It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch

Whether or not you have adopted it or invested in it, you’ve probably heard a lot in the past few years about cryptocurrency, like market-leader Bitcoin. More recently, you’ve probably heard a lot of buzz about NFTs: digital versions of artworks that are all the rage in sophisticated tech savvy circles and are sold online and can be purchased only with crypto. Are you able to wrap your...

During the COVID pandemic, much of life and learning went virtual, and we all thought we could get by just fine doing everything on Amazon and Zoom. But more recently, we have come to find out just how important in-person connection and interaction are – for business, pleasure and especially education. While it’s great we have technology to help us do things remotely, Baton Rouge entre...

It’s not often in today’s world you find people who all agree on something. But if you talk to business owners, large and small, around the state they’re all but guaranteed to agree on the fact that Louisiana needs to beef up its workforce and do more to train workers for a variety of professions. Even before the pandemic, employers were complaining about a lack of trained and sk...

In every society on earth, for probably millions of years, humans have come up with communal methods of eating that reflect their particular human condition. In our world we’ve married eating with capitalism. We’ve devised a method of paying  other people to prepare meals for us in spaces we call restaurants. As our communities have gotten bigger and restaurants have proliferated,...

There has been nothing short of a revolution in the way we do business over the past 20 years, thanks to the Internet. It’s killed some industry sectors, disrupted others, while at the same time creating new opportunities. Local entrepreneurs have come up with some amazing ways to take advantage of those opportunities, and they’ve also managed to adapt and hang on in the face of consta...

It’s no small feat to sustain a long and happy marriage. Just like it’s no small thing to build a successful business - or two or three - with the same, trusted business partner. So to do all of that with the same person is nothing short of amazing. Most of us cannot imagine what life would be like if our spouse was also our business partner. Or if our business partner was also our spo...

Entrepreneurs and other creative ambitious types have been figuring out how to make money by selling food since people have lived in community. Restaurants in some form or fashion have been around for hundreds of years. But only in the past century or so have things gotten really interesting. The possibilities are endless, and some of them are being tried and tested right here in Baton Rouge Speed...

Is aiming to be being smart, fit, and happy too much to ask? Not if you ask Stephanie's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch. What we'd all like to know is, how do you get there? Well, step one is, you start today. Right now. In today’s complex, high-tech, polarized and post-pandemic era, it does indeed, as someone famously once said, take a village to raise a child. You as a parent cannot...

We know south Louisiana is famous for its good food and festivals, a vibrant petrochemical sector, and a thriving hospitality sector. Many of us may not realize that Louisiana leads the way in certain healthcare specialties - not just the diabetes and obesity research that goes on at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, but some really innovative care for very rare diseases. Kevin Tracy is D...

A lot of us have dreamed about coming up with a great idea that would address a need or demand in society while enriching us in the process. But there’s a long and winding road between thinking up the Next Big Thing and making it a reality. On this edition of Out to Lunch Baton Rouge we meet a couple of folks who know this journey well. Clerc Bertrand is founder and owner of Workaru , an app...

Two thirds of the planet is covered in water. In south Louisiana, it may often seem like a lot more than that! We are surrounded by lakes and bayous. We're bisected by one of the largest rivers in the world. And we're sloughing off a football field of land every 30 minutes into the massive Gulf of Mexico that makes up our south coast. We are so vulnerable to the power of all this water, and also s...

Being a mid-sized city in the deep south, you might not think of Baton Rouge as necessarily being a center for the performing arts. But there is a lot of hidden talent in this town doing really impressive things on the stage – and at birthday parties!  Jenny Ballard is the managing artistic director of Theatre Baton Rouge . Jenny began her career in Tennessee and came to Baton Rouge aft...

We’ve talked a lot on this show about how businesses have adapted to the challenges created by the pandemic. But for nonprofit organizations, which sort of live in a constant state of responding to challenges - closing gaps and providing services to the community in any number of ways – the pandemic and post-pandemic has created its own set of obstacles and opportunities for growth and...

Time was, every town had cobblers and tailors. Fairy tales and history books alike are replete with references to these noble tradesmen, who kept people "shodded" and clothed. Today, you can still look good in a sharp suit and shiny shoes. Commerce has evolved from local service providers to department stores, big box retailers and online sites, but, here in Baton Rouge, although old fashioned bus...

We all have two sides to our brain: the right brain which is said to control our creative artistic abilities and the left side which is the analytical part that can do math and science. We often tend to describe people as left brain or right brain people, depending on whether they’re particularly gifted with one set of abilities or the other. Is this valid? Or does a successful computer guy...

If you live in the big cities of Louisiana, like Baton Rouge or New Orleans, you might not realize just how rural much of Louisiana actually is. And how important agriculture is to the state’s economy: it's the state’s 5th largest sector behind oil, natural gas, commercial fishing and chemicals. A lot of research around agriculture - and it’s sister discipline, horticulture &ndas...

It’s cool enough to have one successful entrepreneur in a family. What happens when you have two? Stephanie’s guests on this edition of Out to Lunch have a unique perspective on the topic of love and business. Greg Milneck is president and owner of  Digital FX , which produces commercials and feature films, as well as post production work for the movie and TV industry. The company...

There aren’t enough bad things we could say about the COVID-19 pandemic. It's cut a path of death, destruction and suffering around the globe since early 2020. But, like any major disaster, it has also disrupted the old way of doing things and forced us to come up with new alternatives that will live on after the pandemic has passed - like telehealth consultations and working from home. This...

As we were reminded during hurricane Ida, Louisiana is home to critical infrastructure that serves not only the region but the entire country. Ports and petrochemical plants line the Mississippi River from the Gulf past Baton Rouge. They are vital assets that keep life humming along, and in this digital age they are increasingly interconnected - and reliant on technology to function. Which means t...

How many kids have gazed up into the sky and pondered what it’s like to be an astronaut or space traveler? How many adults, for that matter? There’s something about outer space, which we get a glimpse of through the night sky, that excites the 10 year old watching Star Wars in all of us. But, deep space doesn't have any connection to Baton Rouge, does it? Yes, Luke, it does! Bob Fudick...

Our Cajun Creole heritage in south Louisiana is famous all over the world. People come here for food, music, and historic architecture they can t get anywhere else. And for those who can't get here, or who want a taste of Louisiana once they get back home, we have some crafty entrepreneurs who have figured out how to capture our local culture, bottle it or box it and export it to folks outside Lou...

In the age of Internet shopping, retail is an increasingly difficult way to make a living. When shoppers don't care if you're local and, no matter where they live, want current fashion and accessories at a fair price, how does a local business compete? Scott Berg says it starts with service. Scott has other strategies too, and proven successes to back them up. Scott is Baton Rouge Market Pres...

Water is essential for life on earth and indeed water covers two-thirds of our planet. We literally cannot live with out it.  But living with it, managing it, trying to control it and make it do what we want it to do is an ever present challenge - especially in South Louisiana where we are surrounded by lakes, rivers, bayous and a Gulf that is eating away at our battered coastline and inching...

Louisiana faces so many challenges. One in five residents lives below the federal poverty level and nearly half the population is considered  working poor. Our health outcomes are among the worst in the nation and so are our schools. How do we change policies to help everybody in the state? And what will it take to turn our schools around?  Ashley Shelton has answers to these questions....

Although we live in a digital world today, most of us – both at home and at work – have too many pieces of paper still stored in file cabinets, boxes, and in piles that we have promised ourselves we’ll go through one day soon. But, as we all know, “one day doesn’t” always come. And that’s a problem that not only puts us at risk for information theft, but a...