It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch

If you re a certain age you might remember the telephone. It was a hard plastic piece of equipment about the size of a small cat. You leased the phone, monthly, from what was known as "The phone company." There was only one. Eventually, we got multiple phone companies. Then mobile phones. Which came to be known as cell phones. Then we got what we called "smart phones" which was a cell phone that d...

One positive thing we can say about social media is, it s a great leveler. Even CEO s and celebrities reveal that, although their giant homes and incomes may be far removed from ours, their daily lives and fears are not that different. Nonetheless, even in a world with no secrets, you d probably still be surprised if a celebrity went on Instagram with photos of their kid s head lice. Christina Wom...

It s one thing to come up with an idea for a business and open it in Mid City or Uptown. It s quite another undertaking to launch and run a business in the 9th Ward. Or the Lower 9th ward. That s what Peter Ricchiuti s guests on today s Out to Lunch are doing. Mark Sanders is the owner and CEO of Ninth Ward Nursery. Rashida Ferdinand is Executive Director of Sankofa Community Development Corporati...

In 1967, Edward de Bono invented "Lateral Thinking." It s a type of reasoning that solves problems by steps that might not be obvious. For example, how do you get more college grads to enter the workforce wanting to go into technology Regular logic would suggest employers pay more to people in these positions. Or offer college scholarships. Todd Wackerman has come up with a lateral thinking soluti...

For a number of years now we ve talked about New Orleans as a great place to start a business. But we ve learned it s not such an easy place to take a startup to the next level. When the business you re starting up is not technology, but you re actually manufacturing a real world product, it becomes even more difficult. Jaime Glas seems to have defied the odds. Jaime started a manufacturing busine...

Remember that time you had a great idea You were probably doing something you ve done a thousand times before and you thought, "There s got to be an easier way. Why doesn t somebody invent..." fill in the blank. People who work in universities have these kinds of ideas too. When you think about it, the reason people work at universities is they re smart. They re the kinds of people who deal in ide...

Sometimes the stars just line up. Whether it s fate, destiny, luck, or your own ingenuity, once in a while you find yourself in the right place at the right time and you have one of those "Aha" moments. Turning that aha moment into a successful business is a whole other matter. That s what Peter s two lunch guests today are hard at work doing. Boyce Clark was a geophysicist and a single dad who ca...

In business, we go to great pains to treat men and women equally. But when it comes to pain itself, men and women are not always equal. That s why Sara Reardon opened NOLA Pelvic Health. NOLA Pelvic Health is the first and only clinic in New Orleans that specializes in the treatment of women s pelvic floor muscle dysfunctions including pelvic pain, bowel and bladder dysfunction, sexual dysfunction...

When people say "New Orleans is known for its food" they mostly mean restaurants. From iconic places like Commander s, to your favorite hole in the wall poboy joint. What we are less known for in New Orleans is healthy food. But like so much else here, that s changing. One of the reasons for that change is a company called Supereats. At Supereats they make what they call "snacks with a purpose." H...

There are not many subjects that everybody is an expert on. But healthcare is one of them. Many people s opinions about how healthcare should be provided are formed as a result of interactions with the healthcare system that have involved large sums of money and had less than optimum outcomes. On this edition of Out to Lunch Peter Ricchiuti is talking with two experts about the healthcare system a...

We get excited when economic development people announce a prestigious business is relocating to New Orleans, and bringing with it hundreds of jobs. But business recruiters often report that quality candidates don t want to move to New Orleans, because of our poor education system and high crime rate. Peter Ricchiuti s guests on this edition of Out to Lunch are working on both of those problems. J...

People come to Louisiana looking for everything from Alligators to Zydeco. The two things they are usually not looking for are high tech superstars and women duck hunters. That s exactly who Peter s guests on Out to Lunch are looking for. Bill Ellison and his venture capital organization Innovation Catalyst invest in new high tech companies. Some of them turn out to be big deals, like Waitr, which...

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You ve probably heard of Maslow s Hierarchy of Needs. At the foundation of the pyramid is our need for shelter and food. Even if you re a real New Orleanian and you think about food a lot, there s a pretty good chance you don t spend too much time pondering the 40 trillion bacteria living in your gut. Dr. Dale Pfost does. Dale s company, Microbiome Therapeutics, has launched a product called Biome...

If you re like most Americans, and an even greater percentage of New Orleanians, you ve got concerns about your weight. One of the contributors to issues with our weight, and health, is sugar. But sugar free products don t taste all that great. And substituting sugar with synthetic chemicals is not a popular solution. Believe it or not, there is a product that is a real sugar substitute. It s all...

For nearly 200 of our 300 year history, New Orleans has laid claim to being the birthplace of the cocktail. Whether or not that is strictly true, the cocktail is still a New Orleans icon. A company called New Orleans Beverage Group is helping to keep that tradition alive, and to update it, with their products, El Guapo Bitters, and cocktail syrups. The CEO of the New Orleans Beverage Group, Christ...

The women s movement has been striving to define the place of women in the workplace, and in society in general, since the 1960 s. Although there have been some major turning points over the past half century, the era we re in now may turn out to be one of the most significant and long lasting. In New Orleans, two very different media based businesses are contributing to this change. Heide Winston...

If you re on Facebook, you see photos of yourself pop up from two, three, or ten years ago. Even though they re photos that you posted, you still get a surprise to see what you looked like and what you were doing just a few years ago. If we took snapshots of our work environment we might feel the same way. The way we work is constantly evolving. Peter s guests on this edition of Out to Lunch repre...

If you re single and you have a dog, you ll know that you can never get serious about dating someone who doesn t like your dog. Or worse, doesn t like dogs in general. That self selection of single dog people is the premise behind a dating app called Dig. Yes, it s a dating app for dog lovers looking to find human love. Dig was founded right here, in New Orleans. Dig co founder and CEO, Leigh Isaa...

We hear a lot about New Orleans being 300 years old. Right around our 100th birthday there was a giant worldwide shakeup. It came to be known as The Industrial Revolution. As it went along, more and more of us started living in cities that got bigger and bigger. Our connection to the land got more and more distant. Today, there s a movement to try and rebalance. To connect our urban lives with our...

A few years ago, our biggest housing problem in New Orleans was abandoned houses and blight. Today our biggest problems are gentrification and soaring rents. In an over all economic sense, they re better problems to have. But if housing is your personal problem, or your business is affected, the betterment of the overall economy is not so attractive. Peter Ricchiuti s guests on this edition of Out...

The new "gig economy" is a combination of self employment and contract work. It s a model pioneered by Uber and Lyft. The same model is finding its way into other occupations. You may not have considered ambulance drivers and the ER fitting into this concept. But that s exactly what a New Orleans company, Ready Responders, is pioneering. It s kind of Uber for the EMT business. Justin Dangel, CEO a...

When you think about inspirational figures people who inspire you with their dedication to good works you might think about Mother Theresa or the Dalai Lama. You probably don t think of local men in the construction industry. Peter Ricchiuti s guests on Out to Lunch might change that. Jim Pate is Executive Director of the New Orleans Area Habitat For Humanity. Jim has overseen Habitat construction...

Even if you ve lived in New Orleans your whole life and you know everything about the place, there s a good chance there s one thing you don t know. And that is, what it s like to be a tourist. Some tourists just want to know what it s like to be you. For those people, looking for a unique local s perspective to their New Orleans experience, there s a specialized travel agency called Joieful. The...

If human knowledge and medical technology keep progressing, it stands to reason that eventually we re going to figure out how to cure even the most difficult diseases, like cancer. Yes, it s optimistic, but it s also logical. What is, perhaps, less expected is that this knowledge would come from Louisiana. Paige Miller is President of Oleander Medical Technologies. It s a company that s pioneering...