It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch Podcast

It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch

ItsBatonRouge.la
OUT TO LUNCH finds Baton Rouge Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel combining her hard news journalist skills and food background: conducting business over lunch. Baton Rouge has long had a storied history of politics being conducted over meals, now the Capital Region has an equivalent culinary home for business: Mansur's. Each week Stephanie holds court over lunch at Mansur's and invites members of the Baton Rouge business community to join her. You can also hear the show on WRKF 89.3FM.
Creating Community
In March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic reached alarming levels of spread - more than our health care system was able to handle - so public health officials ordered state and local governments to shut things down. Aand our lives were forever changed. It's strange now to think back on those weeks; how we adapted and coped, and what we learned about ourselves, our businesses and institutions and our communities. It was difficult and stressful, tragic for many, exciting for others, and creative entrepreneur’s took advantage of the opportunity to rethink the way we do things and find new ways of bringing people together and creating community Jenn Ocken, a Baton Rouge photographer, business consultant, podcast host and writer, made a name for herself in a big way during the pandemic with her Front Porch Photos—portraits she took of families and couples and people with their pets on their front porches at a time when we were all living on our porches and in our yards. The Front Porch Photos, shared widely on social media, helped unite the community and reminded us that we were all sharing the moment together. Outside of photography, Jenn’s career has been thriving with workshops and consulting that helps clients live a more empowered, fulfilled, harmonious life. Her latest tool is called ThrivFOCUS- - an innovative journal that integrates goal setting, self reflection and organization.  Sherin Dawud co-founded and co-owns the Nura Company, a local firm that specializes in consulting, marketing and event-planning with a focus on helping nonprofits and mission-driven clients in healthcare, education, advocacy and entertainment that want to make the community a better place to live, work and play.  Sherin co-founded and co-owns the firm with Raina Vallot. Like Jenn, Raina and Sherin were inspired by the events of the pandemic to create the firm. Companies were looking for new ways to connect with people. They saw it as an opportunity to reimagine impact through marketing.  In the years since, they have worked with such clients as the Baton Rouge Youth Voice Initiative, the Baton Rouge Alliance for students, the National Fried Chicken Festival, which is held in New Orleans each fall, and Peace Over Everything. Sherin originally teamed up with Raina to co-found Power Pump Girls in 2017, a social impact club whose mission is to empower women to connect and serve. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 8, 2024
27 min
BetteR Health
Much as we love to tout our fun loving lifestyle in south Louisiana, we have some of the worst health outcomes in the country – including the highest rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and infant mortality. On this edition of Out to Lunch, Jim Engster sits in for Stephanie and is joined by two lunch guests who both head up institutions in Baton Rouge’s growing Health District. Beyond providing reactive medical care to these already existing health issues, John Kirwan, Rene Ragas and their respective institutions are focused on what causes these diseases in the first place and how to proactively keep our population healthier long term.   John Kirwan is Executive Director of Pennington Biomedical Research Center here in Baton Rouge, which is renowned the world over for its focus on diabetes and obesity. John himself is internationally renowned as an expert in diabetes and nutrition science with more than 30 years of research and teaching and a specialty in type 2 diabetes and how to potenitally cure it. John came to the center in 2018 from the famed Cleveland Clinic, and in the years since has generated more than $50M in research funding and spearheaded the opening of Pennington’s obesity treatment center. John was a guest on Out to Lunch  back in the pandemic era, when we were meeting on zoom. A lot has happened since then and it is great to see John in person.  Rene Ragas is President and CEO of Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, the largest birthing hospital in the state. Since opening in 1968, Woman’s has delivered nearly 400,000 babies and is reocngized for its Level 3 neonatal intensive care unit, expertise in mammography and breast and cancer care. What’s perhaps less well known is the hospital’s research capabilities, especially in cervical cancer, where Woman’s has been a pioneer since the implementation of pap screening test used to detect this type of cancer. Rene joined the hospital in 2022. He has more than two decades of experience as a healthcare executive, most recently as north shore market president for the FMOL health system. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. During the recording of this show the power went out in parts of Baton Rouge but the medics and Jim soldiered on! You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 1, 2024
26 min
Chapeaux Jo
Sometime around 100,000 years ago, what we think of as modern humans started wearing clothes. In the centuries since, the outfits and accessories we people have come up with have evolved from utilitarian garments to elaborate expressions of our culture and creativity. Clothes and accessories are fun, fanciful and define who we are. Baton Rouge entrepreneurs are building successful businesses that capitalize on our desire to define ourselves by what we put on our bodies and atop our heads. Karla Coreil, co-owner of Chapeaux, a Baton Rouge based millinery business that combines 19th-century British quality and tradition with South Louisiana style and flair. Karla and her partner in Chapeaux, Jenn Loftin, opened the business in 2022 and custom make creative head pieces for high end occasions like the Kentucky Derby and down home celebrations like the St Patricks Day Parade. Chapeaux also hosts private parties, which they call Chapeaux Party, at which guests can make their own festive hats and head pieces. Karla is an attorney. Jenn has a Ph.D in education and works in educational publishing. When they started the business they said they were worried about how to spread the word. Turns out, Chapeaux caught on so fast their problem now is keeping up with demand. Joey Redditt is founder and owner of Jo Design Studio, a Baton Rouge couturier that makes custom clothing for men, women and children, with a particular focus on  special occasion dresses. Joey has been designing clothes since 2010, when he was gifted a sewing machine. At the time, he had his own successful teeshirt company, Grab it Rabbit. After that business took off, he decided to try his hand at designing clothes. Today he has 35 thousand followers on Instagram, his own studio and a growing number of customers. Joey works fast and Jo Design Studio offers to make bespoke creations -- sometimes in just a few hours.  Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Apr 10, 2024
27 min
Tech BRos
Technology has opened doors in so many industries and enabled us to do so many things we couldn’t even imagine in the past. At the same time, we’ve made things more complicated for ourselves, creating systems that don’t always talk to each other and languages we don’t understand. On this edition of Out to Lunch, two lunch guests who are helping break through the clutter, with products and services that are enabling our tech systems to work for us more effectively - and helping businesses better communicate their messaging. John Morello, is Chief Technology Officer of Gutsy, a tech firm that has come up with a better way to help companies protect themselves against cyberthreat. More specifically, Gutsy uses process mining – and we’ll get into that in a minute – to ensure that the various cybersecurity systems a complex organization has in place are talking to one another and doing what they’re supposed to be doing. If John’s name is familiar to you, it may be because he was a guest on Out to Lunch in 2019, when he was running Twistlock, a tech firm that developed cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. In the years since then, John and his partners in Twistlock have grown that company, attracted new investors, and created the spinoff, Gutsy, to address a need they identified running Twistolock. John is a 14-year veteran of Microsoft, who lives in Baton Rouge and is also a master diver and very active in coastal conservation.  Kenny Nguyen is founder and CEO of ThreeSixtyEight, a Baton Rouge-based creative and strategic media agency that focuses on branding, marketing and advertising with a high tech, high energy super creative approach. The company’s origins date back to 2011, when Kenny and his friend were still students at LSU and started Big Fish Presentations, which specialized in public speaking and presentation services. In 2016, it merged with another local firm to form ThreeSixtyEight. In the years since, it has grown to include clients that include Alfa, Tomb Raider, and Compass Datacenters.  Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mar 27, 2024
27 min
Nurse
Healthcare is big business, and it’s only getting bigger. In 2021, healthcare expenditures topped $4B in the U.S. By 2028, that figure is expected to reach $6.2B. Within this growing and rapidly changing sector, nurses play an outsized role. They comprise the largest component of the healthcare workforce, they're the primary providers of hospital patient care and they deliver most of the nation’s longterm care. They’re also helping to lead the charge in new ways of delivering care, creating companies right here in Baton Rouge that are reinventing the way nursing is done. Renita Williams Thomas is a pediatric nurse specialist and the owner and CEO of In Loving Arms Pediatric Day Health Center, an outpatient center for children with medically complex needs such as congenital heart disease, traecheotomy, seizure, and genetic and neurological disorders, among others. The center combines skilled nursing, education and therapy and enables children with chronic conditions to interact with other kids their age who may also be going through similar health challenges. Renita founded the center in 2012 after spending more than two decades in the field with the Southern University School of Nursing - where she earned her bachelors and master’s degrees in nursing - Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, the Louisiana State Department of Health and the Lousiaina School for the Visually Impaired.  Blasia Rivet is a Registered nurse and the founder and owner of Decision Critical, a concierge nursing agency that offers in home and mobile private duty nursing services in the Baton Rouge region. Services are tailored to fit patient and caretaker needs and include acute and chronic conditions, elderly care support, post op recovery, and more. Blasia founded Decision Critical in 2014 to fill the need she saw in the community for a higher level of personalized care than one can get beyond the doctor’s office. Blasia is a native of Baton Rouge and a graduate of southeastern Louisiana university school of nursing.  Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mar 20, 2024
27 min
Fleurty Perlis
Despite the ease and convenience of online shopping, which enables us to procure almost anything we want from anywhere in the world in short order, there’s still something wonderful about buying clothes, apparel, decorations for the home or, really anything for that matter, from a store that we know and love and a brand we have come to trust. Baton Rouge - which likes to call itself "a big small town" -  has several homegrown brands that have been in business for generations. In the years since Katrina we've also welcomed a number of well known retailers from downriver in New Orleans. One of them is Perlis, a family-owned apparel retailer has been a fixture in New Orleans since 1939 that has dressed generations of Uptown gentlemen and, in more recent decades, women, in what the company calls Southern Style. In 2009 the Perlis family opened its first Baton Rouge location on Jefferson Highway. Bobby Berthelot has been the store's manager since 2013. A native of New Orleans, Bobby majored in business and after graduating learned about the ropes of merchandising, retail and made-to-order menswear at the venerable Rubenstein’s on Canal Street in New Orleans then Brook’s Brothers before becoming GM at Perlis in Baton Rouge.  Lauren LeBlanc Haydel is the founder and owner of Fleurty Girl, another well known south Louisiana brand that hasn’t been around as long as Perlis but is taking the region by storm. Lauren founded the company in 2009 when she was a single mother of three and decided to risk it all creating t-shirts for women that celebrated New Orleans. Today, there are nine FLeurty Girls, including a location in Baton Rouge that opened in the summer of 2023, and Fleurty Girl ships its south Louisiana-inspired merchandise – including t-shirts, gifts, door hangers, gifts for the home and an amazing array of sparkly Mardi Gras stuff – all over the world.  Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. Photos by Brian Newton.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mar 13, 2024
28 min
Skin Deep
I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying, “Beauty is only skin deep.” It’s meant to be a reminder – and a reassurance – that there’s more to a human being than appearance. While that’s true, our appearance is vitally important to us. You only have to spend 5 minutes on social media to reaffirm that’s as true today as it ever has been. Our appearance used to be a kind of genetic lottery. Not so much any more. Today you can get your hair, eyes, nose, lips, breasts, tummy, and butt lifted, sculpted, enhanced, reduced or reshaped to more closely resemble how you’d prefer to look. Signs of aging we euphemistically call “laugh lines” and “crow’s feet” can be smoothed away so your selfie looks as youthful as everybody else’s on Instagram. Without a filter! This kind of physical enhancement used to be the province of Hollywood stars and the wealthy citizens of Manhattan and Beverly Hills. Today we have access to these treatments in Baton Rouge. One of the places you can take this journey here is Ford Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Dr Ann Ford Reilley has been practicing medicine for 30 years and was the first woman in Louisiana to be certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Dr Reilley’s daughter, Dr Kate Chiasson, has gone one better than her mom: Dr Chiasson is double board certified, by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Mother and daughter plastic surgeons are partners at Ford Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. There are others forms of body modification we use to enhance our appearance. One of the most ancient - and currently most popular - is tattooing. We have archaeological evidence of humans with tattoos as far back as 5,000 BC. In the early 20th Century, tattoos came to be associated with outlaws and sailors. Somewhere along the line that changed. Today, tattoos are regarded as pieces of art, acceptable in all walks of life and they show up everywhere - from the bedroom to the boardroom. Daniel Esen has been a tattoo artist since 2008, and he’s been inking skin in Baton Rouge for over a decade at his own shop, Black Torch Tattoo. Back in the 1970’s, a hairdresser turned entrepreneur by the name of Vidal Sassoon marketed his salons and beauty products with the slogan, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.” Sassoon was talking about something as impermanent as a haircut. For Ann, Kate, and Daniel, his slogan applies in a far more consequential form. After they leave their shop or your clinic, their patients and clients are changed forever. Tattoos and cosmetic surgery are permanent. What Ann, Kate and Daniel are doing every day requires skill, talent, confidence and courage. They’re working in professions in which there is literally no room for error. This conversation is a fascinating insight into what it’s like having that kind of responsibility. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 28, 2024
29 min
Cocha Tilt
Downtown Baton Rouge has come a long way over the past two decades, thanks to a lot of careful planning, tireless advocacy, public and private investment, and a commitment from a lot of small businesses to set up shop in the capital city’s historic center. Stephanie's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch Baton Rouge are are two of those small business owners and have unique insights into what it’s like doing business in the heart of always-evolving downtown Baton Rouge  Saskia Spanhoff co-owns Cocha Restaurant on Sixth Street downtown with her husband, Enrique Pinerua. The couple opened the restaurant in 2016 with a focus on locally sourced, sustainable, non GMO foods with a Southern menu that draws on the region’s Spanish, French African, and Caribbean influences. In the years since, it has grown into one of downtown’s most popular gathering spots. Saskia is a native of Baton Rouge and LSU graduate with over 25 years of experience in the restaurant and wine industries. She has worked at restaurants around the country.  Scott Hodgin is owner and Managing Partner of TILT, a local firm, also based downtown, that specializes in branding, marketing and packaging design for a variety of local products that may be sitting on the shelf in your pantry, including Camellia Beans, Blue Plate mayonnaise, Faubourg Brewing beer, and Big Easy Kombucha. Scott co-founded the firm in 2005 after spending several years learning the ropes at other firms.  It's probably no exaggeration to say that every person in the US over 5 years old knows what Coca Cola is and what Walmart is. Assumedly, having achieved 100% market penetration these companies can now quit advertising. However, we see Walmart and Coca Cola marketing everywhere, from YouTube to highway billboards. Why? Because, as we learn in this conversation, it's one thing to have a popular business like a downtown restaurant but it's a whole other thing to keep the branding as fresh as the food. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 14, 2024
27 min
Reimagine Property Development
Real estate development is one of those high stakes businesses where, most of the time, people with a stomach for taking risks, and a lot of money – or at least access to a lot of money-- put together really ambitious plans for a piece of land, convince others to back them and then build apartments or shopping centers or new office buildings and sell them at a profit, not including the hefty developer’s fees they pay themselves along the way. It’s a rich person’s game and most everyone else is left out. But does it have to be that way? Will Bradshaw and Daniela Rivero Bryant don’t think so. They’ve found a way to make real estate development not only accessible but beneficial to the communities in which it takes place. Will and Daniela are the co-founders of Reimagine Development Partners, a company that does property development and is reimaginging what that looks like. Like other developers, Reimagine takes advantage of the Federal Historic Tax Program. But, unlike other developers, Reimagine replaces the lender – normally an institution like a bank - with a crowdfunding model. In this way, members of the local community chip in five to ten thousand dollars and become investors in the kind of property development deal normally reserved for financial institutions or wealthy investors. So, regular folks get access to the kind of potential profit, and the immediate real-world tax advantages, normally only available to property developers. Will and Daniela started the firm in 2022. He is a career real estate developer and part time professor at Tulane, where he was a founding member of the university’s sustainable real estate development program. Prior to launching Reimagine, Will founded Green Coast Enterprises, a triple bottom line company, which means it is focused on people, prosperity and the planet. Daniela is an expert in urban disaster resilience and community development. Prior to launching Reimagine, she spent 15 years supporting the post-Katrina housing recovering in New Orleans and assisting local government in Latin America with resilience and recovery poverty creation. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On The Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 6, 2024
27 min
New World of Hope
If you turn on the news any time, any day, you’re bombarded with stories about climate change and natural disasters, political strife and polarization, and the world poverty that is driving unrest and a migrant crisis. Any one of these issues - not to mention the local problems at home - is too great for any of us to solve. And yet, some of us feel so compelled to do something. But what? Dawn Brown is Water Services Director at Matrix New World Engineering, a New Jersey based engineering firm specifically focused on environmental and climate related challenges, as well as resilience and sustainability projects. These are terms we hear a lot in Louisiana and, based here in Baton Rouge, Dawn makes sense of what they actually mean for us. Matrix was founded in 1990 and opened its Baton Rouge office in 2015. Dawn is an environmental professional who focuses on project management and development with a particular focus is waste permitting and landfills. A native of Baton Rouge, Dawn was a high school biology teacher before switching careers, and while Dawn now deals with environmental issues, Rebecca Gardner is doing her own part to change the world, helping migrants and disadvantaged women around the globe through Hands Producing Hope, a non profit she founded in 2014. Hands Producing Hope sells ethically sourced products made by migrant women and women from disadvantaged countries through a retail shop on Government Street in Baton Rouge and through its website and satellite locations. The organization partners with communities through artisan training programs, maternal health education, life skills classes, adult literacy education, business mentoring and more. It's an extraordinary operation. Rebecca is a native of Baton Rouge who founded Hands Producing Hope because of her passion for helping disadvantaged families and her desire to see long-term sustainable change in impoverished communities. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jan 24, 2024
28 min
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