It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch

When we text each other we use acronyms and abbreviations like OMG and LOL to convey meaning and emotion. And then there’s IRL – In Real Life. We use that to signal that we know the difference between the digital universe and reality. Online, you can play a first-person-shooter game with other people. In real life, you can join the US military and learn to use an M4 assault rifle. It’s the standard issue weapon designed to shoot and kill enemy combatants. It doesn’t get much more IRL than that. Right? Well, not exactly. You see, it turns out that buying guns and ammo to train soldiers for combat is expensive. Training soldiers on simulated weapons is cheaper. And you can hook up a simulated weapon to digital equipment that gives trainers all kinds of information about the trainee’s performance. Here's the thing, though. You can make a fake gun that looks, feels and makes a noise like a real assault weapon, but it doesn’t actually perform like an assault weapon. Because when you fire it, it doesn’t kick back. Or at least it didn’t, until Hahnville High graduate Kyle Monti invented and wrote the patent for the Electromagnetic Recoil System. This technology now forms the basis of Kyle’s New Orleans company, Haptech. Haptech creates warfighter training technology. In 2023 the company was awarded an $11m contract to develop weapon simulators for the US Army and Marine Corps. The entertainment industry also seems determined to blur the line between the digitally delivered universe and IRL. In the movie theater, and in what we now call home theater, visual effects and sophisticated sound systems are designed to give us an immersive experience. The creators of the content and the hardware want to make us feel like we’re really there - whether that’s on a football field or another planet. It hasn’t always been this way. If you’re old enough, you might remember going to Blockbuster and renting a movie on videocassette, which you’d bring home and play on a small TV with a single small speaker. If you were immersed in anything back then, it was the fun you were having watching the movie with your friends or family. Eden Chubb is trying to bring that kind of immersive experience back. Her Garden District store, Future Shock Video, has over 2,000 titles on VHS and DVD that you can rent by the week. Kyle's digital weapons business and warfighter training technology might tempt us to say, “This is not your grandfather’s New Orleans.” But, actually, Haptech's office is on Andrew Higgins Boulevard. Whether that’s coincidence or intentional, it makes the point that New Orleans is no stranger to innovative military design and manufacturing. And when we’re talking about Eden's movie rental business, there’s no doubt - it’s intentionally your grandfather’s New Orleans. These two folks couldn’t be in much more unrelated types of businesses, but they’re both making equally unique contributions to the economy and lifestyle of our unique city. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The common wisdom we’re taught when starting up a business is, “Solve a problem that needs solving.” But the truly exceptional success stories of our time have not followed this advice. When Coca Cola came along, nobody who was enjoying a long, cool glass of lemonade was clamoring for a sweet, syrupy, brown drink. When Uber came along people weren’t fantasizing about getting into a car with a total stranger. And when Jeff Bezos started selling books online, nobody in their right mind would give their credit card number to a person they didn’t know on the world wide web. At the end of the day, it wasn’t Bezos’ ability as a salesman that convinced people to trust Amazon, it was the invention of a piece of software called “encryption” that made it safer to give your credit card to Amazon than to a server in a restaurant. Today there are other online companies poised to capitalize on the next technological change to e-commerce. One of those is a local startup called Cucuron, an online art gallery based in New Orleans, founded by Megan Manning.  You might ask, “How many people are going to pay $2,000 for a piece of artwork based on a photo on a phone?” Maybe not a whole lot, but… When augmented reality and virtual reality become a part of our device’s operating system – which they definitely will at some point – looking at a piece of art online will be exactly, in every way, like looking at a piece of art on the wall in a gallery. Whether or not Cucuron becomes the Amazon of art is unknowable. But it’s building the architecture ready for the day when buying art online is as second-nature as buying the shoes, furniture, and mattresses people at one point said they would never buy online. Over 55% of e-commerce shoppers say the reason they buy online is, “home delivery.” Maybe it’s the legacy of the pandemic, maybe it’s the influence of Gen Z., but more of our lives these days seem to be home-centric. Very few New Orleanians know more about the many notions of “home” than Kristin Palmer. Kristin was Executive Director of an organization called Rebuilding Together. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Kristin led over 10,000 volunteers who rebuilt hurricane-damaged structures so New Orleanians could come home. In 2010 Kristin was elected to the New Orleans City Council. She represented District C which includes the French Quarter, the Marigny, Treme, Bywater and Algiers. In 2014 she founded Bargeboard, a home renovation and restoration company whose goal is to keep Old Algiers affordable and accessible through historic renovation, recycling and reuse. Bargeboard is a culmination of a lifetime of Kristin’s New Orleans-centric personal and professional passions. In the 1940’s, Abraham Maslow, a psychology professor, came up with a pyramid-shape explanation of human existence which has come to be known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. On the bottom level of the pyramid are the most basic needs, including shelter – a home. At the top is something Maslow called Self Actualization, which includes creativity, like producing art. Maslow’s interpretation of human existence has become a foundational teaching in understanding human motivation and behavior. But, if any place on earth was to challenge Maslow’s conventional wisdom, it would be New Orleans. Here, our homes are of course vital, but an equally vital part of our lives - that makes New Orleans New Orleans - is music, beauty, and art. So, although both Megan's and Kristin's businesses – Bargeboard and Cucuron – theoretically represent the extreme poles of human existence, our lived experience here in New Orleans rates them as equally essential to our everyday lives. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is fear? Fear is a natural response to a perception of danger. All creatures on earth have it. We use fear to spur us into action - to run or take other steps to save our lives. There are many studies listing specific fears of different societies. Believe it or not, here in the United Sates, one of our greatest fears is public speaking. In numerous studies, the fear of public speaking ranks number one – higher even than the fear of death. I’m not a psychologist, sociologist or neuroscientist so I’m not about to embark on an exploration of why that is, but I do know there are ways to conquer this fear. And it is worth conquering. The inability to express yourself when you have something to say can severely impact your career. In New Orleans, Chris Trew is an improv comedian who, alongside his comedy career, has turned his talents toward teaching communication skills. Chris conducts workshops for people in business. His goal is to help a business person become a better communicator, a better leader in their field, and to learn to embrace and enjoy attention rather than fear it. In the world of New Orleans comedy, comedian Nicolo Giardina is known as “Pickle.” The name was inspired by a rap song and cemented by fellow inmates when Pickle spent time in jail, the result of a decade-long career in sales - in the drug business. Today, rather than sit around and wait for the phone to ring to be booked at a local comedy club, Pickle has crossed over to the other side of the microphone and produces comedy shows. These shows are principally called Roast Beefin’.  Roast Beefin’s are comedy roasts where two comedians battle each other in a kind of cutting competition. You can see Roast Beefin’ mostly at the Hi Ho –Lounge - where it’s been anchored since 2020. Although producing comedy shows in what is principally a music venue and bar in St Claude might sound like a fun way to make a living, Pickle describes the local comedy industry as “competitive and ruthless.” In 1946 a show opened on Broadway called Annie Get Your Gun. A number of songs from that show have survived to this day. Maybe the most well-known is a song called “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” On the one hand the song is a love letter to the world of live performance. And on the other, it’s a wry observation of the kind of addiction behavior that seems to underlie the world of entertainers. This verse might say it best:“Even with a turkey that you know will foldYou may be stranded out in the coldBut still you wouldn't change it for a sack of goldLet's go on with the show” Chris and Pickle, as producers of comedy in New Orleans, have both chosen a tough path. But although it might sound trite, it’s true – somebody has to do it. We need comedy, and comedy demands comedians.  Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When you have a business that sells a product, you have two choices. You can try and sell it to everyone earth, like Coca Cola, or you can concentrate on a more targeted market. The Coca Cola model is called Mass Marketing. The targeted approach is called Niche Marketing. Sometimes businesses say they have a niche market as a euphemism for the fact that very few people are buying their product. But there are businesses whose products are legitimately very niche. Like, for example, human breast milk. Human breastmilk is intended to be consumed orally by human offspring. But it also has other applications. For example, it can be an ingredient in medicinal soap. When Shay Franklin had a baby, she discovered she was an over-producer of breast milk. When her 4 month of old daughter, Nova, was diagnosed with psoriasis and eczema, Shay used her surplus supply to make breastmilk soap. The soap worked miracles for baby Nova’s skin condition, and Shay started selling her bars of soap to other people in need, on Tik Tok and at local farmer’s markets. But even an over-producer only has so much breast milk. So, Shay came up with other recipes. Today her company, Shay’s Organics, has a line of skincare products including soaps, scrubs, cleansers, body butter, and more. It seems popular these days for people who care about their diet to eat what is called a “plant-based diet.” If there’s a growing number of people who predominantly eat plants, in a sort of horticultural revenge, there’s also a growing interest in plants who eat meat. Beyond the well-known Venus Fly Trap, there are in fact a whole range of carnivorous plants. And there’s a niche market of folks who love and care for them. Locally, these folks shop at a business called, We Bite Rare & Unusual Plants. The owner of We Bite is Carlos Detres. One of the knocks against living in a small city like New Orleans – compared to, say, Los Angeles or New York - is the limited range of goods and services available in a smaller place. The logic is, with a smaller population you have a smaller market to sell to. At some point the scale just gets too small to sustain a business for products that aren’t in great demand. But when your whole reason for existing at all is a niche market – say, Black and Latina women with discerning organic skincare tastes, or self-identifying strange and peculiar people looking for carnivorous plants and fellow travelers – traditional market logic ceases to apply. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’ve lived in New Orleans for any length of time, you’ve experienced your share of natural disasters. We even measure time here by hurricanes. We put events in context by describing them, for example, as “Before Katrina” or “After Ida.” After each one of these disasters, affected homeowners make a claim with their insurance company. Now, I don’t like to generalize, and I don’t have any statistical information to back this up, but I’m pretty sure you’ll agree with me on this… Even though insurance companies are technically in competition, the ones who are still writing policies in Louisiana seem to have adopted increasingly sophisticated justifications for reducing the amounts of money they pay out after a disaster. Most of us who make claims and get denied throw up our hands and say, “What can you do?” But Jonathan Frazier is not taking “denied” for an answer. Jonathan is Co-Founder of Forefront 360, a company created by a team of former insurance adjusters whose aim is to provide tools and services to property owners to get their property insurance ducks in a row before a storm hits. So that when it comes time to make a claim, the insurance company doesn’t have a way to wriggle out of it. When we’re not dealing with the preparation for, or aftermath of, a disaster, we New Orleanians are justifiably well-known for our propensity to celebrate the pleasures of life.  One of those pleasures is going out to eat. When it comes to your favorite restaurant, you might be familiar with who owns it, the names of the chefs, bartenders, and your favorite servers. But one question you probably can’t answer is, “Who built the kitchen?”  There’s very little more vital to the operational success of a restaurant than it’s kitchen. In New Orleans - and around the country too - a company called The Kitchen Guys has been designing and building commercial kitchens for 50 years. One half of their nationwide business is here in New Orleans, so there’s a pretty good chance The Kitchen Guys had a hand in building the kitchen at your favorite restaurant. The President of the Kitchen Guys is Dustin Bennett. In most places, people like to categorize things into groups of two. Black or white. Tall or short. Rich or poor. And so on. In New Orleans, we have our own pairs of things we use to bracket life here. But you’ll notice we don’t use the word “or” to differentiate elements. We use the word “and” to amplify them. Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. The Marigny and The Quarter. The Saints and The Pelicans. Although it might seem slightly less obvious, two other significant, quintessential New Orleans experiences are hurricanes and restaurants. Although one is something nobody wants to experience and the other is something we all love to experience, they’re both woven into the fabric of life here. Living in New Orleans means at some point in your week you’ll be considering a restaurant, and at some point in your life you’ll inevitably be affected by a natural disaster. So it's good to know Dustin and Jonathan have our back. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the course of childhood, we have innumerable experiences. We spend a portion of our adult lives trying to recover from the ones that scar us. But there are also positive experiences. Joyful times and meaningful relationships stay with us. They come to define happiness. For Brittney Hawkins Dobard, one of her happy-place emotional touchstones was with her grandmother in her kitchen, baking cookies. As a kid, Brittney called her grandmother, “MoMo Gerald.” As an adult, Brittney was in car sales. When you’re a car salesperson, your customer spends a bunch of time waiting around. To make the wait less painful, Brittney started bringing her customers homemade cookies. Like MoMo Gerald used to bake. In 2019, Brittney realized her cookies were so popular - and she enjoyed making them so much - that she quit selling cars and started up NOLA Cookie Co. Today NOLA Cookie Co cranks out up to 800 cookies a week. They sell them from their website, ship them across the country, and supply the Virgin Hotel with 300 cookies a month. Margie Tillman Ayres called her grandmother, “Granny.”  But she started out following her in grandfather’s footsteps, as a jewelry designer. It was only when Margie was struggling and out of necessity took a job in the art department at Jazz Fest that she discovered how much she enjoyed recreating her childhood days with Granny, painting, making sculptures and puppets. In 2014 Margie made it official – she become an artist, muralist and illustrator, starting up her own company, Margie and The Moon. You’ll see Margie’s work all over New Orleans – from murals at places like the restaurant Mr. Mao and music venue The Broadside – to her scenic work in movies and TV shows that are shot here. You’ve probably also seen her commercial work as an illustrator and her graphic designs for companies as diverse as Pyrex and Trader Joe’s. Margie’s style is immediately recognizable. It’s a unique whimsicality executed with realist perfection. Margie is currently committing this style to canvases as she moves away from illustration and toward selling her pieces as fine art. When you’re a parent or grandparent, you know that your kids or grandkids are constantly observing you. And absorbing everything. At least until they’re teenagers, when that totally flips. But when they’re young kids you never know what seemingly inconsequential thing you say or do is going to stick with them and resonate through their lives. And maybe even form the basis of an entire career. Brittney and Margie's grandmothers, MoMo Gerald and Granny, might be  surprised at the influence they’ve had on their grandaughter's lives and careers, but they’d certainly be proud.  Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

No matter which side of the political fence you’re on, there’s probably one thing you and your friends on the other side agree on. And that is, you can’t believe anything you see, read, or hear in the news anymore. At least, you don’t believe anything on the channels they subscribe to. And they don’t believe anything anyone says on your side. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an organization that researched issues and published unbiased facts, without ideological partisanship or a devotion to page-views or ratings? Well, guess what? There is! And it’s right here in New Orleans. It’s the Bureau of Governmental Research. The name might not have the zing of an exciting-sounding operation, but BGR’s reporting has a multi-million dollar impact, in New Orleans and beyond. BGR’s President, CEO, and current Samuel Zemurray Chair in Research Leadership, is Rebecca Mowbray. It’s hard to overstate the amount of time each of us spends doing research these days. We’ve shortened the term “research” to simply “search” and, if you’re like most people, you search e-commerce sites; you search restaurants to go out to eat, or delivery services to order in; you search for a plumber, you search the news, the weather, and the list scrolls on… This is mostly time you spend alone. But when you look up from your computer or your phone, maybe you’d like to discuss your opinions with another person. Or, maybe you’d like to learn from an expert – an actual human - whose knowledge comes from education and experience, beyond the internet. If you’re a woman in New Orleans, there’s a place where you can do all of this. It’s called Salon22. Salon 22 is a professional women’s club and idea hub, co-founded by 4 women - one of whom is Salon 22’s CEO, Fay Kimbrell. Because in our regular lives most of us tell the truth most of the time, we tend to believe other people are telling us the truth most of the time, too. But, when it comes to news or information sources, it’s a different story. According to Pew Research, 86% of Americans get at least some of their news online. But only 7% of us trust that what we’re seeing is true. So, the cliché complaint, “Nobody believes anything anymore,” is actually pretty accurate. Here’s another interesting statistic. Do you know what the most trusted online news site is? The Weather Channel. So, if you want trusted, reliable information, other than the weather, where do you go? One answer is, the Bureau of Governmental Research. And if you’re looking for a place to sit and absorb this information, or people to network with, to learn from and discuss things with, you can go to Salon 22. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before the advent of e-commerce, the only way you could buy something was to go to a store.  Manufacturers wholesaled products to retailers, and retailers added a profit margin, which became the price consumers paid. When e-commerce came along, some manufacturers realized they could cut out the middleman - and the term “direct to consumer” was born. Because consumers are used to paying retail, manufacturers who sell direct-to-consumer charge retail prices - substantially increasing their profit margin. If this model works for furniture, electronics, and sports shoes, why couldn’t it work for art? Artists typically get paid nothing at all for their work, until their artwork sells, at which time they give the retailer – typically a gallery owner – 50% of the sale price. New Orleans artist Amanda Stone Talley is rewriting that business model. She cuts out the retail middleman by having her own gallery. And she’s built a website with an e-commerce function that offers a direct-to-consumer experience that’s as easy as shopping on Amazon.  If you don’t like business as usual, start your own business, and do it your own way. That was Michael Newcomer’s response to moving to New Orleans. He was planning on working as an actor in what he thought was going to be a thriving, well-paid theater scene. When he got here - after being an actor in Los Angeles and New York - Michael found the New Orleans theater scene was neither thriving nor well-paid. So, in 2022 he co-founded, and today is Executive Director of, Crescent City Stage. The company bills itself as Louisiana’s first fully professional regional theater, offering paid Theatrical Union jobs. In the early days of the mostly tech-driven entrepreneurial renaissance of the early two-thousands, we heard a lot about “disruption.” Ride-sharing disrupted the taxi industry. Streaming disrupted the music industry. Food delivery services disrupted the restaurant industry. When entrepreneurs went looking for financial backing back then, if investors didn’t see a potential for disruption, they didn’t see potential for success. Today we don’t hear much about disruption. Not so much because everything has been disrupted already, but because this kind of up-ending, innovative business thinking has become normalized. So, when people like Amanda set about disrupting the commerce of art, or Michael set sabout disrupting the landscape of local theater, we no longer look at it as revolutionary. But, actually, it is revolutionary. And it takes the same level of vision and courage as it always has to forge a new path. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When you start a business that sells a product, the first thing you have to do is resolve a contradiction. On the one hand, you want to sell a product everybody needs. On the other hand, if it’s so vital that everybody needs it, they’ve probably already got it. What you have to do is convince a consumer that when they need to replace whatever-it-is, they need to try your product. Because your product is different. This difference is what’s called “differentiation.” Pretty simple. And obvious. It’s what differentiates your hopefully ubiquitous product from everybody else’s. When it came to Jacob Lawson’s flooring company, he decided that what makes his, mostly industrial, polished concrete flooring different from everybody else’s is, his floors are extraordinary. That’s why he changed the name of his company from Big Jake Affordable Flooring, to Extraordinary Flooring. That was in the early two-thousands. If I was to read the names of companies Extraordinary Flooring has made floors for, it would take up half of this show. Suffice to say, if you live in New Orleans, or even visit here, you’ve almost certainly walked on an Extraordinary Floor. Here are just a few examples: The Superdome. The Convention Center. The World War II Museum. Hilton Hotels. Ochsner Hospital. Touro Hospital. Rouse’s Supermarkets. French Truck Coffee. New Orleans Original Daiquiris. Southern University. Lockheed Martin Stennis Space Center… You get the idea. Jacob Lawson is also the author of the how-I-did-it book, “Make It Extraordinary: 27 Life Changing Lessons That Will Elevate You Beyond The Ordinary." Now we’re going to apply this same differentiator principle to women’s underwear. I’m not going to presume to be an authority on this statistic, but I’d hazard an educated guess that most women wear underwear. So, that seems like a good place to start if, like Mindy Christie, you’re going to start up a new lingerie business. Mindy launched her lingerie business in New Orleans in 2020 under the brand name, Furious Viola. In 2023 she re-branded, as undergoodies. (The all-lower-case spelling is a marketing decision.) The undergoodies differentiator is, these undergarments don’t look like anything you see at Victoria’s Secret. They’re not skimpy thongs - nor are they designed to necessarily disappear and be invisible under clothes. They’re not in traditional white, neutral or black - they’re brightly colored. A generation-or-two ago these styles of lingerie were known as pettipants and pettislips. Undergoodies are retro, with updated designs that make them current fashion. People are buying them in stores in 11 states and online at the undergoodies website. Mindy and Jacob are at very different points on the timelines of their businesses. Jacob is able to talk - and write - about the extraordinary successes he's had with Extraordinary Flooring. Mindy is in the building phase of undergoodies, but extraordinary success doesn’t seem to be too far away. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In New Orleans we pride ourselves on our extensive array of live entertainment. According to music media company, Off Beat, and tourist authority New Orleans & Company, on any given night we have, on average, 100 places to hear live music. If New York City had the same per capita number of live music venues, they’d have 800. In fact, they have 1,100. Ok, so we’re not beating New York, but we’re in the same ballpark, and that’s impressive for a medium-size city. How about live theater? If, per capita, we had as many options to go see a play in New Orleans as they do in New York, we’d have 142 live theater stages. In fact, we have fewer than 20. So, what’s up with that? In a city whose Mardi Gras parades are among the biggest live street theater events in the world, why do we have so little traditional theater? Rob DeViney might be able to shed some light on that question. Rob is Executive Director of Jefferson Performing Arts. In New Orleans there’s a long-running intersection of theater and business – in the person of larger-than-life characters who own or represent businesses. Folks like, Al Scramuzza from Seafood City. The Special Man from Frankie & Johnnie’s Furniture. Restaurateurs Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse. Ronnie Lamarque the crooning car salesman. Al Copeland. Chris Owens. Morris Bart. The list goes on. The newest addition to it, is Bougie Man Bourgeois. The Bougie Man is an import from Cajun country where he developed his meat product, Bougie Bologna. Unlike other bologna, which is apparently made from the cuts of meat discarded from traditional butchering, Bougie Bologna is made from 100% pork shoulder. The slogan summarizing this differentiation was originally, “Butthole free.” Apparently, the USDA frowned on that, so now Bougie Bologna is described somewhat more prosaically as, “no mystery meat or byproducts.” The Bougie Man is the alter ego of Ross Brown, who is also the creator of Bougie Bologna. In New Orleans business, like the rest of New Orleans, we’re no strangers to contradiction. The same local companies will sponsor the health-driven Crescent City Classic road race, and the Red Dress Run, an athletic event that’s also an alcohol-fueled celebration of cross-dressing. We don’t think it’s unusual for a CEO of a serious business to also be an active member of a seriously fun-centric Mardi Gras krewe. A great deal of our city’s revenue comes from tourists who come here to party. But we’re also on reputable entrepreneurial lists as one of the best cities to start a business. In this New Orleans tradition of occupational antithesis, Rob and Ross are great representatives of both the business of theater, and the theater of business. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are a number of ways of becoming a New Orleanian. You can be born here. You can marry someone from here. You can go to high school here – that’s a uniquely New Orleans badge of belonging - and then there’s a phenomenon called Magnetic Migration. That’s a term I coined to describe how certain people are inexplicably drawn here. You know these folks when you meet them. They’re so obviously New Orleanian, you can’t imagine them living anywhere else. Like Brent Houzenga and Jensen Reyes. Pop Art Brent moved here from Des Moines, Iowa. He was such a larger-than-life character there, they made a documentary about him. Although to be fair to Des Moines, he’d make a good subject for a documentary anywhere, even here. Brent is best described as a pop artist. You may have seen his work driving around. And by that, I don’t mean his murals or street art – although you can see those too - I mean you’ll see his art, literally, driving around. On cars. All kinds of cars. Painted with layers of colored squiggles, straight lines, polka dots, and stenciled faces. At first glance these cars look like they’ve been randomly graffiti-ed. But when you look more closely, you see there’s definitely an artist’s hand at work. It's this kind of sly intelligence hiding in a punk rock aesthetic that runs through a lot of Brent Houzenga’s work. Yarn Jensen Reyes was living in Seattle. She worked as a hair colorist. And took up knitting as a hobby. When she moved to New Orleans in 2020, Jensen was able to combine both those skills. She started a business called Sugarplum Circus. Jensen called it that so it would be a vague enough umbrella to cover any kind of creative output. Sugarplum Circus has turned out to be a micro-dyer. The company makes dyed-to-order fine yarns. You can buy their hand-dyed yarn at their website, and exclusively at a store in the French Quarter called The Quarter Stitch. The Quarter Stitch is a destination for people from across the country looking for fashion yarn. And online there’s a population of millions of yarn users – many of them are young women who make their own clothes and congregate around #MeMade. In this universe, Jensen and Sugarplum Circus are stars. You might remember, back in 2015 there was an online viral phenomenon called “The Dress.” It was an image of a dress, and there was a massive debate as to whether this dress was white and gold, or blue and black. What we learned from that was – if you’ll pardon the expression – color is not black and white. It’s not objective. It’s subjective. And can be uniquely personal. Whether it’s the color of a piece of clothing made from yarn Jensen has dyed, or the colors of a painted car or piece of artwork Brent created, our responses to color, and to works of art, can shape our day, our mood, and even our sense of well-being. And they and their businesses certainly brighten up our city.  Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Drew Brees was The Saints’ quarterback he was regularly out and about in New Orleans. If you ran into him, you couldn’t help noticing that for a guy who had such a dominating presence on a football field, there didn’t seem to be anything physically exceptional about him. But when he played the game, Drew had an ability to size up what was happening, and he could see opportunities that other players couldn’t.  There are similar types of people in business. Seemingly regular guys who are looking at the same business landscape we’re all looking at, but somehow, they see multiple opportunities most of us don’t. And they create multiple successful businesses in a way most business-people can’t. For example, Jayson Seidman and Alex Pomes.  Jayson Seidman is founder and Principal Managing Partner of a company called Sandstone. With offices in the Texas hill country and New Orleans, Sandstone principally develops boutique hotels and commercial mixed-use properties. They have hotels in Texas, New York, New Orleans, Costa Rica, and Australia. Here in New Orleans, their properties include The Drifter, The Hotel Saint Vincent, The Frenchmen, and Columns – till recently known as The Columns Hotel – which is where Peter, Alex, and Jayson had lunch while recording this podcast.  Jayson’s mother is from New Orleans. His dad went to Tulane. Jayson grew up in Houston, where he was a child actor at Theater Under The Stars, which calls itself “Houston’s home for musical theater.” Alex Pomes is also a one-time musical theater actor turned entrepreneur. Alex is a New Orleans native who graduated from NOCCA in musical theater. His first taste of business was cinnamon. In 2010, Alex was hired as website manager, social media point person and Brand Ambassador for a then small whisky company, called Fireball.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that the marketing of Fireball Whisky is one of the most successful alcohol marketing campaigns, ever. In 2011 Fireball had under $2m in sales. By 2014, sales were $800m. That experience gave Alex the confidence to launch his own alcohol label, Ghost Tequila. It’s tequila that’s actually made in Tequila Mexico, infused with Ghost Peppers. Alex is also the founder of a local marketing company, RAPJAB, that specializes in creative campaigns for breweries, bars and events. And Alex is the co-founder of NOLA Underground Pickleball, the no-frills community-driven pickleball league whose sponsors range from White Claw to Walmart. If there’s one thing we’re not short of in New Orleans, it’s people with a story to tell. Whether you’re at a music festival, waiting for a parade to roll by, or just in line at the supermarket, the New Orleanian next to you is happy to talk to you. And - often without much encouragement - they’ll more-than-likely tell you something fascinating. But, even in this city of storytellers and stories, it’s hard to beat the variety of tales and business ventures from Jayson and Alex.  Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When you walk into just about any interior space in the US – from the biggest office building to the smallest apartment – you’re almost certain to find art hanging on the walls. And not just one piece. From your doctor’s waiting room to your sister’s bedroom, you’ll typically find multiple works of art. Sure, they’re not all paintings, some of them are posters or prints, but at some point, each one had to be created by an artist. Only around 1% of the US workforce are artists. So, with limited availability and high demand you’d expect artists to be highly paid. Most of them, though, are not. The reason might be something to do with the business model by which visual artists get paid. In the film business, actors, directors, and writers pay agents a commission of 10% of their income. Musicians pay booking agents 10% of their income. Directors of commercials pay their business representatives 18% commission. If you’re a visual artist, you’ll pay your business representative – typically a gallery owner – a commission of 50% of the sale price of your artwork. How does an artist survive in this kind of financial setup? That's what we're asking Anastasia Pelias. Anastasia is a New Orleans born-and-raised visual artist whose paintings and sculptures are in museums and in private and public collections across the country and around the world. In New Orleans you can see Anastasia’s paintings in the permanent collections of The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art and The Newcomb Art Museum. You can see her sculptures in St. John Park in Lake Terrace, and on Poydras Street as part of the Helis Foundation’s Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition. In case you’re thinking all 50% commission art gallery owners must be hard-hearted blood-sucking mercenaries, meet Marguerite Oestreicher. Marguerite owned an art gallery in the heart of New Orleans’ art district on Julia Street, until Hurricane Katrina closed it down. In part, Marguerite credits the skills she picked up running her art gallery with her ability to perform her current job as Executive Director of New Orleans Area Habitat For Humanity. NOAHH, as it’s commonly known, has 65 full-time employees and builds around 25 homes a year. Their stated mission is, “To responsibly build communities where families can thrive in homes they can afford.” For whatever reason – maybe because it helps bring order to a chaotic world - human beings like to divide by 2. We like to put things in one category, or another. Republican or Democrat. Employed or unemployed. Artist or Businessperson. Renter or Homeowner. Marguerite's mission at Habitat For Humanity is defined by categories: moving people from one to another. From renter to homeowner. To survive as an artist, like Anastasia, you have to defy the categories of art versus business – you need to keep one foot in each world. Across all these categories, the one thing most of us have in common is, we like to live in an affordable home where we can hang our art on the walls. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Blake Langlinais at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When somebody suggests going out for a beer, you know what that means. Or, rather, you know what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean meeting up for a single beer. And after you’ve had a few beers at whichever place you decided to meet, at some point somebody will suggest moving on and going to get another beer – or two – at someplace else. The problem with this plan is, nobody should be driving a car at this point. And ride-sharing isn’t as cheap as it used to be. That’s why Elizabeth Bates launched her business, Beer Bus. Beer Bus is a hop-on-hop-off bus line that serves New Orleans craft breweries on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. It’s been running since the end of 2023 and when you pay your $10 – or $30 for unlimited rides – you can check the Beer Bus website to see where the bus is and when it will be by if you want to hop on and try another brewery. Elizabeth Bates is not just the founder of Beer Bus, she’s also the bus driver. If you’ve spent any time in the UK or around British people, you’ll be familiar with the sentence, “What you need is a nice cup of tea.” Whether there’s been a death in the family, your car broke down, or maybe you’ve gotten a giant bill you don’t know how you’re going to pay… Whatever the calamity that’s befallen you, the default old-fashioned British remedy is, “a nice cup of tea.” Well, it turns out, like many pieces of folk wisdom, there’s actually some truth to the healing power of tea. That’s the basis of Portia Cooper’s business, NOLA Botanical Tea. Portia makes specific concoctions of various strains of tea to treat particular physical ailments. There’s ginger root, elderberry, chamomile, hibiscus, and others that Portia says will remedy stress, reduce inflammation, boost your immune system, boost your energy, and much more. Normally if we say we’re going around in circles, we’re implying we’re doing the same thing over and over again and getting nowhere. But when going around in a circle is a ride on the Beer Bus - taking us from one New Orleans craft Brewery to another - we may physically end up where we started, but the ride has been anything but unproductive. On the other hand, if you have a recurring medical complaint that’s not life threatening but never seems to totally go away, you really do feel like you’re going around in circles. Maybe adding medicinal tea to your treatment would help. Whether you’re drinking New Orleans beer or New Orleans tea, it’s a triple bottom line – good for the mind, body and local business.   Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Blake Langlinais at itsneworleans.com.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the conundrums about being human is, we strive for happiness, but when something makes us happy we grow accustomed to it and, usually sooner than later, we’re looking for something else to make us happy. Whether it’s your income, your appearance, your career, or anything else in your life that can be improved, we’re trapped on what social scientists call The Hedonic Treadmill.  It’s why we buy new clothes, try new diets, take up new hobbies, why we travel, drink, take drugs… and you can list a bunch of other things that make you happy. Until they don’t. Well, what if you could get off the hedonic treadmill? What if you could find something you liked so much – say, a piece of jewelry – that makes you feel so good that you can commit to wearing it forever. That’s the concept behind a jewelry business on Magazine Street called Love Weld.  They sell what they describe as “permanent jewelry.” In the store, a customer designs a bracelet, necklace, anklet, ring, or charms, and the people at Love Weld fit it and weld it, so it’s on forever. The Sudio Lead at Love Weld is Sarah Sylve. If permanent happiness sounds ambitious, a little further down from Love Weld on Magazine Street you can make yourself feel better for an hour - and for days after - at NOLA Massage. NOLA Massage specializes in therapeutic massage, and you can also get a bunch of other treatments including detoxifying body wraps, a salt scrub, cryo treatments, and cupping. The owner - and one of 4 massage therapists at NOLA Massage - is Amy Nicole Stewart. Like a lot of things in New Orleans, it’s hard to put your finger on exactly what’s so special about Magazine Street. Basically, it’s nothing more than a relatively narrow street, not especially well landscaped, lined with stores. But, somehow, the street has a unique energy and a charismatic charm. It’s a street where locals shop, and tourists get a genuine taste of New Orleans and New Orleanians. Anyone can open a store on Magazine Street. But not just anyone does. The street seems to attract store owners who manage to combine individual flair with general functionality. Amy's and Sarah's businesses, NOLA Massage and Love Weld, are two of the most recent to have opened on Magazine Street. They both make a unique contribution to the street’s rich retail mosaic. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com. Check out Amy's children's book about Shotgun Kitties, a bunch of musical New Orleans cats, in their debut outing, Bill Bailey Please Come Home.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s a term in theater called “meta.” It’s used to describe a scenario where actors call attention to the fact they’re performing. For example, the play within a play in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Except for the name of the company that used to be Facebook, we don’t have a similar term to “meta” in business. But we do have a similar concept. We have businesses that make other businesses do better business. And we have businesses that help individuals conduct business better. One of the most common business contracts most of us navigate in everyday life is a rental or lease agreement - for a house or apartment. Signing a lease is a seemingly simple act of appending a signature. But it is in fact deceptively difficult, both for the renter and the manager of the rental property. It gets especially problematic at the end of the rental period when the renter wants their deposit back and the manager claims they can’t refund it because of the damage the renter caused to the property during the term of the lease. This is precisely why Marco Nelson and his partner created RentCheck. RentCheck is an app that a rental agency, a landlord, or a renter can use when they sign a new rental agreement. It records the rental details and, probably most importantly, photos of the property which can be compared to photos of the property when the rental period ends. There is definitive proof - in the date-stamped, cloud-based app - of what damage was there when the renter moved in, and what wasn’t. Marco and his partner founded RentCheck in New Orleans in 2019.  Today they have 24 employees. RentCheck is used by 700 property managers in the US and Canada, and manages a total of 500,000 properties. Marco and Peter first spoke in 2020 when RentCheck was getting rolling and we were doing Out to Lunch on Zoom because of the pandemic. Kristen Dufauchard grew up in New Orleans - and left for 20 years. During the time she was gone, Kristen was Associate Director of Communications for New York University and Global Marketing Lead for the market measurement company, Nielsen, where she focused on DEI and multi-cultural consumer trends. Kristen moved back to New Orleans in 2022 and discovered there are a bunch of folks back home who could use the kind of expertise she’d picked up over the previous two decades. So, she founded a corporate marketing, event planning, and training firm called aKrewe NOLA – krewe is spelled the New Orleans way – and a networking platform called The Business Exchange, where diverse professionals can make new connections, exchange ideas, and support each other. In a statistic that might make the point about how much New Orleans changed while Kristen was gone, The Business Exchange has 1,500 members – entrepreneurs, creatives, and innovators who identify as Black, Brown, LGBTQ+, or women. There was a time in New Orleans, and not so long ago, when the term “entrepreneurial ecosystem” sounded about as exotic as lobster rolls or bubble tea. Now you can get lobster rolls and bubble tea every day in New Orleans, and we most definitely have a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem. RentCheck is a great example of the type of nationwide success that’s grown out of our entrepreneurial community, and helped shape it. And aKrewe NOLA and The Business Exchange are building on the city’s first-generation entrepreneurial foundation, taking it to more places and including more people. Thanks to the efforts and talents of people like both Marco and Kristen and the success of their companies, New Orleans is continuing to be a great place to start and grow a business. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’re a theater kid in high school and decide that’s what you want to do with the rest of your life, you’re familiar with the moment you tell your family you’re taking out college loans to major in theater. Even your most supportive parent can’t hide a fleeting grimace as they think, “You may see yourself becoming a great writer or actor but the only role you’re writing for yourself is a person whose actual career will be waiting tables.” Jenni Jenni Daniel started down this path. In fact, she went a long way down it. Jenni has an MA in Theater, from the University of London. Before she got too far into table-waiting, Jenni got another post-graduate degree. This one was an MBA from the A.B.Freeman School of Business at Tulane University. Today, Jenni is Vice President of Institutional Advancement at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. In an organization of 29 staff members who work to financially support access to arts, culture, education and history in Louisiana, Jenni’s responsible for private and corporate fundraising. And she manages the marketing team. Jenna Dr. Jenna Winston, went to Tulane too. Jenna had the foresight to study a subject that leads to a professional career. She earned a Ph.D in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. When Jenna graduated from college, what did she do? She went into theater! Jenna is the founder of New Orleans Youth Theater, made up of theater kids between the ages of 4-18. And it’s a rare type of theater company – nobody has to audition to get in. Any kid who wants to attend is accepted. If they can’t afford the approximately $400 per semester tuition, the theater will help with a needs-based scholarship. Jenna founded New Orleans Youth Theater in 2022. Members of the company learn voice, dance and acting, and perform full-length musicals. And, despite what you might assume, New Orleans Youth Theater is not a non-profit. It’s a legit, for-profit business that makes legit theater. Louisiana Chronicles The relationship between New Orleans and Louisiana is unique. In most other cities in the US, people naturally append the name of the state to the name of their hometown. Austin Texas. Miami Florida. Denver Colorado. You very rarely hear anyone here describe our city as anything other than, simply, New Orleans. That’s because, if there is a typical Louisiana city, New Orleans isn’t it. Actually, it’s hard to put your finger on what a typical Louisiana city or town would be. The lifestyles and culture in places like Alexandria and Shreveport are vastly different from other communities, like Eunice or Venice. Celebrating these differences and weaving them into a commonality among all of us in the 64 parishes of Louisiana is what the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities is all about. And celebrating the differences among a vast array of New Orleans kids and melding them into a common purpose of artistic expression is what New Orleans Youth Theater is all about. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr Nicolas Bazan is a world-renowned neuroscientist with a research lab in Stockholm Sweden and another here in New Orleans. When Dr Bazan was a guest on Out to Lunch, he pointed out that, compared to other fields of medicine, treatment for conditions of the human brain are at a primitive stage. For example, the current standard of care for Traumatic Brain Injury is “rest.” Part of the reason there’s no medication for neurological conditions like dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons is the way pharmacological research is conducted. For obvious reasons, there are rigorous controls on the development of neurological drugs before they’re allowed to be tested on humans. The only new medications that are allowed to be trialed by humans are ones that have proven safe in trials on animals. But an astounding 94% of these neurological drugs fail - because preclinical results on animals can’t predict results in humans. It’s with this is mind that Lowry Curley founded his revolutionary biomedical research company, AxoSim. AxoSim simulates brain cells, so drug developers can try out a drug on a human brain without having an actual human being attached to it. We last talked to Lowry when this was all just getting off the ground, in 2016, a couple of years after the company was founded in New Orleans. Today, AxoSim has two laboratories, 30 employees, 3 separate research divisions, and a bunch of industry-leading patents. The human brain is a delicate organ. That’s why it’s housed in a hard case: the skull. But there are some activities where even the skull and a protective helmet aren’t enough to prevent the brain from getting injured. One of those activities is military combat. Veterans who lose limbs in combat have established pathways to recovery. But veterans with brain injury, spinal cord injury, or other neurological conditions can go undiagnosed. Veterans who struggle with these issues find themselves isolated and lonely – part of the reason for the high rate of veteran suicide. Here in New Orleans a program called Headway is setting out to solve these issues by placing affected veterans in a purpose-built housing development, called Bastion Community of Resilience. It's a $14m, five-and-a-half acre neighborhood of homes in Gentilly in which veterans with neurological wounds live among other veterans, and volunteers. We spoke with the founder of Bastion, Dylan Tete, back in 2016 when the site was under construction. Today Bastion is a living neighborhood and we’re joined by it’s Executive Director, Jackson Smith. For a medium-sized city in the south of the United States, New Orleans gets a lot of publicity. Most of it - even when it’s generated by our own city and state agencies - focuses on what a great place New Orleans is to eat, drink, and listen to music. And, it is. But we’re so much more than that. One of these days maybe we’ll also be recognized for being the home of AxoSim, a company that’s revolutionizing neurological medical research, and the Bastion Community of Resilience, pioneering healthcare and the welfare of military veterans. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The city of New Orleans is in Orleans Parish. For reasons that are mainly economic and infrastructure-related, Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish are inter-dependent.  The two parishes are very different. The rivalry between them isn’t on the scale of the Saints and the Flacons, but it’s definitely real. If you live in Jefferson Parish, the basic perception is, “Sure, New Orleans has great restaurants and music clubs but it’s dangerous, dirty, and dysfunctional.” If you live in New Orleans, the perception is, “Sure, everything works in Jefferson Parish, but it’s sterile and soulless.” Nothing illustrates the real-world differences between the parishes better than the business stories of this editon of Out to Lunch's two guests. The Tale In Jefferson Parish, the heart of the retail economy is Veterans Boulevard. There used to be a bowling alley on Veterans, called Paradise Lanes. In 1995 it was knocked down and replaced by a Barnes & Noble bookstore. The owners of the bowling alley retained a retail space in the New Barnes & Noble building. They called their new store Paradise Cafe & Gifts. 21 years later, in 2016, two of the owner’s granddaughters, sisters Jenny McGuinness and Jessica Woodward, along with their mom, Linda Dalton, transformed the store into a home accessories and gift shop, and called it Phina. Next, they opened two more Phina stores – one on Metairie Road and another on Harrison Avenue. In 2023 they bought a company called The Basketry, that specializes in personal and corporate gift baskets. Today the combined companies have 50 employees and business is booming.  Our story from Orleans Parish is equally successful. It’s based on a single word. A word that, if you live in Orleans Parish, has enormous practical and symbolic meaning: Potholes. Nothing typifies the perception of the dysfunction of the city of New Orleans like the pot-holed state of our streets. In 2019, an anonymous person started an Instagram account illustrating the sorry condition of our streets. The name of the account is the sentence many New Orleanians say or think as they drive or bike around town, Look at This Effin Street. (On Instagram "effin" is the f-word. Because none of our podcasts are explicit we're sticking with "effin" to avoid the bot-police.) The Look at This Effin’ Street Instagram account was an instant success. People started contributing photos of New Orleans streets and today the account has over 120,000 followers – including by the way, The City of New Orleans. How do you monetize this kind of social media success? You can’t exactly sell potholes. But you can sell merch about potholes. And that’s what the anonymous founder of Look at This Effin Street did. He contracted with a local merch company, InkMule, to make stickers, baseball caps, T-shirts and other pot-hole merch. The anonymous business-person behind this successful social-media driven venture is still anonymous. On this edition of Out to Lunch we referring to him as Effin Street. Two Parishes Next time you’re driving along Veterans Boulevard, Harrison Avenue, or Metairie Road, you might notice one of the three Phina stores. But you probably won’t think anything at all about the street you’re driving on. If you keep driving east from there on surface streets, you’ll cross the parish line into Orleans Parish. At that point you may well find yourself remarking, “Look at this effin’ street.” Jenny and Effin Street's respective experiences are model examples of the differences between Orleans and Jefferson parishes. But their histories and businesses are also representative of the synergy that exists between the two parishes and the people who live, work and play in both of them. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns on St. Charles Avenue in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Blake Langlinais at itsneworleans.com.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the world of American coffee culture, 1971 changed everything. That was the year Starbucks was born. For much of the country, Starbucks was the first coffee shop in their town. In New Orleans, our first coffee shop opened in The French Market - in the late 1700’s. For a city not known for being on the cutting edge of business, we were 200 years ahead of the coffee game. Today, we’re the country’s second biggest coffee importer, after New York City. In part that’s because we’re the home of coffee giant, Folger’s. But New Orleans has always been – and still is - a hub of green coffee markets. Green coffee is raw, unroasted coffee beans. It’s the world’s second-largest traded commodity, second only to oil. One of the major players in the green coffee market is International Coffee Corporation. Besides importing and shipping beans, they do something called Q-Grading. Q-Grading is a specialized skill performed by people trained in the art of coffee tasting. People like Drew Cambre. As Sustainability Manager at International Coffee Corporation, on an average day Drew will sample and grade 20- 40 different coffees.  We drink a lot of coffee in the United States, but we drink around three times as much beer. The reason we drink all this beer is partly because it tastes good, but it’s also for the feel-good effect alcohol has on our brain. Well, now, there’s another drink that’s competing with beer for both taste and mood-altering, and it’s not alcohol. It’s cannabis. THC to be exact. THC - tetrahydrocannabinol - is the chemical in cannabis that gets you high. One of the country’s fastest growing manufacturers of THC sodas is a New Orleans company called Crescent Canna. Crecent Canna was already manufacturing and selling THC-based products when it launched its drinks division in 2022 - and saw its fortunes radically improve. Today, Crescent Canna has a lab and brewery in North Carolina, a head office in New Orleans, sales in over 1,000 locations in 20 states, online sales in all 50 states, and the company’s CEO, Joe Gerrity, says the company is negotiating with major distributors with the goal of becoming the Budweiser of THC drinks. Few of us have advanced degrees in medical science, but we all know that for survival, human beings have to stay hydrated. We could conceivably just drink water, but we long ago abandoned mere survival as the benchmark of human success. And that’s why we have flavored drinks. Hundreds of years ago New Orleans was one of the earliest American cities to import and sell coffee. Today we’re becoming one of the earliest American cities to manufacture and export THC infused sodas. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.