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.

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