It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch

If you’re under 30, and you have any kind of original, innovative ideas, you might not know that before you were born people like you generally left New Orleans and went to places where forward-thinking was appreciated. Then, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina had knocked the city to its knees, the river of intellectuals and social activists started to flow in other direction. All kinds of smart people with new ideas started coming here. Two of them were young guys who arrived as part of the revolution in education. Jonas Chartock was CEO of an organization called Leading Educators. Matt Candler was CEO of an organization called New Schools For New Orleans, and then Founder of an education startup called 4.0 Schools. Like pretty much everything else in New Orleans at the time, our schools and our entire education system was in ruins. In a period we can now look back on as something of an Enlightenment, Jonas, Matt, and a generation of educators completely re-imagined our education system and built what was both an education laboratory and beacon for the nation. In 2016 Jonas and Matt were guests on Out to Lunch. They were fired up about the education revolution they were a part of leading. Today’s Out to Lunch is a reunion. Ten years and some-odd on, Jonas and Matt are still revolutionaries. Matt is building electric motorbikes under the banner of Night Shift Bikes. And he’s helping build a number of other battery-based companies as General Partner of an investment fund called The Batteries Included Fund. Jonas is CEO of The Childrens Bureau of New Orleans. It’s a non-profit that provides primarily mental health support for children who have experienced a traumatic event. That support is in the form of immediate crisis intervention, and longer-term, evidence-based therapies for children and families impacted by trauma. people come and go out of your life. You’re friends for a while, maybe you were even close friends or partners – but things change, life goes on, and one way or another you drift apart. That person might not be a central part of your life any more they way they were, but your relationship with them had an affect on you, and when you run into them these days it’s still good to see them. It can even be like old times and you pick up right where you left off. It’s kind of the same for the City of New Orleans’ relationship with Matt and Jonas. They might not be the central revolutionary savior figures they were when you first rolled into town, but they’re still here. Their contributions to the education revolution continue to ripple through the system in various ways, and their current contributions to the city are not insignificant either. 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 think it feels like things are speeding up and change is coming faster than ever, well, you’re right. It took us hundreds of thousands of years to get to a worldwide population of 3 billion. We got there in 1927. From there, it only took about 70 more years – one lifetime – to get to a population of 6 billion. Back at the 3 billion mark, fewer Americans lived in urban areas. When they needed to shop for necessary supplies they’d talk about “going to town.” “Town” was often a single street. A commercial corridor. A “Main Street.” Here in New Orleans, over the 300 years of our existence we’ve had a number of main streets. Canal Street. Dryades Street. Magazine Street. Recently we’ve added Freret Street. The current incarnation of Freret street as a commercial district began with the re-birth of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. One of the first outposts of resurrection was a then audaciously high-end, hip, cocktail bar and restaurant, called Cure. Cure would go on to win all kinds of awards, including the Oscar of hospitality - a James Beard Award for “Outstanding Bar Program” - and the company behind it, CureCo Bar & Restaurant Group would go on to open Val’s, also on Freret Street, and other establishments, including Cane & Table on Decatur Street. Neal Bodenheimer is a Co-Founder and the Managing Partner of these ventures, as well as a partner in Dauphine’s in Washington DC, Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of Tales of the Cocktail Foundation, and author of the book, Cure, New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ‘em. Tourists who visit New Orleans will often check out Freret Street and Magazine Street, but mostly they want to see The French Quarter. Typically, they’ll stay in a hotel in the Quarter, or at an Air B’nB in a neighborhood. There’s another local accommodation option too. It’s just west of the city. It sits on 7 and a half acres. It’s staffed by 12 employees, 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and has a full concierge desk. There’s a shuttle service to the French Quarter, and to special events like Saints games and Jazz Fest. The concierge will arrange any tour you want to go on. And they have a souvenir shop where everything is intentionally priced lower than downtown.  So, what is this place? It’s the KOA campground in River Ridge. There are 100 RV sites, 4 tent sites, and 3 deluxe lodges. The owners of KOA Campgrounds New Orleans are husband and wife team, Mike and Deborah Dunn. Yes, we have Big Ass Beers and Pat O’Briens, but we also have craft cocktails and Cure. And, yes, we have hotels on Bourbon Street and Air BnB’s Uptown, but we also have KOA Campgrounds in River Ridge. There is, as they say, more than one way to skin a cat. According to AI, the origin of that saying is unknown, but it’s thought to refer to the various solutions to the tricky business of cleaning and preparing catfish. Which is entirely appropriate for this part of the world, and for today’s conversation, referring, as it does, to various ways of achieving the desired result of enjoying a long life or a short stay in New Orleans by taking the road less traveled. Whether its locals who have turned Cure into an institution or visitors who have discovered the benefits of urban camping, all of us appreciate the unique ways both Deborah Sunn and Neal Bodenheimer are helping retain New Orleans’ reputation as a city that defies easy definition. 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.

Things don't always work out like you planned. You know, they just don't. 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.

When you’re the CEO or Executive Director of a company, you’re responsible for, well, everything. If the company does well, you’re a genius. If the company does poorly, you’re fired. 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.

When we started out making a show about New Orleans business, people – even in the business community – said, “Well that’s great, but what are you going to do after 6 weeks?” 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.

In almost every conversation about healthcare, we hear the term, “provider.” Typically, we assume a healthcare provider is a doctor. But, if you look at insurance company definitions of health care providers, the term includes almost every branch of medical care - therapists, podiatrists, imaging centers, home-health agencies, hospice, the list goes on. 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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you ever use the term “brainiac” to describe someone who’s super smart? We use a term like that because we tend to assume that someone is either highly intelligent, or they’re not. In other words, you’re either lucky enough to be born with a high-functioning brain that can get you into Harvard, or not. 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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I was very tempted to go fishing today, and leave this show to the machines. 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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s a term in psychology that also applies to marketing. It’s called “The Halo Effect.” It refers to how we can make sometimes incorrect assumptions based on a collection of pieces of 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.

Lists used to be the stuff of clickbait. Now even venerable outlets like the New York Times regularly publish lists. Including the Times’ list of the 25 best restaurants in New Orleans. 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.

Generally, by the time someone gets invited on a show like this they’ve figured out how to tell the story of their business in a way that makes their journey seem like a steady climb from humble beginnings to current success. 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.

When you walk into a home, a room, or a business, you typically have a single sensation. A place feels a certain way. That specific reaction is actually the culmination of a whole range of perceptions that include observations about dimensions, light, color, furniture shapes and sizes, painting on the walls, decorative touches, rugs, even scent. 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.

As a society, we’re generally focused on achievement. We celebrate when a person gets into college. And we celebrate when they graduate. In between, when it comes to winning monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily battles - like structuring your day to attend classes and study for tests; and how to budget to afford tuition, books, transportation, food, and rent – well, we typically leave people to figure that out on their own. 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.