It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch

If you could sell a product every person on earth wants, you’d have a winning business. Right? So - other than a phone upgrade - what does nearly every single person on earth want?

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.

New Orleans is a city of mysteries. Tourists, fascinated by ghosts and grandeur, learn about them on French Quarter walking tours. For those of us who live here, there are other mysteries. Like, “Why am I paying so much in property tax and my street still has massive potholes?”

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.

If you Google “demolition videos” you’ll find a seemingly unlimited number of videos of commercial buildings being imploded, and bulldozers mowing down houses.

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.

Back in 1923, a guy in Norfolk Virginia called T. Parker Host founded a company. He called it, T. Parker Host.

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.

Perception and reality can sometimes be two different things. When it comes to money, that can be a problem.

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.

Every creature on earth is concerned with his or her appearance.

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.

There’s more to life than money. That’s true. In some circles it’s become fashionable to talk about the goal of business as being about more than single-mindedly making money. Ok, that’s true too. But it’s worth noting that although money can’t buy you happiness, poverty can’t buy you anything.

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.

For a good deal of human history, if you wanted something done you had to do it yourself.

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.

If you’d been living in the 1800’s you might have found yourself sitting at a lunch table asking your friends, “What are y’all talking about? What is “tennis”?”

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.

We hear a lot about “polarization” these days. And for good reason. It impacts all of us.

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.

If you lived in New Orleans between 1953 and 2021, you might remember Baker Maid Fruitcake. It was made here, and in its earlier years was hugely popular.

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.

If anything good came out of the Covid 19 pandemic it was the advent of remote working. For some people that means they now work from their dining room table, or spend a chunk of their work day at a coffee shop.

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.

Anybody can have a good idea for a business. I’ve already had a couple this morning: Ice that stays frozen longer in iced coffee. And a real-time updating system from the doctor’s office that tells you they’re running an hour late.

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.

Humans are social animals. We like to hang out and talk.

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.

Most animal species go through a juvenile developmental stage where they play with each other. Think, puppies and kittens.

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.

Specific areas of the US are associated with specific industries. In those places, people who work in those industries can make a lot of money.

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.

Walk around the French Quarter any night, go to any music club from the Bywater to Uptown, or join any second-line, and you soon understand New Orleanians’ perspective on life. We’re open-minded and accepting. Famous people move here because they discover nobody’s judging in New Orleans. Everybody’s equal.

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.

If you go to the drug store and check out the hair and skin-care aisles, you’ll find shelves crammed with products. There seems to be a product for every conceivable hair type and skin condition. But, actually, there’s not. 

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.

People who own their own sailboat sometimes describe sailing as, “Like standing in the shower ripping up money.” The point being, not only is a sailboat an expensive item to buy, but sailing is a prohibitively expensive hobby to take part in. Which is unfortunate because the earth’s oceans, lakes, and breezes are accessible to everyone and, really, we all ought to be able to enjoy them.

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.

Oil companies spend a huge amount of money and devote massive resources to exploring for oil and pumping it out of the ocean floor.

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.