It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch

It would be hard to find anybody in America who doesn t know that there s a link between diet and health. It would, however, be no problem to find a hundred people on your street who want to eat healthier but don t. Our usual excuses are healthy food is harder to find, it s expensive, and it doesn t taste good. Betty Archote s company, Healthy Course Meals, is out to change that. Healthy Course Me...

Running a sports business in New Orleans comes with a number of unique challenges. Ask the Voodoo, the Jazz, or for many years the struggling Saints. On the other hand, the New Orleans Zephyrs seem to have found a winning formula. Winning enough for a new ownership to take over the team and unveil plans for an optimistic future. The team s new Assistant General Manager, Donna Light, is Peter s gue...

As you know, statistics can be twisted to mean anything we want. How about this computation If every one of the 9 million tourists who visit New Orleans was to visit one of the 400,000 locals, you d only have 23 visitors a year. You ve probably had more folks than that over to watch a Saints game, right So. How would you like to entertain tourists and get paid for it That s the principle behind Pa...

Here in the United States we like to think of ourselves as world leaders. But we re not ahead of everybody in everything. England, Germany, India, Israel, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand have all elected women presidents and prime ministers. In business in the U.S. we re still fighting for equal pay and figuring out what equality means from bathrooms to board rooms. And so as it has done many...

On May 22, 1796, while George Washington was still president, the first opera performance in America was staged here in New Orleans. These days most of us think of New Orleans music as small bands playing jazz and funk. But orchestral music has been played here continuously from that night in 1796. Today, Carlos Miguel Prieto leads a classical music orchestra, the Louisiana Philharmonic. Guitarist...

If you drive a car, at some point in the next few days you re probably going to need gas. If you fill up at the pump at a convenience store, your experience will never be the same after you listen to this edition of Out to Lunch. Peter Ricchiuti is lunching with Ethan Cheramie, founder of PetroTV. That s the company that owns and programs the TVs that play commercials on top of gas pumps. You migh...

In business, and other organizations, we hear about "mission drift." That s a condition where the organization loses track of what it set out to accomplish. The way to re focus is to get back to basics. That's what we re doing today on Out to Lunch. We're talking about three very basic elements sunshine, water, and dirt. And we're looking at how we can harness these 3 elements to re focus us on on...

If you ve ever had folks come visit you in New Orleans from out of town, they ve probably said, "If I lived here I d put on a hundred pounds." They re not the folks who come here to visit ProTac Fitness. Those folks say, "If I lived here I could benchpress another hundred pounds." Protac Fitness is a New Orleans business that trains people to get in shape for the US military and law enforcement. I...

In the grand scheme of things, it s difficult to know at the time which small decision you make might have enormous consequences. Like the time in 1978 when a social worker from Des Moines Iowa decied to open a small coffee shop on Maple Street, in Uptown New Orleans. That coffee shop, PJ s, was to become a coffee empire. And the young social worker behind it, Phyllis Jordan, was to become one of...

Over the past few years you ve probably been hearing the word "entrepreneur" a lot around New Orleans. As business incubators like The Idea Village grow, and we hear success stories about all kinds of wildly imaginative local startups, you might wonder how someone gets to be an entrepreneur. Maybe you have a great idea for a business. Have you ever wondered how you get to be one of the hip crowd h...

When you look back at the human form at Venus de Milo from 100 BC, or Michelangelo s David from the 1500 s the ideal human body hasn t changed much at all. But with the advent of progress like the automobile, and the ability to gather food while sitting in an automobile, retaining our ideal body shape has led to all kinds of creative ideas. The latest to arrive here in New Orleans is called Orange...

Today we ve relocated our lunch table from our usual spot in the Garden District to downtown New Orleans. We re at Idea Village s annual Entrepreneur Week. Idea Village is an independent nonprofit organization with a mission to identify, support, and retain entrepreneurial talent in New Orleans. They describe Entrepreneur Week as an annual business festival, celebrating entrepreneurship, innovatio...

It used to be that a single income could support a family including owning a home. After 35 years of employment you could retire from the same company you d been at all that time, with a pension. Times sure have changed. Now most of us need a savvy work and personal strategy just to navigate our way into the middle class. Peter Ricchiuti s guests on Out to Lunch today are all about helping you fin...

New businesses are springing up in New Orleans all the time. Some of them you may not have heard of. Others you can t miss. There s a good chance you ve seen an MHM Urgent Care clinic open up somewhere near you. There are currently 13 of them in and around New Orleans. Co founder and CEO of MHM, Keith Leblanc, joins Peter Ricchiuti on this edition of Out to Lunch. Dr. Mignonne Mary is the founder...

The world of New Orleans education is changing. For elementary, middle, and high schools that change has been so radical that we've become global pioneers in charter education. There's another education transformation going on that you might be less familiar with. It's a parallel universe. Of paradoxes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In New Orleans we often take pains to point out what makes us different from other places. It s pretty common to hear comments like, "We re not like the rest of the country" and "We re not like the rest of the South." So it s ironic that two of New Orleans newest icons are representative of The South, and the rest of the country. And they re just a few blocks away from each other The World War II...

You'd have to be a certain age and have a certain kind of musical taste to remember Peter Allen singing, All our dreams will come true again, when everything old is new again. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When we talk about big events in New Orleans we typically say Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you've been shopping lately you might have noticed the growing number of stores that have creative chalkboard signs outside on the sidewalk. You might have also noticed similar creative chalkboard menus in restaurants. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We ve all seen this guy or woman on TV, and we've all said, "Thank God that's not me." The person sweating behind a bank of microphones, trying to explain away something bad. What if one day, maybe through no fault of your own, that person is you Having to explain why things aren't quite how they look. How do you know what to do What to say You could call on crisis management PR specialist, John D...

Wherever you go in the world you find human beings have two things in common. We all like to eat. And we all like to incorporate into our living spaces non functional objects we call art. In many countries we've institutionalized these traits. We dine in restaurants and we hang art in galleries. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are so many great musicians in New Orleans, there's got to be a reason. Maybe it's something in the water. Or maybe it's something in a building on the corner of Chartres St and Saint Ferdinand. That's NOCCA See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Property values are going up in New Orleans. Parts of the city that buyers have been avoiding for years are now desirable addresses. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When it comes to business, we all agree on one thing we all want to succeed. Typically we measure success numerically the more profit we make the better we're doing. Sure, we'd all like to make billions, but the reality is most of us are not going to turn our businesses into Facebook or Apple. For many people in business, just keeping the doors open and the lights on is succeeding. Peter Ricchiuti...

In 2005, many of us in New Orleans found ourselves in a position we could never have imagined. Homeless. Our place of work closed down. Our insurance companies refusing to compensate us. And our government largely useless. Until then it was just a clich See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.