It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch

"The disruption economy" refers to the fact that technology is changing the traditional constructs of our capitalist economy. Amazon is one of the most obvious examples. Uber is another. Closer to home, local companies are part of that disruption economy, changing the rules of the game for everyone. Chris Meaux is founder and CEO of Waitr, the phenomenally successful tech start up that is revoluti...

In 2015, Louisiana lawmakers joined their counterparts in a growing number of states to legalize medical marijuana for a long list of diseases and disorders, including cancer, cerebral palsy, seizure disorders, epilepsy and muscular dystrophy. Today, therapeutic cannabis is opening up all sorts of new and promising business opportunities for physicians, pharmacies that can dispense marijuana, and...

Health and wellness is big business today between 2013 and 2015, the global wellness industry grew nearly 11 percent from 3 point 3 trillion to more than 3 point 7 TRILLION dollars. And it is continuing to grow. For local entrepreneurs, that is creating a lot of opportunities but that also means there s a lot of competition. Nicole Cummins is owner of Barre 3, a boutique fitness studio that s part...

Local Baton Rouge companies are carving out an amazing space in the tech sector. They re designing impressive software platforms and tools that are attracting worldwide attention. Steve McKinney is the Chief Operating Officer of Cell Control, a Baton Rouge company that, in 2009, came up with technology to help eliminate distracted driving. In the years since, Cell Control has become the global lea...

One of the chief goals of technology is to improve efficiency to make it quicker and easier to do our jobs and to make money. Baton Rouge is home to a growing number of tech companies that are coming up with software products and services that increase efficiency in a variety of sectors. Joel Costonis is CEO of Advanced Concepts and Engineering. The company s signature product is the ACE Auto Grad...

South Louisiana doesn t usually get much recognition for being home to IT and biotech talent, but there are impressive start up businesses you may never have heard of that are turning heads around the country. And beyond. Casey Roussel is Executive Vice President of Cloud Gavel, a company that is revolutionizing the way law enforcement officers do their jobs. More specifically, Cloud Gavel has cre...

Ann Connelly is a legend in the art world. Ann is founder and owner of Ann Connelly Fine Art where she is a curator, interior designer, and consultant to homeowners and businesses. Over the past 25 years, Ann has grown her business into a gallery that today carries the works of more than 40 creatives, and as a consultancy to some of the most prominent companies and institutions in Baton Rouge, tha...

Every place has a history and a past, but preserving the best of it and keeping it relevant doesn t just happen, you have to work at it, through education, and preservation. Which is exactly what Stephanie s guests on Out to Lunch do every single day. Michael Desmond is an architect and scholar in the LSU School of Art and Design, with a particular expertise in the history of architecture. For the...

Andi Holliday is a professional home stager with a local firm called Stage Presence. Andi s been dubbed the "House Doctor," writing out design prescriptions that can sell the unsellable. Her firm offers a range of services, from full staging to less expensive walk through and written consultations, as well as "redesign" services that s where Andi uses the client s existing furniture and d cor to s...

As the tech industry evolves and matures, all sorts of new opportunities are created for entrepreneurs, who see where existing technologies don t meet a need or don t go far enough to deliver what customers demand. But taking a good idea and developing it into the latest app one that works and then getting customers to buy it is a challenge that kills a lot of enterprising start ups before they ge...

We talk a lot about business on this show, and what it takes to be successful in business. On this edition of Out to Lunch Stephanie focuses on an aspect of business that doesn t typically get so much attention ethics. Aaron Beam is a former executive who travels around the country lecturing on ethics in business. It s a topic he knows well. In the late 1990s, Aaron participated in a 2 billion sec...

Technology plays an increasingly important role in all aspects of our lives today. The more entrenched it is in government systems, in our offices and in our home appliances the more vulnerable we are to cyber attacks. On this edition of Out to Lunch, Stephanie Riegel introduces two local experts on the subject of cyber security. One developing technology; the other trying to protect us from malwa...

There s a lot of cool stuff going on in Baton Rouge. From the redevelopment of neighborhoods downtown and in Mid City to the young entrepreneurial culture that is fostering startup companies willing to take risk and take advantage of new technologies. Gerald Drefahl s company, Kinesics, is a homegrown, biotech start up that licenses a software program that analyzes the physical mobility of athlete...

Though Baton Rouge, in many ways, is slow to change, in recent years there has been a gradual shift in the balance of power. New, young firms and new, young business leaders are taking over from the Baby Boomer generation that preceded them. One such leader is Julie Laperouse. Julie is Director of Training at Emergent Method, a management consulting firm owned and run by an ambitious group of Mill...

Few industries in our economy today are changing as rapidly and dramatically as health care. In Baton Rouge we are far from immune to these national changes. Teri Fontenot is President and CEO of Woman s Hospital, the only independent, community owned women s and children s hospital in the country and the largest birthing and neonatal intensive care facility in Louisiana. Teri has been at the helm...

Ted Kergan is the largest franchisee of Sonic drive in restaurants in the state of Louisiana. Ted owns 58 Sonic locations in the central and southern part of the state. That sounds like a lot but it s just a fraction of the more than 150 Sonic restaurants Ted has developed during his nearly 40 year career. Ted Kergan is originally from Detroit. Ted began his career in 1977 as a managing partner in...

Nationwide, there s a lot of talk these days about two major subjects Infrastructure and health care. Specifically, how to improve and rebuild roads, bridges and other vital connections that we all depend on, and how to pay for the level of increasingly complex care that our aging population requires. Stephanie s guests on Out to Lunch are problem solvers whose locally owned companies are in the t...

We re serious about our food in south Louisiana, and food related businesses are as interesting and varied as are our own family recipes for gumbo or oyster dressing. As the food industry becomes more complex and sophisticated there are ever more opportunities for entrepreneurs to craft new business models and come up with new ways of serving an ever expanding clientele. Emliy Carlson is the Accou...

Local retailers give a city a sense of place, setting it apart from the next big exit off the interstate. In Baton Rouge, we re fortunate to have several much loved local retailers who, in some cases, have spent generations serving Baton Rouge shoppers with quality products. Manuel Martinez is a well known fixture in Baton Rouge for his sartorial style and for his Corporate Boulevard storefront, M...

In recent months, female empowerment has become an important topic dominating the media, and the issues raised by the metoo movement have forced this country to have important discussions about how women are treated in the workplace and beyond. Here in Baton Rouge we have some incredibly strong, powerful women who have their own stories of struggles and successes to share. Dima Ghawi specializes i...

One of the biggest challenges in Louisiana is a lack of skilled workers in the technical trades. Companies complain about it all the time. And yet, many young people will tell you they can t find a good paying job, which is a reason so many of them leave after high school. For the past several years, the business community in south Louisiana has been focused on this dynamic. On this edition of Out...

While New Orleans gets the lion s share of attention for being Louisiana s premier tourist destination, Baton Rouge has some offerings of its own. Michael Day is General Manager of the Raising Cane s River Center, Baton Rouge s premier event facility. Built in 1977, the River Center has more than 14 thousand square meters of exhibition space, a 12 thousand seat facility for concerts, performances...

Ryan Grizzafi is the owner of The Cajun Spoon, a four year old company that makes healthful, easy to prepare box mixes of beloved Cajun dishes like gumbo, etouffe and shrimp and grits. The Cajun Spoon started out as a food truck in 2014, progressed to become a catering business, and more recently has ventured into retail. To stand out from other, established, Cajun dinner products, Grizzafi s comp...

We know south Louisiana has a healthy number of budding entrepreneurs. We ve met many of them on this show over the past year. But one thing we hear over and over again is that south Louisiana doesn t have a very well developed entrepreneurial ecosystem. It s starting to change, but is it happening fast enough Arthur Cooper is on the frontlines of building that entrepreneurial ecosystem. He is the...

Quality education is a challenge. It seems like many of our schools are losing ground, as public funding for education is being cut. At the same time, there s a greater emphasis on alternatives to the traditional school system and an increased interest in things that helps us think outside the box. Ashley Heard has spent a lot of time thinking about non traditional education and the charter school...