legally pot.

So, if you’re farming cannabis, it’s essential to know the THC level of every plant in your crop. The standard way of finding that out has been to chop off a bit of each plant and send it off to a lab to get tested. The real-world problem here is, in the week it takes for a farmer to get results, the plant can increase its THC level. That not only changes the value of the crop but in the wrong state it also changes the farmer from a person legally growing hemp to a criminal farming pot.

The solution to this problem is a hand-held piece of technology that’s a kind of cannabis-zapper. The technology is actually called Raman Spectrometry. And the revolutionary new hand-held device that adapts it to measuring THC levels on the spot, is called PAMAP - which stands for Predictive Analytical Modeling Application for Plants.

The company behind this advanced cannabis science is Mariposa Technology. Michael Dalle Molle is a partner and Chief Operating Officer at Mariposa Technology.

There’s a formula investors use to determine how risky a stock purchase is going to be. It’s called a risk/reward ratio. Typically, the higher the risk, the higher the potential reward. Jack's Pre Rolls and Mariposa Technology are both companies at early stages of development in a field so full of unknowns that it would be hard to accurately assess the possible reward for the risks you’re taking.

The legal hemp industry is in a comparatively lower-risk lower-reward category, but the THC side of the cannabis farming business is a textbook example of high risk, with a potential market that is simply unknown.

If marijuana is legalized, is it going to be as celebrated, popular, and lucrative as alcohol? Or is it going to be highly regulated and generally regarded negatively, like tobacco? Only time will tell. Let's al meet up back here in a year and get an update.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When somebody asks you that, you know what they mean. They’re not suggesting, literally, that you might want to synchronize a trip to procure coffee - they’re inviting you to talk. Maybe they want to talk about work. Relationships. Kids. Parents. Movies. Music. Sex. Religion. Politics. School.

You could probably list another half dozen conversational topics you typically discuss when you get together with friends or family. And you still wouldn’t get to the subject of “death.” That’s because death is a subject we Americans don’t like to talk about.

Yes, we know it’s coming for all of us, but we seem to believe that if we employ a technique somewhere between outright denial and magical thinking, we’ll deal with the death of our loved ones only when we really have to – when they die. And similarly, someone else will take care of us when we die.

Liz Dunnebacke says we can do better. Liz quit her job in the film business to dedicate herself to death. She founded and is Executive Director of a non-profit organization called Wake.

Wake is for people who would like help planning an orderly exit from this life when the day comes at some point in the future. And for people with zero planning who need help with a deceased person, right  now.

Of course, as Sigmund Freud kind of said, sometimes a cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee.

Sometimes when you want a cup of coffee, you want a cup of coffee. Good, strong coffee that will make you feel how you want to feel. And you don’t need it delivered with a bunch of conversation. If, however, you would like especially strong coffee delivered directly to your home or work, Brice Sanderford can help you.

Brice is co-founder of Riverboat Coffee Company. Riverboat cold-brews coffee and delivers it to you in glass growlers – those glass containers usually used for craft beer, with a resealable top. Or, if you need a little more, they’ll bring you a keg.

Riverboat also has a retail location Uptown on Magazine and Napoleon, and a pedal-powered mobile coffee trike called “The Caffeine Queen.”

In our pursuit of happiness, there’s definitely something to be said for the popular opinion that we should live in the moment. But, whether that moment is as momentous as the death of someone we care for, or simply waking up in the morning and wanting a cup of coffee, it’s good to have a plan.

On the face of it, there might not seem to be much in common between a for-profit craft-coffee company and a non-profit deathcare organization, Liz and Brice are both in the business of encouraging people to think ahead to improve their own wellbeing and happiness. And whether the end result is in a growler or in the ground, that's a noble enough pursuit, don't you think?

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you go back to your own memories of childhood, do you remember a time when you thought you didn’t fit in? You probably do. Because, in reality, there is nothing objective to fit into. We learn to become what is expected of us. Or we did.

Today, we have far greater freedom to become the person we truly want to be. Instead of trying to beat creativity and idiosyncrasies out of people, we see the wisdom of equipping atypical individuals with skills that will let them function, while retaining their individuality.

That is Adela Baker’s job. Adela is CEO of a company called Mind Coach NOLA. Mind Coach NOLA provides individual and group sessions to people Adela calls, “Turbo Thinkers.”

Turbo Thinkers are folks who struggle with executive function skills and impulse management. A lot of Adela’s clients are entrepreneurs and creatives.

Growing up in Slidell, Gabriel Flores followed his own path. He started down the road to the million-dollar business he owns today when he was arrested - for spray painting on the walls at Slidell High.

Today, Gabriel is owner of The Inkwell Press. The Inkwell Press designs and produces screen-printing and embroidery on a multitude of items, including T-shirts, professional work wear, promotional items like flags, koozies, glassware, and much more.

An even greater connection to Gabriel’s less than illustrious entrée into the art world is his allied company, New Orleans Paint & Design. It’s acronym, NOPD, is a tip-of-the-hat to his origin story, and, even more ironically, the business itself is a mural painting company.

You can see NOPD’s murals all around New Orleans, including at Whole Foods, the ACE Hotel, Marjie’s Grill, and in locally shot movies and TV shows.

Talking with Adela and Gabriel brings to mind a two-word saying: “Be You.” Unfortunately, sayings like “Be you,” “You do you” and “Live your best life” have become social media cliches and memes. But for good reason. We keep encouraging each other with these bits of advice because being your authentic self and living the life you want to live with only a minimal amount of necessary compromise is an extraordinary challenge.

Adela is devoting her professional life to giving people the tools to simply be themselves. And Gabriel is a textbook example of the kind of success a person can achieve by having the courage to simply do what makes you happy.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you live in New Orleans, you can be justifiably proud of our cuisine. But there are only so many poboys, muffalettas, and plates of red beans and rice you can eat. That’s why, when people move here from other parts of the country or the world and bring with them authentic food from their home, we locals jump at it.

Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern, Latin, and Indian immigrants have all created restaurants that New Orleanians love. To that list you can also add German, and Connecticut.

Ok, Connecticut’s not a country, and normally nobody in New Orleans would look to the northeast for any kind of food. That is, until 2021. That’s when Joel Griffin graduated from Tulane and instead of going back home to Connecticut for a lobster roll, he brought lobster rolls to New Orleans.

From his very first pop-up at The Boot, Joel’s Lobster Rolls were a massive hit. Over the Summer of 2021 New Orleanians were lining up for an hour or more and happily parting with over $20 for one of Joel’s Lobster Rolls. My neighbor, Jane, told me, “I spent 4 hours of my 50th birthday in line for a lobster roll.”

“Joel’s Lobster Rolls” is now the name of Joel Griffin’s company, and it’s the name emblazoned on his food truck.

Sven Vorkauf, grew up in his family’s deli business in Berlin, Germany. When he got old enough to take over the business, Sven turned the single store into a chain of European style delis.

Then he sold the whole lot of them, and moved to New Orleans.

In 2012, Sven started over. At the Freret Street Market he had a pop-up he called Bratz Y’all. Like Joel’s Lobster Rolls, Sven’s Bratz Y’all was an instant smash hit with New Orleanians. 

Today you can find Bratz Y’all Bakery & Biergarten at its permanent home on Piety Street in the Bywater. The mostly-outdoor restaurant serves uncompromisingly authentic German fare including Bratz, schnitzel, pretzels, and decadent desserts, along with a wide selection of exclusively German wines, beers and spirits.

Over many years, the myriad influences of indigenous people - French, Spanish, Asian, Haitian, Honduran and many others who have moved here to New Orleans  - have built our city on a freedom of coexistence. New Orleans embraces everyone who shares our unique perspective on life.

It's hard to put your finger on what exactly that almost indefinable New Orleans-ness is. At the end of the day it’s not about a nationality, or an industry, or a plate of food. It’s about a person.

The reason Joel's Lobster Rolls and Bratz Y'all are businesses that are doing so well in New Orleans is partly because of lobsters and Bratz. But it’s largely because of Joel and Sven.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Like so many things, it’s different in Louisiana. Here, fish stories include hurricanes. Salt water intrusion. Fishing camps being flooded and destroyed. And “the one that got away” is more likely to be an insurance claim that was denied.

Here, people in the leisure fishing business are not your typical fishermen. Or typical businessmen. They’re larger-than-life characters who are equally adept at battling the elements and battling FEMA. And who can manage balance sheets and change bedsheets.

Fred Lewis has been an actor in a bunch of Hollywood movies, including Blaze with Paul Newman, and Tin Cup with Kevin Costner. In 2003, when the only way to go fishing in Venice Louisiana for longer than a day was to stay at the one available fishing camp, Fred had a houseboat towed in from Alabama. Eventually he started renting it out to other folks.

Before long, Fred had 5 houseboats docked at the Venice Marina. He’s sold one, and his stepson, Steve Brantley, has two. Fred’s company, Venice Houseboat Rentals, keeps the houseboats rented out pretty much continually. They all sleep six to eight people. It’s no exaggeration to say, Fred has almost single-handedly created a short-term-rental leisure-fishing industry in Venice.

Even closer to New Orleans, around 30 minutes south of the city, you can go fishing in Barataria. There you’ll find another impressive renaissance man, Theophile Bourgeois. 

Theophile is the front man of a popular New Orleans-based band, called Them Ol’ Ghosts. He’s a tattoo artist who founded an Uptown New Orleans tattoo shop - Oak Street Tattoo. And in Barataria he’s the owner of Bourgeois Fishing Charters.

Bourgeois Fishing Charters is anchored in a 10,000 square foot guest house that sleeps 52 people. They have their own fishing boats, four charter-boat captains, two full-time cooks, a housekeeper, a reservation department, and even their own seaplane.

In New Orleans we have a number of terms for activities that are unique understatements. For example, “going to hear music” typically refers to a night out that involves a whole lot more than just “hearing music.” “Going by my momma’s” can refer to anything from stopping by for a crawfish boil to painting your mom’s house.

Similarly, in most parts of the world, “Gone fishin’” evokes a kind of mental health day: A temporary checking out of daily life in favor of a slice of solitary, silent, self-reflection. Here, “Gone fishin’” - along with the terms “Going down to the camp” and “Going duck hunting” - typically refers to group undertakings in which the activity of fishing, camping, or hunting is inextricably bound up with socializing.

Whether you tend more toward the serious fishing or serious fun end of the spectrum, there’s a spot for you in Barataria or Venice. Theophile Bourgeois (Toe-feel) has you covered in Barataria and Fred Lewis has you covered in Venice.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The original saying, “It takes a village to raise a child,” is variously attributed to African and Indigenous American societies. Wherever it came from, its meaning is widely accepted. And that is, the knowledge and skills a child needs to become a well-rounded, successful, functioning adult are learned not just from a child’s parents, but from people in their community.

Peter Ricchiuti's guests on Out to Lunch today are two of those village people.

Larry Washington is working to retire the common complaint that kids graduate high school woefully unprepared for the real world.

You might have been one of those kids. A lot of us discovered when we left school that we knew nothing about credit cards, checking accounts, or budgeting. We had no real understanding of what being a member of the workforce is all about. And no one in school even broached the subject of entrepreneurship or what it means to start your own business.

If Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans has a connection to your kids’ school, they’re going to graduate knowing all of that. Junior Achievement of New Orleans reaches between 20 and 40 thousand students a year. And Larry Washington is its President.

After we graduate from school and move into various stages of adulthood, marriage, and parenting, we find out we have even more to learn.

Ty Salvant is an author, speaker, and founder of an organization called Time With Ty that focuses on providing education, support, and assistance in those areas of our lives where we’re expected to figure it out on our own.

Sometimes, that strategy just doesn’t work out so great, and you need help. Time With Ty includes Time For Rest – self-care support for women; Time For Us – a marriage enrichment program; and Time To Play, which connects adults to local community organizations.

Ty is also the author of a series of children’s books called The Alphabet of You.

“Easier said than done.” We’re all familiar with that saying. And most of us are also familiar with how frustratingly true it is, in all kinds of avenues of life. It’s a lot easier to say, “Kids need a more rounded education,” or “We should be able to ask for help when we need it,” than it is to actually give kids a more rounded education, or ask for help when we need it.

We’re all indebted to people like Larry and Ty who dedicate themselves to stepping up and doing something about solving the problems most of just talk about.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You know that’s true because you do it yourself. We all do. And if the person we’re checking out has an unimpressive website, or their Instagram or Facebook page hasn’t been updated in a while, it can cloud our opinion of their professional abilities.

IT

So, if you’re a business owner who is already taking time away from your primary business to keep on top of your online presence, now you’ve also got another problem. Getting hacked.

That might seem like a remote possibility. Well, it’s actually not. Something like 30,000 websites are hacked every day. Worldwide, 64% of companies have experienced some form of cyber-attack. For a lot of businesses, this is all too much distraction to deal with. And that’s when they call in a company like BIOS Technologies.

BIOS Technologies has been around since 2002. They’re an IT company who take pains to be something other than your typical collection of wonky nerds with questionable personal hygiene. Their tech support employees are specifically hired because they also have people skills. The co-founder of BIOS Technologies is Kevin Launey. 

Diaries

As a result of changes in our work life that started with the Covid pandemic, and changes that come with an aging population, we’re seeing changes in our families.

As more of us spend more time working from home, a growing number of people are taking on the role of caregiver to a family member. That might be a parent, a grandparent, or a child with particular challenges.

There are a large and growing number of these unpaid caregivers in the United States. A startup company called Memoryz lets these caregivers find each other through an app, and provide each other with both practical and emotional support.

The founder and CEO of Memoryz is Rishawn Dindial.

I'm Not a Doctor, But...

Way back in 1984, an actor on a soap opera called General Hospital made a commercial for Vick’s Formula 44 cough syrup, and coined the immortal line, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.”

These days, a lot of us are forced to become familiar with subjects we know little or nothing about. You might not be an IT expert, and you might not be a nurse, but if you have a business with an online presence, or you have a family member who needs care, you find yourself simply having to rise to the occasion.

Keeping a business healthy and keeping family members healthy might not have many similarities, but what they do have in common is, they’re problems with solutions. Kevin's company is designed to provide solutions for business owners, and Rishawn's company is designed to provide solutions for family caregivers.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Social science has a term for these kinds of unintended incidents. They’re called “latent functions.” Latent functions exist on a grand scale at our public libraries.

Principally, a library is a building that houses books that are loaned out. Beyond that principal function, all kinds of social and educational programs are run out of libraries. Reading Outreach for children, Adult Literacy, creative writing workshops, all kinds of community meetings… And then there’s the tax forms, internet access and other services libraries provide.

Although we expect to find all these things at our libraries, local governments typically see them as merely latent functions - beyond the regular scope of the institution - and for that reason don’t necessarily fund them.

In New Orleans, we have an organization dedicated to raising auxiliary funds to cover the shortfall. It’s called Friends of the New Orleans Public Library. It raises money through grant writing and donations, but principally it’s a bookstore.

Three days a week they sell donated books out of a building on the grounds of the Latter Library, on St Charles Avenue Uptown, and one day a week the bookstore is open at the library in Algiers.

The Executive Director of Friends of the New Orleans Public Library is Shannan Cvitanovic. 

When you’re not reading your library book, maybe you’re watching TV, or a movie. When you get to the end of a TV show or movie, the typically long list of credits is an indication of the large number of people it takes to make a work for the screen.

Although that list of creators can number well into the hundreds, the only people most of us have any real interest in is the relatively small number of actors.

Within the entertainment industry, actors are also the center of attention. Projects are often funded based solely on which actors agree to star in them. In the tiers below those starring roles, landing an acting job is highly competitive. Getting cast in a movie, a TV show, or a live theater production depends on how well an actor performs at their job interview – known as an “audition.”

Here in New Orleans, there’s a business that dedicates itself to preparing actors for auditions. It’s called The Actors Apothecary. The founders of The Actors Apothecary are Chelsea Bryan and Sylvia Grace Crim.

For most of us, reading books, watching TV, or going to a movie is a break from our everyday world. But for some people, books, movies and TV is their everyday world. Shannan's professional connection to books is unique: her daily labors provide an important element of funding for the New Orleans Public Library. And Chelsea and Sylvia's connection to film and TV is equally unique. On paper it seems paradoxical to create a business that’s building a community of actors while at the same time giving each of them a competitive edge, but in the real world it’s working.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this by by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first is - The greater your need for money, the harder it is to borrow it.

In 2022, Elon Musk, then the richest man in the world, had no problem borrowing 13 billion dollars to fund the purchase of Twitter, a company that had been losing money for most of its existence.

If you’re a small business owner in Louisiana or Mississippi, however, your chance of being turned down for a loan is 60%. And that’s if you’re white. If you’re a Hispanic business owner, that number jumps up to 80%. And if you’re Black, the chance of your business loan application being rejected jumps to 87%.

These statistics were compiled by a financial institution called HOPE.  They’re the reason for HOPE’s existence in Louisiana, Mississippi, and other Southern States. HOPE is a loan fund and credit union supporting small businesses in primarily majority Black and Latinx counties and parishes.

The Senior Vice President of Community and Economic Development at HOPE is Kathy Saloy.

The other curiosity we’re looking at today is the financial conundrum of college education.

People go to college to get a degree to enable them to make more money during their working lives. But getting that degree requires years of financial hardship. And the ramifications of borrowing money to finance an education often severely limits a person’s economic opportunity for a decent portion of their working life.

A startup company called HustleHawks is setting out to provide students a way of making an income while they’re in college. And to allow them to schedule their income creation around their studies.

The co-founder and CEO of HustleHawks is Gerald Rossen.

It’s stating the obvious to point out we all need money. Generally, there are only two ways to get a hold of it: work for it, or borrow it. On paper, that sounds straightforward enough. But in the real world, neither of those options are simple. And both options are made more difficult if you fall into subsets of the population that includes students, women, and people of color.

Kathy Saloy and Gerald Rossen are both working to shorten the distance between money and the people who need it. A lot of people have already benefited from Kathy's efforts over many years, and a lot of people will hopefully benefit from Gerald's in the future.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may have noticed that over the past few years the city of New Orleans has been updating sidewalks to provide wheelchair access at intersections, so people in a wheelchair can do something as simple as cross the street. That’s a definite step forward, but other than the street you live on, wherever you go in a wheelchair, you have to get there somehow.

If you drive or have someone who can drive you, you’re good. If you can’t drive, you can always get an Uber or Lyft, right? Well, not exactly. Because there are so few Wheelchair Access Vehicles, if you’re in a wheelchair getting an Uber or Lyft is mostly an exercise in frustration.

That’s why Irell Warren created WE LIFT Rideshare. It’s a rideshare company specifically for people in wheelchairs. WE LIFT works like other rideshares, with its own app. And it’s available in every one of Louisiana’s 64 parishes.

If you wander along the 2,340 miles of the Mississippi River, from New Orleans to Minneapolis Minnesota, you’re going to see a lot of tug boats pushing barges.

Here’s some interesting facts about those river barges: When it comes to dry goods - like bananas or coal - a single barge carries the same amount of cargo as 70 semi-trailer trucks. And for liquid cargo, like oil, a single barge carries the equivalent of 144 semi-trailers.

As well as this efficiency, the marine transportation industry claims the nation’s waterways provide the safest and most environmentally friendly mode of transportation in the country.

Commercial river traffic is officially known by the slightly oxymoronic term, “inland marine transport,” and here in New Orleans it’s big business. One of the biggest, local, inland marine companies is Blessey Marine Services. They operate 85 tugboats, 175 barges, and employ around 750 people. The President and CEO of Blessey Marine Services is Clark Todd.

Irell's rideshare company is a rare convergence of doing good and good business.  And Clark's company, moving goods on our waterways, although not without its own challenges, is certainly good business. These businesses are at very different stages of development. Clark's company has a reach way beyond its New Orleans roots, and Irell's company is growing in that direction.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For example, try this. Wherever you are right now, pick a random object. Now make an argument for why it’s the most vital element of human society. If you’re in a room, you could pick a chair. If we couldn’t sit down - to rest, or work at a desk – life as we know it would be impossible. So, if you make chairs for a living, you could say you’re absolutely vital to the perpetuation of human society.

If you’re in a car, there’s a bolt that attaches your steering wheel to the steering column.  And there are a series of bolts that attach your wheels to their hubs. Without these bolts, we wouldn’t have a transportation vehicle of any type. So, a person who works on a machine manufacturing bolts can say their occupation is absolutely vital to the perpetuation of human society.

You see how this goes. You can pick pretty much anything. Even with that in mind, Bobby Feigler has a pretty good claim to actually being central to the existence of our economic system. Bobby is Vice President and General Manager of Michelli Weighing And Measurement.

Weights

Almost everything in our world is weighed. Structural elements of buildings have load-bearing weight. Most of the food we eat is sold by weight. Then there’s gold, silver, and your own body mass index. 

Scales that reliably and accurately weigh things are essential for almost every aspect of our lives. Michelli Weighing and Measurement calibrates and regulates scales. The company was founded in Louisiana in 1947. It’s still headquartered here, in Harahan. Today it employs over 150 people, and services 11 states in the South and West of the US.

Waiters

In the game of “What’s most vital to human existence?” we don’t have to do any mental gymnastics to agree on “food.” We all need to eat.

Almost every human civilization has given specific people the role of preparing meals for the rest of us. In our case, we’ve created specialty eating locations, called “restaurants.” However, because our society is built on a foundation of commerce, operating a restaurant is not just a matter of being able to prepare food people like to eat. It also requires the ability to run a business.

To be financially successful, a restaurant needs as many as 20 people in office and corporate positions. Most restaurants simply can’t afford that kind of investment in personnel. And that’s why Elizabeth Tilton created a company called Oyster Sunday.

Oyster Sunday is a specialty corporate team that provides expert business skills for independent restaurants. They’ve been around since 2019 and have clients from Los Angeles to New York, from DC to their home here in New Orleans, and as far afield as Tokyo.

You may have heard this statistic: the world is divided into two kinds of people. Those who believe the world is divided into two kinds of people; and the rest. The point is, it’s not all that helpful to simplify the world by broad-stroke categorization.

But, at least in business, there is one such observation that is worth noting. And that is the distinction between what we see, and what we don’t. 

When we go to a restaurant, we see people making and serving meals. What we don’t see is the equally important team of people in the back office. Elizabeth Tilton has come up with a way to provide restaurants with a corporate team that lets owners and chefs concentrate on what we see, and what they do best. And Bobby Feigler's business provides the most significant contribution imaginable to commerce that most of us never see.

It’s nice to be able to meet and acknowledge people who are normally out of the spotlight. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Apple’s iPhone 14 innovation is the addition of satellite service. Gone are the days of your phone not working while you’re at sea, when you’re hiking in Nepal, or out on your tractor in rural Louisiana. For millions of people worldwide out of the range of cell towers, this is a major development. It’s also a revolutionary life-saver for people who find themselves in danger someplace remote and need emergency medical or rescue services.

You might think Apple would turn to SpaceX to provide this kind of global satellite service. But they didn’t. They turned to a telecommunications and satellite company called Thermo/Globalstar. Thermo/Globalstar is headquartered in Covington, Louisiana. The Executive Director of the Board of Directors of the company is Jay Monroe.

Wherever you go in the world, you’ll never find anyplace quite like New Orleans.  However, because New Orleans is flat, the only way you get a bird’s-eye view of what our expansive city looks like is if you happen to be in someone’s office in one of the downtown high-rise buildings, like Place St Charles or Canal Place.

In that case, you’re probably there to see an attorney, so you’re probably not in a frame of mind to be gazing out the window enjoying the view. Here’s some good news. You can now enjoy a bird’s-eye view of the city of New Orleans without worrying about running up billable hours.

Vue Orleans is an observation deck on the 33rd and 34th floors of the Four Season’s Hotel. On the 34th floor you’re outside. On the roof. Inside, on the 33rd floor, you can interact with a series of high-tech installations that recreate experiences that are unique to New Orleans.

Vue Orleans is part of the transformation of the World Trade Center into the Four Seasons Hotel.  This transformation was designed and built by Woodward Design and Build, one of the largest design and construction companies in the Gulf South. The President and CEO of Woodward Design and Build is Paul Flower.

It seems like ever since humans started walking on earth we’ve looked up and wished we could fly like birds. To experience the freedom of flight. But also to see what they see from up there.

For centuries, in lieu of flying we climbed to the highest point we could get to. And we often built fortifications, and even whole villages there.

While our ancestors were scaling hilltops, they were communicating with each other over the greatest distances they could with all kinds of innovations, from drumming to carrier pigeons.

The point we’ve reached today is extraordinary. Satellite cellphone technology makes it possible for a person in even the most remote location on earth to communicate with anybody anywhere. What’s equally amazing is that this final frontier has been crossed by technology created in Covington Louisiana.

While you’re pondering Covington-powered radio waves bouncing through the heavens, you can go from 5 feet below sea level up 34 floors in an elevator and look down on the city below, at Vue Orleans in the Four Seasons Hotel Building.

It's enlightening to even just scratch the surface of everything you’re Jay Monroe and Paul Flower are up to.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you talk to any of these folks on their way out of town, they’ll typically look at you with the kind of reverence normally reserved for endurance sports champions, and say something like, “Man, I don’t know how you live here.”

We who live here tend to respond with the explanation that the French Quarter is filled tourists. Locals don’t eat, drink and party like that. 

Have you been to Arnaud’s restaurant in the French Quarter? They’ve been there since 1918 and built their reputation on serving a vast menu of French Creole fine dining - including 9 different oyster appetizers, 51 seafood entrees, 40 different vegetable sides, including 16 different types of potatoes.

Arnaud’s is massive. It’s an amalgamation of what was originally 13 different buildings. There’s a jazz bistro, two bars, and the main dining room seats 950 people. Yes, 950.

And here’s the kicker. The place is typically packed. With locals. Don’t tell your tourist friends who you’re trying to impress that you live an upright, healthy lifestyle, but there’s more than a good chance you or someone you know has plans to go to Arnaud’s - for a rehearsal dinner, a wedding, or just because it’s Friday.

Since 1918 Arnaud’s has been owned and run by two families. First the family of the founder and namesake, Arnaud Cazenave, and since 1978 by members of the Casbarian family. The current Casbarians are brother and sister Archie Jr and Katie, and their mom Jane.

French Creole fine dining is all well and good, but you can’t eat like that every day. And especially if you’re an athlete. Not just a professional athlete. Anyone who takes fitness seriously also takes their diet seriously.

If you’re a professional athlete, you have access to dietitians and nutritionists who craft specific meal plans for you - to maximize your strengths, and help bolster any deficiencies you might naturally have. For the rest of us, here’s some good news. You no longer have to figure out your sports diet on Google. You can download an app called Eat 2 Win, the product of a company called My Sports Dietitian.

My Sports Dietitian is set up to give everyone in sports – from high school coaches to individual amateur athletes – the same access to specialized dietary and nutrition advice the pros get.

The co-founder of My Sports Dietitian and the Eat 2 Win app is Ronnie Harper.

We hear a lot these days about work/life balance. The acknowledgement that there’s more to life than work and money. The point being, if you want to be happy, you need to prioritize happiness.

Apparently, the rest of the country just figured out what we’ve known for generations in New Orleans. It’s part of the reason living here is so attractive. And so different from anywhere else in the US. We don’t think there’s anything strange about wearing a costume, or going to work on Monday morning and partying with our boss and colleagues at The Maple Leaf on Monday night.

Similarly, we accept as matter of fact that we can live a healthy life, subscribe to a sports diet from My Sports Dietitian, and occasionally indulge ourselves with dinner and drinks at Arnaud’s without having a melt-down guilt trip about it.

Because, in New Orleans, that’s life. In any other city Archie Casbarian Jr, and Ronnie Harper might be regarded as being at opposite ends of the spectrum. In New Orleans, they’re two sides of a coin. Probably a doubloon.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But there’s a difference between tradition and habit. That difference can be knowledge. 

For example, in the 1950’s if you, your parents, and grandparents all smoked cigarettes, you might have called yourselves “a traditional tobacco family.” Now that we know smoking is the cause of seriously life-limiting medical conditions, you’d be more apt to describe that family as having a bad smoking habit.

Which brings us to Mardi Gras. Wait, what? If you’ve lived in New Orleans for any time and you go to Mardi Gras parades, you’ve probably caught or thrown hundreds, if not thousands, of Mardi Gras beads. Mostly manufactured in China, these plastic beads are allegedly made from unregulated petroleum products and reportedly contain unhealthful levels of lead, arsenic, and other chemicals you don’t want your kids anywhere near.

Are Mardi Gras Beads as bad for you as cigarettes?!

We put that question to Brett Davis. And we're betting you can guess the answer. Brett is Director of an organization called Grounds Krewe. Grounds Krewe’s mission is to make New Orleans events  sustainable by diminishing waste and instituting recycling wherever possible. When it comes to Mardi Gras, Grounds Krewe’s aim is to get us to replace plastic beads - and other toxic throws - with sustainable throws that are local, healthful, and as affordable as the ubiquitous, Chinese, plastic beads.

Now let’s move on to another mainstay of the New Orleans economy in which there’s a blurred line between tradition and habit: the music business.

The traditional way the music business is structured in New Orleans tends to financially benefit purveyors of alcohol more than the creators and performers of music. That’s because we have a very robust live music culture that’s centered mostly in bars. Unlike other music-centric cities - like Nashville and Austin - we don’t have a similarly robust allied music economy.

If you’re a New Orleanian and you want a high-level career as a music business attorney, agent, manager, song writer or recording artist, you’re in the same position locals in other businesses were in till recently. That is, you have to leave New Orleans. Think about that for a moment. You live in a city people come to specifically to hear music. But to be truly successful in the music business you have to leave.

This tradition has been going on for some time. Louis Armstrong left New Orleans to make it. So did Lil Wayne. Winton Marsalis. Jon Batiste. Evan Christopher. Harry Connick Jr. Davell Crawford. Nicholas Payton. No Limit Records left. Cash Money Records left. Daniel Lanois, Lenny Kravitz, Trent Reznor, and Ray Davies from The Kinks all moved their music operations here, then left.

You could argue that Winton Marsalis had to leave here for his prestigious job as Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Jon Batiste had to leave here to be music director on The Tonight Show. But that’s the whole point. We’re the birthplace of jazz but we don’t have a jazz institute. And we don’t have the infrastructure a national TV show needs to originate from here.

At what point do we go from regarding this talent-emigration as a tradition, to calling it a habit - and do something about breaking it?

Best-selling songwriter Jim McCormick knows as much as anybody about finding an answer to this question. Jim is a New Orleans native who left. He went to Nashville for 15 years. Then he came back.

Jim has written a string of hit songs for artists like Jason Aldean, Tim McGraw, Kelly Clarkson, Brantley Gilbert, and many more. He's been nominated for a Grammy 5 times. He’s had 3 songs hit number one on the Billboard country chart. And he’s done much of that while living in Orleans parish.

It’s easy to keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. It feels good to label ourselves as the home of Mardi Gras, because Mardi Gras is amazing - if it doesn’t bring a smile to your face probably nothing will. And we’re justifiably proud of New Orleans being a place where you can hear enormously talented musicians all around town, every night. 

None of this has to stop. But it can change. What’s already good can be better. And what are now just hopes, dreams and visions can become reality.

We can have a healthy Mardi Gras that’s safe for everybody. And we can have a robust music business that makes money for musicians and everybody else in the chain of music marketing.

But none of that is going to magically just happen. For things to change it takes people like Brett and Jim, giving us the benefit of their knowledge, experience, and passion for the city of New Orleans.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworeans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Having a unique product and finding people who need it is the pathway to success. Supply and demand. Simple enough, right? Well, it might have been, when that meant opening a store on main street. Or buying an ad in the Yellow Pages. (If you’re under 40 you’re going to have to Google “yellow pages” - and even then it probably won’t make sense.)

My lunch guests today are both in fields that have been upended by technology: photography, and book sales.

Amazon rewrote the rules on how people buy books. And the smart-phone and Instagram have turned everybody into a photographer. Within these crowded spaces, both of my guests, Olivia Grey Pritchard and Candice Huber, have successfully carved out their own markets.

Candice is the owner of Tubby & Coo’s MidCity Bookshop. It’s been around since 2014. If you’re saying, “What? I live in New Orleans and I’ve never heard of it,” it might just mean you don’t read the kind of books they sell.

Tubby & Coo’s describe themselves as a “Local, queer-owned, progressive, nerdy, independent bookshop focused on science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, queer, and diverse books”.

We’ve talked here before about how the career of professional photographer has been battered by the extraordinary number of amateur photographers in the world – everybody who owns a cell phone – and the ease with which photographers’ work is stolen off the internet.

Olivia Grey Pritchard has figured out a way to succeed as a photographer in this tough environment. Part of Olivia’s success is centered on educating other photographers on how to run a successful photography business. She teaches online classes and conducts mentoring sessions for professional photographers.

And in her own photography work, Olivia delivers more than just digital files of photos. If you hire Olivia to be your photographer, you end up with a piece of framed wall art, an archival-quality photo album, or a unique family movie.

As a consumer, it’s frustrating to look for something you want, and not be able to find it. Since the Covid pandemic gave rise to an inexplicable labor shortage, and choked supply chains, almost everybody has had a taste of this kind of frustration.

But for some people, this frustration has been going on for a lot longer.

If you’re a person who has a particular taste in books and you can never find quite what you’re looking for, Tubby & Coo’s MidCity Bookshop is a refreshing oasis.

And, in a world where we’re bombarded by images that only last a fraction of a second before we swipe or scroll them away forever, being able to have a photo of your family, yourself, or even your dog, that’s good enough to frame and hang on your wall is equally refreshing.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Of course, not all humans are created equal. There is a small group of men and women for whom the human brain is not a complete mystery. These folks devote their professional lives to understanding and unravelling its secrets.

One of these neuroscientists lives and works in New Orleans. Dr. Nicolas Bazan is the founding director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU’s Health Sciences Center. He leads a team of 90 researchers in areas ranging from Parkinson’s Disease to Traumatic Brain Injury.

Dr Bazan’s team publishes multiple research findings each year. And Dr Bazan himself is the holder of around 120 patents in the area of neuroscience and the treatment of neurological disorders.

Notable even among all his other achievements in the field, Dr Bazan is the discoverer of a new class of biochemicals found in the brain, known as ELV’s. In 2018, a year after he made this discovery, Dr. Bazan founded a local company, NeuResto Therapeutics, to research and develop the use of ELV’s in the treatment of Traumatic Brain Injury and stroke.

If you’ve ever been in the hospital, or have visited anyone who’s a hospital patient, you’ll be familiar with an IV. Typically, one of the first things that happens to you as a hospital patient - or even in an ambulance on the way to the hospital – is you get an IV line inserted into your arm or hand. The reason for that is, intra-venous – which is what IV stands for – it means basically straight-into-the-vein - is the most efficient method of delivering fluids or drugs to someone who needs them.

But delivering drugs to a patient through an IV is not an exact science. It relies on a human operator getting it right. In light of that, here are some sobering statistics.

Medical errors are reportedly the 3rd leading cause of death in the US, after heart disease and cancer. 73% of medication errors involve what’s called “push doses.” A “push” is the rate that a person administers a drug through an IV. 95% of IV push errors are the result of the drug being administered too quickly.

That’s why Tonia Aiken has invented a device she calls SafePush - which is also the name of her company.

SafePush, the device, is a small, disposable piece of equipment that fits on the tip of a syringe or an IV and precisely regulates the flow of a drug in a way that doesn’t let the person administering the dose push it any faster than the set rate.

SafePush, the company, was launched in 2019 and is looking at potential market of 137 million devices per year. The cost of the device is $20 - about the same as a large pizza. 137 million-times-twenty is a lot of pizza.

At some point we’re going to have recalibrate how we think about and describe New Orleans. As well as describing ourselves as the home of Mardi Gras and the Hurricane, we could equally legitimately call ourselves something like, “world leader in medicine and medical technology.”

Nicolas Bazan and Tonia Aiken enjoy Mardi Gras and cocktails as much as the rest of us (Tonia was Queen of Krewe du Vieux!), but they're giving us a whole other reason to be proud of living here.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Although we’re deeply divided about how best to solve the issues of adolescent gun violence and drug abuse, the cure for saving kids from drowning is obvious: Kids need to learn to swim.

In some countries, like Australia and New Zealand, learning to swim is a mandatory part of the elementary school curriculum. Not so in the United States. Here, an average of 11 kids a day die from downing.

Kaci McGuire is doing everything she can to correct this situation. Kaci is the founder of Safe Swim, a swim school she launched in New Orleans in 2020 whose 6 instructors give swim lessons to people of all ages and abilities, starting with kids as young as 4 months.

When a child is sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, days or weeks confined to bed can feel like they drag on forever. Unlike adults, kids don’t have the life-skills to deal with the stress, anxiety and depression that can accompany a hospital stay. Not only does this make a kid’s daily life in the hospital miserable, it can also impede their medical progress. Multiple studies have found that a healthy mental and emotional attitude aids with recovery from illness.

So, given that children typically can’t call on coping mechanisms like yoga and meditation to improve their mental and emotional state, what can they do? Becca Chapman has the answer. Becca is co-founder & Executive Director of Prescription Joy.

Prescription Joy are healthcare clowns. Yes, actual clowns. With goofy outfits, and props like rubber chickens and toilet-plungers.

Prescription Joy is a member of the North American Federation of Healthcare Clowning, whose members include The Laughter League at Boston Children’s Hospital and The Clown Care Team at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Healthcare clowning is, indeed, a serious business.

Of all the behavioral aspects of our American society that have changed over the past few generations, little has changed more markedly than our perception of childhood. We used to believe that childhood was just an inconvenient period we were forced to endure until small humans got big enough to function independently and join the workforce. Today, we realize that perception is ill-informed.

We now recognize the value of child development, and the relationship between our childhood experiences and our happiness as adults. As we further break down childhood into its component parts, we appreciate how a single childhood experience can reverberate through our lives and make a world of difference. Something as seemingly innocuous as a joyous hour with a healthcare clown, or as simple as a swim lesson, can change or even save a life.

Kaci and Becca are quietly contributing to the betterment of the lives of New Orleans’ childhood inhabitants, and the rest of us too.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You’re sitting at your desk, or kitchen table, and your colleagues are scattered around the country, or the world. But the conversation, the screen, and the whiteboard you’re sharing is meant to create the sense that you’re all in the same room. 

When you actually are in the same room as another person, unless that person is a ventriloquist, when their lips move, words come out of their mouth at the exact same moment. When you’re on a video call, the sound of someone’s voice frequently reaches you either before or after you see their lips moving. We generally call this, “out of sync.” The technical term for it is, “latency.” Latency can be aggravating. But you put up with it, because in conversation, it’s not that big of a deal. 

But imagine instead of talking to other people, you’re playing music with them. You’re in your home studio playing a keyboard part. Another person is in their home studio playing a drum part. A third person somewhere else is playing a guitar part. And a fourth person in a 4th location has a vocal track. In this case, latency is not merely an aggravation, it’s a monumental issue. Everybody being out of sync with each other makes it impossible to create music together.

That’s why musicians never collaborate online in real time. The best they can do is record their individual tracks and send them back and forward to each other, each person contributing their part one at a time. It takes days or weeks to complete a single song.

If there was a way for musicians to meet online and play together, whoever invented the software that could make that happen would be a superstar in the world of music creation. Well, today that software has a name. It’s called DAWn Audio. And the four superstars who created it are right here in New Orleans - including co-founder and CEO of DAWn Audio, Diego Pinzon.

Most of us in New Orleans enjoy live music collaboration – but as consumers rather than creators. At live music events there is a very obvious dividing line between creators and consumers. More typically know as “the band” and “the audience.” The band is on stage, and the audience is on the floor, facing them.

Other than yelling “Who let the dogs out?” at a Saints game, or singing Christmas carols in Jackson Square, it’s hard to think of any place in New Orleans where the dividing line between music creation and music consumption is blurred. Have you been to The Music Box Village? It’s in the Bywater.

The Music Box Village is a collection of rustic-looking buildings described as “musical architecture.” When you interact with the buildings – either by walking through them, pulling levers, or taking some other action – the buildings make musical sounds. So, a bunch of people strolling through the village create music.

The Music Box Village is also a music venue where artists perform. Many of them incorporate the musical buildings into their live performance, reinventing songs in ways that are unique and can be magical and transporting.

The Music Box Village is the creation of an organization called New Orleans Airlift, whose wider mission is to promote music collaboration between local New Orleans’ musicians and other musicians worldwide.

The Co-Founder and Creative Director of New Orleans Airlift, and Music Box Village, is Delaney Martin.

Recent research has demonstrated that birds, dolphins, whales, and even cicadas aren’t just making sounds to attract mates or warn each other of danger – they also sing collections of notes that can only be described as pieces of music.

There’s obviously something primal in our desire to make music. If you’re a dolphin or a cicada, you have your own particular challenges. But you’re free to make music without having to concern yourself with any consideration of copyright, the internet, or online collaboration software.

Music-creating and music-appreciating humans have Music Box Village, New Orleans Airlift and DAWn Audio to help both create and appreciate music. Although we're not deputized to speak on behalf of all music-creating-and-appreciating humans, all of us locally wish these companies every success in the future.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are also families of business people here in New Orleans. Families that are every bit as dynastic as these other names. Like, for example, the Neill family.

Hair

In 1946, Harriet and Abner Neill started up the Magnolia Beauty Supply company. They manufactured and sold hair care products to hundreds of salons. They stayed in business for a couple of generations, over the years becoming bigger and more successful.

Then, in 1991 they expanded into retail, and opened their first hair salon, in Hammond. That one salon, which they called Paris Parker, is now 8 salons that are called Paris Parker Salon & Spa. Employing over 200 people, they’re a division of the Neill Corporation and are co—owned by Executive Director, Garrison Neill.

Getting Ahead

Growing up in a family where people are talking about business around the dinner table can be a distinct advantage for anyone going into business. But you can only absorb so much over a meal. And even if you go to business school, when it comes to actually running a business and making decisions that affect hundreds or thousands of other people, that’s a whole other set of skills.

Those skills – including communication, management, and leadership – are an absolute must to master. And what’s interesting about them is, you can’t learn them once and know everything. As times change, so do the ways you run a company.

Michelle Johnston keeps corporate executives abreast of those changes. Michelle is an executive coach for the leaders of companies as diverse as Ochsner, Pfizer, The City of New Orleans, JP Morgan Chase, and many more. She’s also a professor of business at Loyola University in New Orleans, and the author of a book about keeping current in business, called “The Seismic Shift In Leadership: how to thrive in a new era of connection.”

There’s no doubt that age makes you wiser. As time passes, you learn from your mistakes. If you’re really wise, you reach the conclusion that you’ll never stop learning. But what comes along with that wisdom is the corresponding realization that you’ll also never stop making mistakes.

The best you can do is to minimize your inevitable errors of judgement. And one of the ways you can do that in business - the same as in the rest of your life – is by learning to listen.

Michelle's impressive list of clients, students, and readers of her writing are all smart enough to listen to her. And Garrison has learned from the generations of family members ahead of him and is continuing to shape the family business in response to the changing needs of both clients and employees.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everybody likes free money. For the most part, that’s why we invest in the stock market. Of course, the act of investing in the market and making money, is the same act as investing in the market and losing money. The trick is to know which stocks to buy. And when to buy them.

Like gamblers at the horse track, investors have all kinds of foolproof strategies. There are studies that claim, if you write a list of company names on a henhouse floor and invest in whichever names a chicken poops on, you’ll come out ahead of most of these strategies.

The generally-accepted, best stock-trading strategy of all, is to hire a seasoned, smart, Wall Street investment advisor with a proven track record. But most of us can’t afford that. And that’s why there’s The Motley Fool.  

The Motley Fool is a financial and investment advice company that democratizes investing in the stock market by making insightful, dependable advice readily available to almost everyone. They have a website, produce podcasts, publish books and newspaper columns, and they have a radio show.

New Orleanian John Rotonti is a Senior Analyst and the Head of Investor Training and Development at The Motley Fool.

Even the greatest investors go through tough times. On the days you look at your portfolio and it’s not doing as well as you’d like, you can still capture that dopamine-high feeling you get on a good day, by stepping through the door of a business in the Lower Garden District, on Magazine Street.

The business is Piety and Desire Chocolate. The public-facing part of it is called Café au Chocolat, and the aroma alone in this place will transport you to a place many emotional miles away from financial stress.

Piety and Desire is a New Orleans bean-to-bar chocolate maker, which means they make their own chocolate from scratch, from cacao beans they get directly from growers, mostly in South and Central America.

The founder and chocolatier at Piety and Desire Chocolate is Christopher Nobles. Christopher started the company in 2016. Today he works with a team of employees and they turn out around 2,000 handmade chocolate bonbons a week.

It’s a pretty normal part of human nature to think that everybody else has a better job than you. But then, you rationalize it. You tell yourself, “Sure, so-and-so’s job might look better than mine, but I’m sure she has her own problems.”

Well, when you’re through rationalizing yourself into feeling fine about your own life, you’re in a secure-enough place to admit - there are actually people who have pretty awesome jobs. For example, being able to live in New Orleans and work for a major company with national reach, and spend your day picking stocks, like John Rotonti.

And then you look across the table at Christopher Nobles. Not only does Christopher get to create works of art for a living, but they’re made of delicious chocolate.

Both these guys work hard, and they have to deal with stress of performing at a consistently high level and delivering every day, but what they’re each doing is exactly what they want to be doing, and it’s hard to beat that.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

That’s the perspective that has led a recent generation of practitioners in the healthcare industry to focus on what they call “wellness.” At its most basic, wellness is an awareness of the power of prevention. It’s an attempt to shift healthcare from doctor-and-drug-driven repair, to self-motivated care.

“Self-motivated” doesn’t mean going it alone. It means seeking out care from professionals who are not necessarily MD’s but who provide you with methods and techniques to stay healthy. That might include Yoga, meditation, massage, nutrition advice, mental health therapy, and what’s called Integrative Medicine, which incorporates both Western and Eastern medical philosophies.

If you were going to seek out these professionals yourself, first you’d have to know a lot about wellness to even know who you’re looking for. Then you’d have to drive all over town, or possibly all over the state, or even the country, to find skilled people working in these fields. Which is why a local wellness center has brought these practitioners together and put them in offices under one roof, on Prytania Street in the Lower Garden District - in the space that used to be the Norwegian Seamen’s Church. 

This integrative medicine clinic is called Spyre and its co-founder is Diana Fisher.

Even if you take amazingly great care of yourself, you’re not going to be able to prevent yourself from ever getting sick. Unfortunately, even people in the greatest  physical and mental shape can find themselves with a cancer diagnosis. But if that happens, you don’t have to rely solely on drug-driven medicine to cope with, and help cure yourself, of cancer.

In the Ochsner Health System there’s a specialist cancer division situated in a building on Jefferson Highway, called The Gayle & Tom Benson Cancer Center. Within that specialized cancer center patients have an opportunity to complement their traditional healthcare with Therapeutic Yoga and Meditation.

Therapeutic Yoga is not the same as the yoga you do to stay in shape. And in this case, meditation is focused on training yourself to concentrate your mental strength to help cancer cure and recovery.

The founder and Coordinator of Therapeutic Yoga and Meditation at the Gayle & Tom Benson Cancer Center is Tamarin Hennebury.

Despite our best intentions - like new years resolutions to go to the gym, convincing ourselves that buying new running shoes will make us start running, or swearing we’re going to cut out carbs - it’s hard to make and maintain big lifestyle changes.

What would be more effective is implementing smaller, simpler changes. So that, instead of thinking of efforts to stay healthy as bursts of unpleasant hardship shoe-horned into a foundationally unhealthy lifestyle, wellness becomes a series of commonplace pleasures that integrate into our everyday lives.

You might think that’s easier said than done, but now that we have an integrative health facility like Spyre, it’s easier to actually achieve than it ever has been in New Orleans. 

And although there’s very little more daunting in the world than getting a cancer diagnosis, having access to therapeutic yoga and meditation within the course of Western medicine makes the treatment more bearable and ultimately the cure more possible.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mandeville, Covington, Madisonville, Hammond – they’re just names of places that get hammered when the weather forecast gets it wrong and storms go north of New Orleans.

Ponchatoula sounds interesting. You’ve thought about checking out the strawberry festival. But when it comes right down to it, why not just get a strawberry daiquiri at the drive-thru and go to one of the many festivals on this side of the lake?

That’s a pretty prevalent view from the south shore. When you live on the north shore, the perspective is, understandably, different. 

Without generalizing any more than I have been already, the North Shore sees itself as a superior part of New Orleans that’s a mere 40-minute drive away from downtown. The towns on the north shore, they say, have all the benefits of New Orleans, without crime, potholes, poor education, exorbitant rents and inflated real estate prices.

Even die-hard New Orleanians have to agree that those downsides are real. But they might be skeptical of the North Shore’s claims to share the attributes New Orleans is best known for. 

South Shore skeptics, this show’s for you. We haven’t got time to go into every facet of North Shore/South Shore comparisons, so we’re just going to look at one: hospitality.

If you live on the south shore, you’re familiar with celebrity chefs and restaurateurs like Alon Shaya, Donald Link, and Emeril Lagasse. If you live on the north shore you’re also familiar with Pat Gallagher. Pat is the founder and lynchpin of The Gallagher Restaurant Group, a collection of four restaurants in Covington, Mandeville and Slidell. Pat’s restaurants employ over 200 people, from the classic upscale Gallagher’s Grill in Covington to the casual seafood restaurant, Pat’s Rest Awhile, on the lakefront in Mandeville

If you live on the south shore, you’re familiar with elegant, traditional hotels like the Monteleone, the Roosevelt, and Le Pavilion. If you live on the North Shore, you’re also familiar with the Southern Hotel, in Covington.

The Southern Hotel existed from 1907 till 1960. After the hotel closed in 1960, the building suffered all kinds of indignities, including a stint as a drugstore, and a City of Covington government building. From 1983 on, it was totally abandoned.

It wasn’t till 2011 that lawyer and preservationist, Lisa Condrey Ward came along and convinced her husband, her brother, and her sister-in-law to go into business with her and buy the building. Some three years, and $8m in renovations later, the Southern Hotel re-opened in 2014.

Today the hotel has 40 guest rooms, event spaces, a set of private guest suites in the garden, and a restaurant.

North vs South

It’s human nature to compare yourself to others. It might not be conducive to good mental health, but we can’t help judging ourselves. Apparently, as humans, we like to know where we stand on various axes - like rich/poor, young/old, and smart/stupid.

If we really were smart, we wouldn’t do this at all. Because it’s pointless. Knowing that you’re richer, older, or taller than someone else doesn’t make you a better person. Similarly, believing that the city you live in is better than the city someone else lives in doesn’t actually make your city better.

New Orleanians on the South Shore prefer living here for their own reasons. And the exact same logic applies to folks on the North Shore. For diehard South Shore loyalists, maybe today’s glimpse into Pat Gallagher's restaurants and Lisa's hotel will open some minds to the merits of the North Shore.

And to our friends on the North Shore, Pat and Lisa drove all the way to the Irish Channel without getting carjacked or shaken down by someone claiming to know where they got their shoes.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For example, in the 1950’s, Americans regarded the automobile as the absolute apex of human engineering, even though some thousands of years before, humans had managed to build the pyramids.

Since the invention of fiction, we’ve credited contemporary creators with devising the most fantastical worlds ever imagined - from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan, to Walt Disney’s Disneyland. But it’s hard to imagine an era more extreme than the one we’re living in today.

Even with the caveat of misplaced narcissism, there has never been a greater disparity between the real world and the non-real world. Between, say, the world of manufacturing, and the promised land of the metaverse.

The metaverse is a more-or-less parallel rendering of the real world, in a 3D digital dimension. Although we’ve been promised versions of this vision for years - with names like “holograms” and “VR” - the latest portal into this alternative universe is called “Web3.”

Web3 is built on the blockchain, which is, at its heart, a metaverse where we can relate to each without going through a middle-man. In other words, in this utopian digital future we won’t need Facebook, Netflix, or anybody who builds an online platform for us, because, somehow, we’re all going to be able to build these bridges between ourselves.

So, the question is - is Web3 another empty promise about mass market adoption of life-changing Virtual Reality - which is always just about to happen but never seems to - or, is a blockchain, crypto-currency, free-to-be, Web3 world really here?

Arguably New Orleans most successful entrepreneur ever is betting on option number 2. 

In 2010, Patrick Comer created a real-world company called Lucid (now Cint), which dealt in collecting data. In 2021 Patrick sold Lucid for $1.1 billion. Patrick’s latest venture is called Gripnr. Gripnr couldn’t be more untethered to the real world if it was an acid trip.

Gripnr is a Web3, blockchain-based platform that allows online game players to play a game like Dunegeons and Dragons and incorporate crypto-currency and NFTs into their online gaming world.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Stephen Bateman has a forge in the back yard of his house in Jefferson Parish.

Stephen is the owner and sole employee of his company, Down The River Forge. He spends his days making knives.

Stephen started the business in 2020. Today he’s making high-end, hand-crafted hunting knives, kitchen knives, meat cleavers, oyster shuckers, and cane knives, for clients across the country and around the world, as far away as New Zealand, Norway, and the UK.

If you want a handmade knife from Down The River Forge, your current wait time is 18-20 weeks. And, thanks to Stephen’s appearances on TV, and the organic success of Down The River Forge’s Instagram account, Stephen’s client list is growing every week.

If you’ve ever been in a brainstorming session, you’ve probably heard an encouraging moderator try and elicit input by saying, “There’s no such thing as a bad idea.” On the other hand, anybody who has sat through a pitch session in which entrepreneurs pitch concepts for startup businesses, will tell you there is no shortage of bad ideas.

Or so they think.

In reality, there are countless stories of very successful businesses whose founders had people tell them, “It’ll never work.”

Patrick's startup, Gripnr, is a business that is so cutting-edge it’s almost literally in a world of its own. And who would have known that there is such an enormous demand for custom knives until Stephen had the courage to commit to Down the Rive Forge.

Peter has ended quite a few of these Out to Lunch shows over the years by saying “I look forward to following you and keeping up with your continued success,” but doubtful that he's ever meant it more than he does after hearing these two very different entrepreneurial tales.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. And you can check out Patrick's last appearance on Out to Lunch talking about how he sold Lucid.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, the coffee shop is cemented permanently into our mix of alternative office spaces. Wherever you go in the United States, you see a particular breed of coffee-shop-warrior. They have ear buds in so they can’t communicate with anybody. And their gaze is so intently fixed on a screen that they’re barely aware of other humans around them.

With this almost-total-isolation, you might wonder why these folks want to be in a place like a coffee shop where there are so many distractions. Well, apparently there’s something about the buzz of coffee shops – and coffee - that is conducive to task completion.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this coffee culture started in Seattle, when Starbucks was founded, in 1971. But it actually started long before that. In the 15th Century. The home of coffee wasn’t a town called Frappuccino, but it was a city called Mocha. Mocha is the name of the port city where coffee was first exported from its home in Yemen.

Today, if you want authentic Yemeni coffee, you can find it here in New Orleans, at the Hey Coffee Company on the Lafitte Greenway. Hey Coffee imports and roasts a number of unique small batch coffees. The co-founder of Hey Coffee - and its coffee shop, Hey Café - is Greg Rodrigue.

While the coffee shop is an alternative to working at home, other than an endless supply of coffee and pastries it doesn’t have any significant advantage over your kitchen table.

Sometimes, whether you’re at home or on the road, you need more than just a flat surface for your laptop. Sometimes you need an office. And, if you’re on the other side of the desk, now that your employees are working out of the office a few days a week, you find yourself with a bunch of office space you’re paying for and not using.

A new company called Workaru is solving all of these problems at once.

The easiest way to think of Workaru is the Air B’n’B of office space. If you have an office with empty desks, or an empty conference room, you can rent out your office space for a day or two, or an hour or two.

And if you need an office space to work in, or a conference room to hold a meeting, you can find that on the Workaru app – either in advance or on the day you need it.

The founder of Workaru is Clerc Bertrand.

One of the most popular TV shows of the early 2000’s was a comedy called The Office. What made it funny was, a disparate group of people doing boring jobs for a lame company were forced into the same space for hours a day.

Today, the concept of being forced into a hell-scape office to work alongside people you don’t want to deal with is seriously dated. For starters, most people aren’t stuck in a job they don’t like. These days if you don’t like your job, you quit and go get another one. Or join the gig economy.

And if you do enjoy your job, you’re not forced into an office every day. You can work from home, from a coffee shop Like Hey Café, or you can grab an office when you need it on the Workaru app.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you don’t know, or don’t remember, where that comes from, it was a 1970’s Hershey’s marketing campaign. The concept was to sell two candy bars with one ad. One candy bar was Almond Joy – made with almonds – which you ate when you felt like a nut - and the other was Mounds, which was made with coconut – which you ate when you didn’t.

Despite its name, coconut isn’t technically a nut. Nevertheless, people who are allergic to tree nuts - like almonds, cashews, and walnuts - are typically also allergic to coconut.

Back in the 1970’s that didn’t bother anybody. The reason you ate one candy bar over another was just a taste preference. Today, things have changed. Now there’s an entire market of products for people who are allergic to nuts, including foods that are staples of  the American diet, like peanut butter.

For those of you in that category – and those of you looking for healthier snack food - there’s a new nut in town. It’s called Sacha Inchi.

Sacha Inchi is a super-seed that is barely known in the US, but in South America it’s known as “The Inca Peanut,” having been cultivated in Peru for centuries.

The stateside pioneer of snack foods made from Sancha Inchi is a company called Brass Roots. Brass Roots makes three types of Sacha Inchi nut butters – unsweetened, chocolate, and classic. They make three versions of roasted Sacha Inchi seeds. And three varieties of Sacha Inchi puffs - which are kind of like healthy Cheetos.

If you’re familiar with our traditional New Orleans eating habits, here’s a sentence you probably weren’t expecting to hear: Brass Roots is from right here in New Orleans. The founder and self-described Chief Eats Officer at Brass Roots is Aaron Gailmor.

When we think about the natural world, we typically think of the outdoors. Although most of us spend the bulk of our lives indoors - either at work or home - we do make an effort to bring the natural world inside. We might have a potted plant in our office - though typically it dies the first time we’re out for a few days.

At home, whether or not we can keep indoor plants alive depends entirely on whether there’s one person in a household who has a clue about horticulture.

When it comes to the outside of our home or office, we can turn to professional landscapers who choose plants that are right for our specific location, and who come out and maintain them. Now, in New Orleans, we can do the same inside, thanks to an indoor landscaping company called FAIT NOLA. 

Over the past few years you may have seen the FAIT NOLA truck around town – it looks like a food truck for plants. Now there’s a brick-and-mortar location on Magazine Street. The co-founder and self-described Plantpreneur at FAIT NOLA is Laura Stirling Joffrion.

Back in the day, the 70's ad campaign for Almond Joy and Mounds had the same level of success we would describe today as "going viral." In the 1980's there was another memorable ad campaign with an equally tag-line. This one was for  a re-tooled American car. The tag line was, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.”

Unfortunately, it turned out that your father’s Oldsmobile was actually better. And pretty soon Oldsmobile disappeared off the market. But the reason I bring this is up is because the businesses we’re talking about today – pioneering a brand-new healthy snack food and a new way of bringing nature into our indoor lives – are far from the old, stereotypical perceptions of what succeeds in New Orleans.

It’s been true for some time that we’re no longer living in your father’s Crescent City, and it says a lot about New Orleans today that we’re not surprised to learn  that original and exciting businesses like Brass Roots and FAIT Nola come from here. 

But we still have small town pride! All of us in the business community and the wider community beyond are happy for the success of these two pioneering businesses and we're looking forward to following their continued success.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizzain the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. And you can check out Aaron Gailmor's earlier pre-Sacha Inchi appearance on Out to Lunch.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The accumulation of wealth is so ingrained into our American way of life that wealth is synonymous with success. And for good reason. In our society, the more money you have the better access you have to pretty much everything – from healthcare to art.

For some people, there are pathways to making huge amounts of money. But for most of us, there’s not. For most of us, it doesn’t matter how great we are at our job, there’s a definite ceiling to the amount of money we can ever make.

And that’s why, given an opportunity, we’re attracted to the chance of making tons of money. And I use the word “chance” intentionally. Because I’m talking about gambling.

In 2018, the Supreme Court decided a case that allowed states to legalize sports betting.

In 2020, betting on live sports games was legalized in most Louisiana parishes.

In 2021, in-person sports betting was allowed here - meaning you could bet on sports games in a casino.

And in 2022, the State allowed mobile sports betting.

So, how do we like our sports betting here in Louisiana? Apparently, a lot. According to recent statistics, we’re the 8th biggest sports betters in the nation. And if you rank it on a per capita basis, we’re third biggest.

Who’s benefitting from this all this sports betting? Well, you are - if you win. The State is – they’re gaining millions in tax revenue. And the casinos are probably doing okay too.

To find out just how well Harrah’s Casino in New Orleans is doing, we can turn to Dan Real. Dan is the Regional President, Southwest, of Caesar's Entertainment, who own Harrah’s New Orleans.

Legal real-time betting on the sports industry is fairly recent. But we’ve been placing real-time bets on just about every other industry in the US since 1790. That’s when the Philadelphia Stock Exchange was founded. That was followed two years later, in 1792, by the founding of the New York Stock Exchange.

For a very long time, stocks were traded by a select group of Americans who could afford a broker to navigate the complex process of buying and selling on these exchanges.

Then, along came the internet. Online trading democratized the investment process. Apps like E*TRADE let anyone with a few discretionary dollars and a cell phone put money in the stock market. Consequently, the current generation of investors is way more representative of the general population. One positive effect of this generational shift has been a move toward what is known as ESG investing.

ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. ESG investors invest in companies that are environmentally and socially responsible, and that encourage diversity in their own makeup.

Locally, Suzanne Mestayer, Managing Principal at majority-woman-owned Thirty North Investments, is very familiar with ESG investing. She describes it as, “bringing together money and meaning.”

From the outside, a lot of things look easy. Until you come to do them yourself. Then, when you actually have to write a resume, ride a surfboard, host a podcast, or any one of a thousand things that look easy, you find there’s more to it than you thought.

Investing in the stock market is the opposite. From the outside it looks complex, even inexplicable. But once you become an investor, you realize it’s actually pretty straightforward. Of course, the action of putting money in the market and making a profit, is the same action as putting money in the market and making a loss.

Thanks to the demands for transparency that have come with the advent of ESG investing, there are now other forces than a company’s profit and loss statements that move markets. And, although there are various schools of thought on the wisdom of gambling, it’s not a totally dissimilar process to investing. You do as much research as you can, weigh the odds, decide how much you can afford to lose if things go the wrong way, and put your money down.

This is a unique conversation about investing and gambling, from two very different perspectives that come together over pizza. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. 

And you can check out more lunchtime conversation about ESG and how you can get involved in it through being selective about who you buy from online.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You’re no doubt all too familiar with the hurricane season ritual ahead of a storm heading in our direction. It starts about 5 Days out, with casually checking the weather forecast, and builds to obsessively watching storm predictions on TV, checking incessantly online, and asking family, friends, and neighbors, “Are you staying or evacuating?”

So, here’s a crazy question. What if you didn’t have to do any of that? What if there was a website or an app that you could open, punch in your address, and get an individualized, accurate, wind and flood forecast? Not for the city, but for your own specific street address.

If that sounds ridiculous and impossible, well, it’s neither. It’s actually real. It’s a tool that’s at your fingertips right now, called QRisq. It’s the result of years of development by a company headquartered at the Stennis Space Center, called QRisq Analytics.

Initially QRisq’s customers have been municipalities but starting with the 2022 hurricane season, Q Risq is available to the general public.

Elizabeth Valenti is the Lead Engineer who created, designed and, along with a staff of 7, built this piece of technology.

There’s a good side and a bad side to everything. Even high winds.

Almost everybody in the energy production business believes that wind power is going to provide a significant amount of our future electricity supply. Here in Louisiana, we don’t exactly have winds whistling across wide open plains. But we do have wind out at sea, in the Gulf. Harnessing that off-shore wind to generate electricity is now a priority, for both our State and Federal governments.

As plans progress to build wind farms out in the Gulf, one of the essential items is the giant windmill blades that spin around to produce the energy. Each wind turbine blade is 400 feet long. And made of aerodynamically sculpted steel.

Wind turbine blades are reportedly the largest serially produced item manufactured on earth. And the exact spot on the planet that some of the most advanced blades are being designed is at the Avondale Shipyards, just out of New Orleans, by a company called Gulf Wind Technology. Its CEO is James Martin.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.” It’s meant to suggest that even something that is bad for most people has got to be good for somebody. There are very few instances where you can employ that expression literally. So, to that extent we may have made history with this podcast! 

Elizabeth Valenti's QRisq technology might be the closest we’ve come to getting an advantage over hurricanes, or at least predicting our chances of survival. And increasing our chances of getting an insurance settlement on the other side.

And whereas “trying to catch the wind” was once a poetic way of describing a hopeless cause, today, catching the wind is becoming a potentially planet-saving industry. And James Martin's turbine blade technology is at the cutting edge of the revolution.   

Elizabeth and James are both doing ground-breaking work that would be significant whatever city they were in, anywhere in the world. It’s amazing that they're both here in New Orleans.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. And  you can also check out more lunchtime conversation about New Orleans surprising role in advancing wind-power technology

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For example, if you order a pizza that has 8 slices, and you throw 40% of the pizza in the trash, you’ll only have 4.8 slices to eat.

Why would you do that? You wouldn’t throw out 40% of a perfectly good pizza. That you paid for. Right? That would be a ridiculous waste of food and money.

Well, believe it or not, you are in effect doing just that. And so is everybody else in the country.

According to the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, between 30 and 40% of the food supply in the US is wasted. This is not some sort of deep-probe Out to Lunch investigative reporting - you can find this information on the FDA’s website.

And think about this fact for a moment. In the US, food waste is the single largest item thrown into landfills. Not paper. Not plastic. Food. And just to be clear, by “food waste” we’re not talking about things like potato peelings or compost. We’re talking about discarded food.

If there was a way to intercept this food waste, it could be diverted to the 42 million Americans who live in households reported as “food insecure.” That is precisely what an organization called Food Rescue US is trying to do.

The New Orleans chapter of Food Rescue is headed up by its Site Director, Kelly Haggerty.

When you own a restaurant, food waste is unavoidable. No matter how skilled you are at restaurant administration, it’s very difficult to predict exactly how many people are going to show up on a given day. But, because restaurants run on slim margins, being able to predict food requirements is essential if you’re going to keep the lights on.

If, for example, your restaurant is in line with the FDA statistic of wasting 40% of the food you purchase every day, you’ll pretty soon find yourself out of business.

New Orleanian Robert LeBlanc has managed to navigate the unpredictability of running restaurants, music clubs, and bars in New Orleans since 2005. Currently the hospitality businesses Robert’s company, LeBlanc + Smith, own and operate, include the restaurant Sylvain in the French Quarter, the bar Barrel Proof in the Lower Garden District, and the Chloe Hotel in Uptown.

You can’t live in New Orleans and not have an appreciation of food. It’s not till you leave here and go other places that you realize the high culinary standards we’re surrounded by here. Even tiny poboy and snoball stands deliver tastes you don’t get anywhere else.

And it’s not till you leave here and go other places that you realize how New Orleanians have a respect for each other that stands apart from the casual indifference people exhibit toward strangers in other cities.

Because of that, New Orleanians will continue to rally around the cause of Kelly's Food Rescue as they become aware of it. And Robert's bars and restaurants are certainly taking their places in the long tradition of exemplary hospitality we’re famous for here in New Orleans.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

And you can also catch up with more lunchtime conversation about New Orleans food, specifically booze and veggies.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A successful exit is when your business is doing so well that someone buys it off you. In 2021 the founders of Turbosquid, Levelset and Lucid sold their New Orleans companies for $75m, $500m, and $1.1b dollars, respectively.

As impressive as that is, it’s not the full story about all the successful exits that are happening in the New Orleans tech sector. On this edition of Out to Lunch we take a look at two other companies who have made successful exits, from the buyer’s side, as well as the seller’s.

Let’s kick off by catching up with Darryl Glade. Darryl was on Out to Lunch back in 2019. If you want to check out that conversation, search in your podcast app for Out to Lunch - the episode was called "The Camera Doesn’t Lie."

Darryl’s company, IMOTO Photo, specialized in taking photos for real estate listings. The quality of photos in real estate listings can make a huge difference - both in finding the right buyer, and getting the right price for the seller.

We're not sure what photos Darryl used to execute his own sale, but in 2021 he sold IMOTO Photo and an allied company, Rocket Photo, for $5m, to a real estate tech company based in Quebec, Canada, called Urban Immersive.

Unlike some other exits, Darryl and his whole team have stayed on after the sale. Today, IMOTO Photo is bigger than ever and has added all kinds of tech to the services it provides to home buyers and sellers, including real estate listings in the Metaverse.

Since 2015 we’ve been following the fortunes of a local education technology company called Whetstone. Whetstone is a software platform that improves classroom teaching. It streamlines and standardizes teacher observation and instruction.

You only have to meet Whetstone CEO Libby Fischer once to know she’s the kind of person who’s going somewhere. And, in fact, today she has gone somewhere - she’s gone on her honeymoon. But before she went there, Libby led Whetstone to a successful exit. 

In 2021, Whetstone was bought by another Ed-Tech company, based in Lafayette Louisiana, called SchoolMint. Like Darryl’s company, everybody who was at Whetstone has stayed on at SchoolMint.

Libby has become SchoolMint’s Chief Operating Officer, and Whetstone’s Director of Operations, Zach Hollwedel, has become SchoolMint’s Vice President of Finance Operations.

When we talk about local startups being bought by bigger companies, one of the frequent criticisms is that these sales siphon future earnings away from New Orleans and into the coffers of out-of-town owners. 

That has not happened with the purchase of either IMOTO Photo or Whetstone. To the contrary, it looks like these successful exits are more success than exit. Everybody is still at both of these companies, and rather than siphoning off anything, these companies are both growing, creating more wealth for New Orleans.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom.

At itsneworleans.com you can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur.

And check out part I of our Successful Exit series with Patrick Comer, Matt Wisdom and Scott Wolfe Jr.

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As we’ve discussed previously on this show, critics say a tourist-dependent economy traps people in low-paid jobs. Tourism boosters say without the revenue generated by tourists we’d all be paying way more in taxes and our cost of living would be through the roof.

Whichever of these positions you subscribe to, undeniably the heart of the New Orleans tourist industry - and therefore New Orleans’ vital finance generator - is the French Quarter.

The French Market Corporation is all too aware of this tourist-dependence. They’d like the French Quarter to be a place locals visit too. Not just because it is, after all, quintessentially New Orleans, but because for a large chunk of the year the heat keeps tourists away and locals are the Quarter’s only source of revenue.

As their name suggests, the French Market Corporation operates the French Market. But their jurisdiction also includes the Pontalba buildings, all of the riverside retail stores, and riverside restaurants, from Cafe duMonde to Gazebo Café. It's a big chunk of real estate and accounts for a significant percentage of French Quarter revenue.

The Executive Director of the French Market Corporation is Leslie Alley.

There aren’t many places in the French Quarter that tourists and locals go. But there is one place most tourists go, and most locals have been. And that’s Pat O’Brien’s bar.

Pat O’Brien’s is the home of the Hurricane. They have fountains of fire in the courtyard. And in their piano lounge they have dueling pianos. Two piano players sit at matching copper-topped grand pianos, playing together or trading off, playing requests, and encouraging audience participation. It’s a singular kind of skill that combines musicianship and live improv entertainment.

For 25 years one of these entertaining piano players has been Henrietta Alves.

There’s no doubt, New Orleans wouldn’t be the city it is without the French Quarter. And the French Quarter, as attractive as it is architecturally, wouldn’t have the charm, character, and reputation it has without the people who live and work there.

Henrietta Alves has contributed to decades of life in the Quarter, as both a resident and a musician. And Leslie Allie's contributions to the French Market, and the properties the French Market Corporation operates, will be felt for decades to come. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. And check out more lunchtime conversation with New Orleans entertainers Andrew Duhon and Henrietta's daughter, Musa.

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There’s a vast repository of fact-checked knowledge at your local library. Just how vast that repository actually is, though, depends on where you live. If you live in a big city, you have access to a big library. If you live in a small town or suburb, your library is smaller.

But your access to reliable and specialized information doesn’t have to be limited by where you live, thanks to your local librarian. Librarians everywhere receive the same training. As our quest for information changes, librarians’ skills have to change too. And they have to change more quickly now than they did before Siri and Alexa showed up.

Since 2018, librarians have been adopting a software-driven training program called Skilltype. Skilltype’s librarian customers are spread across the United States, and around the world, including the UK, Israel, Singapore and Australia.  

The founder and CEO of Skilltype is Baton Rouge-based New Orleanian, Tony Zanders.

If you’re a company or organization, rather than an individual, and you’re looking for information about individuals, you conduct market research.

The most common form of market research is finding out what people like, or don’t like, by simply asking them. You’re probably familiar with that phone call. The person on the other end says they’re conducting a survey and asks if you have a few minutes to answer some questions.

This person is typically working for a research firm that a company or organization pays to design and administer a survey.

The research firm maximizes its profit by completing the greatest number of surveys in the shortest possible time with the least number of employees. Because what they’re doing is specialized -meaning, their client doesn’t understand it – there’s no oversight. And so, the door is open for unscrupulous corner-cutters to use technology like automated phone bots to make it look like a batch of surveys were executed honestly, when in fact they weren’t.

If you’re the client, how are you going to know whether the company you’ve hired to conduct your research is giving you reliable data? Or whether they’re defrauding you with bogus information? Well, the way you can tell is to make sure the company you hire to conduct your research is using a piece of software called Research Defender.

Research Defender uses A.I. and machine learning to keep up with and defeat the dirty tricks that unscrupulous survey-takers employ.

The CEO of Research Defender is Vignesh Krishnan.

Living in the Information Age, we’re constantly bombarded with information. Although “Knowledge is power,” there’s a significant difference between knowledge and information.

Knowledge is the foundation of our whole lives. Everything we decide, or do, is based on what we know. We regard knowledge as truth. Information, on the other hand… Well, it can be anything from true, to wrong, or even intentionally fraudulent.

Tony Zanders and Vignesh Krishnan are in the business of helping individuals, companies, organizations, and institutions find and share knowledge. It’s impressive that the kind of specialized, sophisticated technology they've  developed is coming out of Louisiana. Their contributions are helping put  Baton Rouge and New Orleans on the worldwide technology map. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in theNOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. And check out what happens when local New Orleans tech companies hit it out of the park

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When you come face-to-face with Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, HIV, cancer, or any of the serious conditions the human body can fall victim to, it’s not uncommon to find yourself asking, “Why haven’t they found a cure for this yet?” And to hope that somebody, somewhere, right now, is working on a cure.

The questions you probably don’t think about, are, who exactly are “they” who haven’t found a cure for this. And who exactly is the “somebody somewhere” who is hopefully unravelling the science of disease.

Well, two of those people are Peter's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch. 

Dr. Chenzhong Li is a world-renowned scientist. He’s an inventor of breakthrough medical technology in the fields of Alzheimer’s, cancer, and infectious diseases.

Dr. Li is the holder of 18 medical patents, including for the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s and certain types of cancer. He’s a member of a very prestigious body of medical professionals, the National Academy of Inventors. And Dr Li is a Professor at the Center for Cellular and Molecular Diagnostics at Tulane University.

If you’re thinking it’s extraordinary that somebody of Dr Li’s stature is working in a lab in downtown New Orleans, wait till you hear what’s going on in Thibodaux.

Thibodaux is home to a company called BioInfo Experts. BioInfo Experts is a tech company that works on a branch of science called pathogen genomics. They sequence the genomes of infectious diseases. Then they use computational analytical tools to improve the identification, tracking, and treatment of infections. It’s part biology, part computational science, and part statistical analysis.

The founder and CEO of BioInfo Experts is Susanna Lamers. Susanna started out working in a lab in Florida back in the days of the AIDs epidemic and pioneered the science of collating disease data and turning it into digital tables. She turned those skills into a business and relocated to Thibodaux to run it remotely long before the next major US epidemic was going to turn remote work into a commonplace modus operandi.

Anyone who lives in New Orleans can tell you, the city we live in is vastly different from the impression you get of the place from the outside. Sure, local New Orleanians enjoy Mardi Gras and music festivals, and we might even occasionally wander around the French Quarter with a cocktail. But beneath the fun exterior, there’s a city of business, industry, and science that’s equal to just about any place you could name.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. And check out more lunchtime conversation about breakthrough science from right here in New Orleans.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is having a tourist-dependent economy good for us? Or bad for us? Well, that depends who you ask.

Many people who work in hospitality point out that their jobs are poorly-paid, with few if any benefits. There’s no job security. And they claim that a tourist-based economy traps them - and the city - in a cycle of poverty that does nothing but perpetuate a glaring wealth gap.

On the other hand, people in organizations that promote New Orleans tourism – whose incomes are typically substantially larger than hospitality workers - claim tourism is vital. They say that without tourism our individual taxes would have to increase by thousands of dollars a year, and our entire city economy would be strained to the point of collapse.

Which side of this argument is true? Petr Ricchiuti puts that question to Dr. Andrew Ward. Dr. Ward is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Development at Tulane University, and he specializes in a branch of practical study called Sustainable Tourism.

In 2018 we introduced you to Allison Albert Ward. At that time, Allison had quit her job as an accountant and founded a company called Pet Krewe, making costumes for pets. That has turned out to be a good move. Today, Pet Krewe’s costumes are sold in 600 independent stores and several mass retailers in the United States. They’re also sold internationally. Outside of China, Pet Krewe is the biggest pet costume company in the world.

But, even after achieving world domination, Pet Krewe is not slowing down. They’ve formed partnerships with Hasbro, Sesame Street, and others, and their business continues to grow by hundreds of percent a year.

If you’re a regular listener to Out to Lunch you might have noticed that on each show we usually invite guests who have something in common. So, you might be wondering what the link could possibly be between sustainable tourism and pet costumes. Well, there is one. Marriage. Andrew Ward and Allison Albert Ward are married. To each other.

Unless you happen to be friends with them and hang out with Andrew and Allison Albert Ward, it’s unlikely you’ve heard a discussion about pet costumes and sustainable tourism anywhere else recently. Or ever. 

In the days before social media, traditional media outlets bolstered their reputation as information sources by scooping each other – getting a story first and owning it. These stories were billed as “exclusive,” meaning it was content you could get from one place and one place only. Today, information spreads around the world in moments. We’re all instantly reading and hearing versions of the same content. Except, that is, for this conversation. You won't hear anything like this conversation, anywhere.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur. at our website itsneworleans.com. And check out Allison's Albert Ward's first appearance on Out to Lunch.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s unlikely that serious practitioners of mindfulness have a protocol for walking into a bar. But, hey, this is New Orleans. 

When you walk into a bar you might unconsciously be asking yourself, “What am I going to drink?”  A more mindful approach might be to let your gaze fall on the bottles behind the bar. And perhaps notice a particular bottle. Say, one with a bright blue wax seal, and a label that says, “River Basin Distillery.” And you might find yourself asking, “Who are the people who make this rye whiskey?”

Then, noting that all the bottles in here are made of glass, your next mindful moment might be to wonder, “How do you make glass?”  

Well, your mindfulness is paying off. These are the very questions Peter Ricchiuti's guests are answering on this edition of Out to Lunch.

The answer to question number one is Elliott Wiener. Elliott is co-founder of New Orleans rye whiskey company, River Basin Distillery. 

And so, to question number 2, How do you make glass? We put that question to Jean Blair. Jean is the founder of New Orleans Glassworks, on Magazine Street, near the World War 2 Museum. Glass artists make and sell glass creations there. And you can also sign up for classes at New Orleans Glassworks and learn to blow glass yourself.

When we talk about “the economy” we typically like to divide things into neat categories. Among those categories are “manufacturing,” “tourism,” “hospitality,” and “fine arts.”

But when we’re talking about manufacturing whiskey and high-end pieces of glass works, that are all purchased by tourists and locals, and can be found in bars and restaurants, those categories are blurred in a way that’s unique to our New Orleans’ economy. Jean and Elliott are both contributing to all kinds of categories of the local economy. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website itsneworleans.com. And check out more lunchtime conversation about making beer and homemade wine.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Disruption” is a euphemism. It’s a combination of revolution and destruction. For example, streaming music platforms “disrupted” the recorded music industry. Uber “disrupted” the taxi industry. And in the biggest, most widespread disruption of all, e-commerce led by Amazon, disrupted the retail industry.

As a result of e-commerce disruption, a huge number of small retailers had to shut up shop. And too-big-to-fail retailers like Sears, Nieman Marcus, Toys R Us, JC Penney and Circuit City, all filed for bankruptcy.

Amid this widespread retail carnage, a local New Orleans women’s clothing store called Hemline has not only survived, it’s flourished. Hemline has grown from a single store on Chartres Street in the French Quarter, to a chain of local stores, and a franchise with a total of 30 stores in 7 states, including Florida, Tennessee and Texas.

The Brand Marketing and Events Manager of Hemline is Cristina Ebberman.

The reason you barely hear the word “disruption” any more is because pretty much every industry that could have been disrupted, has been.

In 2017, Laurel Hess was in marketing. When she came home from a business trip to a mountain of laundry, she had the sudden realization that nobody had disrupted the laundry industry. Thinking there had to be other busy people like her who would love nothing more than for someone to come and take away her dirty laundry and bring it back the next day washed and folded, Laurel created the Uber of laundry – Hampr. 

Hampr started life in Lafayette, Louisiana. Today, Hampr is in 8 states, including Texas, Colorado, and Arizona, and that number is growing almost monthly as the Uber of laundry spreads across the country and attracts investors.

As times change and we hand the reins of business over to the next generation, it’s interesting how our definition of success is changing. Success used to be defined numerically. By a dollar amount. Today, how you make money is as important as how much you make.

The rise of the sharing economy reflects this sentiment - spreading wealth in a socially responsible manner is a better goal than individually getting rich at any cost. For example, we all know the name Henry Ford. Ford didn’t invent the automobile, but he did invent a way to make a lot of money out of making and selling cars. This generation, we all know Uber. But it’s the concept of ridesharing we admire. Most people probably couldn’t tell you the name of the person who started it.

If Hampr gets to be as big as Uber, founder Laurel Hess's primary source of pride won’t be how much money she's made for herself, but rather, how many people she's given an opportunity to have an independent business.

In the face of the stiffest retail headwinds in decades, Hemline is bucking trends and expanding a chain of clothing stores because, rather building an empire for a single owner, the company is intentionally growing a family of locally-focused, women-driven businesses.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website itsneworleans.com. And you can also hear recent conversation with other disrupters in e-commerce and insurance: https://itsneworleans.com/2022/03/16/cluey-claimly-and-the-iv/ 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The implication being, that no matter what people say they care about, if they don’t have enough money, nothing else matters. Here in New Orleans, for decades, topping the list of things people say they care about, usually right under crime, is education.

We also know that, with a few exceptions, the more education you have the more money you make. So, today, Carville’s famous advice could be, “It’s education, stupid.”

By education, we typically think of elementary school and high school. But lately we’ve come to learn that life-long problems with poor education-outcomes start earlier. Studies show that children under the age of 4 who receive quality Early Childhood Education are more likely to graduate high school. They earn more money. And they’re more likely to own their own homes.

If you’re a parent with resources, you can pay for quality Early Childhood Education. If you don’t have the means to do that, you can send your children to publicly funded pre-school. But in New Orleans, 70% of low-income children under the age of 4 don’t have access to publicly funded, quality, Early Childhood Education.

An organization called Agenda For Children is trying to change that. Agenda For Children works to train Early Childhood education teachers, and to create access to early Childhood Education for all New Orleans families. Jen Roberts is CEO of Agenda For Children.

This is not to say that all we have to do in New Orleans is get kids under 4 in a good pre-school and in a generation everything will magically improve. We’ll still need good high schools.

Here in New Orleans, a “good high school” is typically one you pay to go to. Or, if you’re a kid who’s focused and driven enough, you can test into one of the few high-performing public high schools. But kids growing up in less-than-ideal circumstances are typically not in either of those categories.

That’s where an organization called Rooted School Foundation comes in. Rooted School Foundation focuses on at-risk kids who are talented or smart enough to change their lives. It gives students a way to graduate high school while also earning industry credentials in fields with growth potential, so that they can go from high school to college, or into a career in a growing field.

This is not some sort of theoretical, pie-in-the-sky concept. In June 2021 Rooted New Orleans graduated its inaugural class of 38 students. 54% of them went to a 4-year college, and between them they hauled in over $1m worth of merit grants and scholarships.

The visionary founder and CEO of Rooted School Foundation is Jonathan Johnson.

In music and fashion, generational changes are easy to see. In business, those changes are not so obvious. But they definitely exist. The current generation is emphasizing good corporate citizenship, and work-life balance. Companies are being asked to take socially responsible positions. They’re no longer seen as profit-centers responsible only to shareholders. And work is no longer regarded as a monastic calling to which you have to dedicate your entire life to succeed. Instead, a company is more prized if it is able to integrate into the wider community, and a job is more prized if it allows you live a balanced life.

Early Childhood Education is the first step on the path to a parent creating work/life balance. And Rooted School Foundation is giving companies an opportunity to become corporate good citizens.

Both Jen Roberts and Jonathan Johnson are involved with organizations that at first glance might seem far removed from business, but that on closer examination are vitally entwined in our local economy.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in theNOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website itsneworleans.com. And listen in to this lunchtime conversation about the education initiative, Uncommon Construction, that allows high school kids to graduate into the construction industry.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.