It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch

Out to Lunch is recorded each week live over lunch at Commander s Palace in New Orleans Garden District. One of the reasons Commander's has been in business for over 130 years is that each time we come here for lunch it's just as good as it was the last time. Imagine if you had to replicate that dining experience at not just one, but hundreds of restaurants. That's what a franchise is. Despite the...

Common sense is difficult to define. In business, people with unique and quirky ideas can run into a lot of negativity based on common sense. A few years ago it was the stupid idea of putting a camera in a phone. Common sense said it would never work people who want to make a phone call don't want to buy a camera. Then there was the idiot idea of fancy coffee. Who's going to pay 5 for something wi...

When people visit New Orleans and drive in from the airport, they assume they're in New Orleans from the minute they figure out how to get on the I 10 till they get to their French Quarter accommodation. If you live in New Orleans, you wouldn't say you were in New Orleans till you got to... well, where exactly In business, the Orleans Jefferson connection can be somewhat murky too. On this edition...

The national movement away from bad eating habits has swept into New Orleans. In the town that cholesterol forgot we ve started demanding to know more about what s in what we eat and take more care in selecting what we prepare at home for ourselves and our families. Seth Hamstead opened full service butcher Cleaver and Co to source locally grown meat from producers he can go meet. From a location...

There are a lot of great reasons to live in New Orleans, but making money is not typically at the top of the list. Even though the business climate is undeniably better here now than we've seen in decades, money is not what drives most of us. But of course, we can't live without it. So thankfully there are New Orleanians who devote themselves to looking after money, and two of them are Peter s gue...

Last year Americans spent over 55 billion dollars on their pets. To put that in some sort of perspective, that's more than most countries in the world spend on their military. In New Orleans, Zeus Place is one of a number of 21st Century pet boarding and day care facilities where pets are treated somewhere between kindergarten kids and rest home residents, with activities, walks, naps and even the...

"Do something you re passionate about" is tossed about so often as the key to starting up an entrepreneurial business that it s become all but a cliche. This episode of Out to Lunch will restore your faith in the place of passion in business, and if you ve ever thought about starting up your own business, in 30 minutes you ll be inspired to run out and do it Amanda Dailey was in real estate in Tex...

Drew Bevolo is the current torch carrier of his family firm, Bevolo Gas and Electric Lights, founded in 1945. Burt Benrud is the current head the family business Cafe du Monde which started up in the 1860 s. These two standard bearers of New Orleans enduring icons talk about the present, the future, and entrepreneur NOLA Pie Guy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Orleans annual Entrepreneur Week is a week long throw down of entrepreneurs and the men and women who love them. Resembling a melange of New York s Fashion Week, TED talks, and Cirque du Soleil of business, classes and seminars fill out the day around the star events where NOLA entrepreneurs get to pitch their Idea Village labeled "crazy ideas" in front of venture capitalists and the general p...

We talk a lot in New Orleans about the "rebirth" of the city but before the city was re born it was born. The architects of what we all agree is our remarkably beautiful city were just that architects. The major architects of today s New Orleans are renaissance men and women. An eye for beauty and an ability to translate that into an engineerable design, once thought to be a singularly rare talent...

Sure, we all know New Orleans business is doing better than it ever has, but in your wildest imaginings of exactly what that means it s unlikely you ve had any idea that "they sky s the limit" has in the last few years gone from being a visionary fantasy to an aerospace reality. While many of us are still evoking the credentials of being the birthplace of jazz and the cocktail, two extraordinary l...

Hubig's isn't what the rest of the country thinks of as pie. It's a single serving deep fried envelope of home made pastry and pie filling, sealed in a wax paper bag. And it's not sold in bakeries, but in all kinds of stores all over town. After Katrina, the return of Hubig's Pies was heralded as a milestone in our recovery. And so it was a community tragedy on July 27th 2012 when Hubig's factory...

Ocean front property is desirable, unless the ocean is meant to be hundreds of miles from your front door. Webster Pierce Jr is the inventor of a hunk of plastic called the Wave Robber. Anchored off the coast of rapidly disappearing Louisiana land, it upends the natural process of waves washing away land by robbing them of their power, but unlike a traditional breakwater, siphons the silt out of t...

Would you like an article about yourself in the New York Times Betsie Gambel can make that happen. Would you like to own Mardi Gras Josh Mayer will take care of that for you. Peter, Josh, and Betsie delve into PR, branding, marketing, advertising, NOLA Mad Men and Women, and lend their substantial skills to startup business Clear the Clutter. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Orleans is a city torn between upholding traditions and embracing change. In this Tale of Two Jonathans, Jonathan Bertuccelli s Studio 3 creates centuries old papier mache art in the form of elegant Mardi Gras floats while Jonathan Schudmak s NOLA 3D Printing creates our plastic future. In the Pay It Forward segment of the show Peter, Paper Jonathan, and Plastic Jonathan weigh in on how best t...

Did you know New Orleans is America s second favorite spot for destination weddings There s a whole industry built on folks coming here to get hitched. At the heart of it are two New Orleans icons House of Broel and Harkins the Florist. John Harkins and Bonnie Broel join Peter Ricchiuti for a lunch time chat that swings from brides on their wedding day to wives doing things with floral preservativ...

Latona Giwa from Birthmark Doula Collective breaks down the A B C sections of the NOLA baby biz. Angelle Missios, NOLA Birth Photographer, is there to capture baby s first breath and first Facebook post. In the Pay It Forward segment of the show Peter, Angelle, and Latona take a look at The Elmer Group s Nerium. For dessert, co founder of Birthmark Doulas, Dana Keren, joins the postpartum party. S...

In 4 years Lauren Thom has taken Fleurty Girl from a bedroom in the front of her house on Oak Street to 5 stores citywide. At a time when the term "T shirt shop"was synonymous with "bottom feeding scum," representative of everything that was wrong with New Orleans tourist centered economy, Lauren turned T shirt economics on its head, pitching her product at locals, with dopey tourist slogans like...

David Darragh is President and CEO of Reily Foods. Even if Reily Foods is not a household name you probably have some of their products in your household. La Luzianne Tea, French Market Coffee, CDM Coffee, Blue Plate Mayonnaise and many more. Erik Frank is a former USA weightlifting champion who bench pressed a then record setting 462 pounds so he knows a bit about getting in shape. His recently l...

The vacuum created when NASA left the Michoud facility in New Orleans East has been filled by a range of new, innovative aero space and robotic manufacturers. Among them, Crescent Unmanned Systems and NVision Solutions. Charles Easterling, co founder and CEO of Crescent Unmanned Sytems, came to lunch with his Google Glass. While you re doing whatever it is you do on a regular day, right off of the...

Cam Marston tells a great story that illustrates how our attitudes to parenting have changed today babies are brought home from the hospital strapped down in a rear facing car seat in the back seat of a car. In the previous generation babies were carried in mom s lap in the front seat while mom wore no seat belt and smoked a cigarette. Cam is an authority on the relationships between generations a...

The post Hurricane Katrina world of demolishing New Orleans buildings and hauling truckloads of rubble off to a landfill isn t a male dominated industry, it s a male only industry. At least it was until Simone Bruni came along. A party planner with no parties to plan in 2006 Simone started out with nothing more than a notion, a few pink yard signs, and a business name that would capitalize on her...

Pres Kabacoff and his company HRI Properties have had an enormous impact on the city of New Orleans as diverse as building Beau Chene on the Northshore, pioneering inner city living by bringing back the Warehouse District, converting the Blue Plate Maynonaise factory to artist lofts and creating The Healing Center in Bywater. Pres also has a vision for the big picture development of the city. Excl...

The film business continues to grow so quickly that the term "Hollywood South" is becoming less of a quaint marketing moniker and more literally true with every movie that shoots here. Giant productions like Jurassic Park II and The Arnold Schwarzenegger franchise Terminator numbers 4, 5, and 6 are on the way. Part of the reason for Hollywood South s growth is financial State tax credits and the o...

Chris Schulz's [Voodoo Ventures][link1] is an angel investor and founder of NOLA IT-central [Launchpad][link2]. Once you're up and running McKenzie Coco's [FSC Interactive][link3] will get you noticed. As will your hip sunglasses from [Krewe du Optic][link4]. [link1]: http://www.voodooventures.com/ [link2]: http://lp.co/ [link3]: http://www.fscinteractive.com/ [link4]: http://www.kreweduoptic.com/...