Biz Talks

New Orleans restaurants are facing an existential threat. The pandemic has drastically reduced the number of visitors to the city and locals are dining out less frequently. It’s unclear when health restrictions will ease and life can return to normal. On today’s podcast we talk with Jennifer Weishaupt, the founder and CEO of the Ruby Slipper Restaurant Group, about how COVID-19 may change restaurants forever - and how she’s managed to keep her business moving forward despite all the challenges.

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A chemical engineer, Jennifer “retired” from Shell Oil Company in 2015 with 16 years of service, most recently as operations manager for three oil and gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. As founder and CEO of Ruby Slipper Restaurant Group, Jennifer oversees all aspects of restaurant operations and future growth for what has grown from a single neighborhood café in 2008 into an award-winning, 18-unit restaurant group spanning five states and two sister brands (Ruby Slipper Café and Ruby Sunshine). Jennifer stays engaged in her community where she recently completed a term of service on the board of directors of Liberty’s Kitchen and previously served on the board of directors of Morris Jeff Community School. She and her husband, Ruby Slipper co-founder Erich Weishaupt, have been married for 19 years and have three amazing school-aged children who keep her on her toes.

Looking to use this time to prepare for a career change or add to your list of marketable skills? Tulane’s AB Freeman School of Business is launching their first-ever online graduate degree program — a Master of Management in Entrepreneurial Hospitality degree — in January. This week AJ Brooks, assistant director for entrepreneurial hospitality and real estate programs within the Freeman School, talks to Biz New Orleans Magazine Editor Kim Singletary about what the program will look like and how it can be customized to fit those interested in positioning themselves for leadership in a wide variety of industries as we move into a new normal.

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AJ Brooks is a Lecturer in Finance and Management at the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University.  He is also Assistant Director for Entrepreneurial Hospitality and Real Estate Programs within the Freeman School.  In addition to his work as an educator, Brooks has developed several real estate projects as the founder and CEO of Left Brick Capital, LLC, a privately-owned real estate development company based in New Orleans.  With a focus on urban infill and historic rehabilitation projects, Brooks specializes in incentive-based development and is responsible for placing over $30 million in real estate assets in service over the course of his career. Prior to founding Left Brick, he worked as an asset manager at Gibbs Development and as a financial analyst at Stonehenge Capital.  Brooks holds an MBA with a concentration in finance and specialization in energy from Tulane’s A. B. Freeman School of Business.

In this podcast, we talk to music manager Reid Martin (Big Freedia, Tank and the Bangas, Sweet Crude) about how the New Orleans music industry is dealing with the severe changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some artists, like Big Freedia, have pivoted in a big way while others are hunkering down and getting creative. All of them need as much support from fans, the community and government to survive financially until they can begin performing in front of crowds again.

Hospitality and tourism are the lifeblood of New Orleans, and a big chunk of those visitors are a result of the events and groups hosted by the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Ranked in the top 10 of convention centers in the nation in number of conventions and tradeshows held annually, the Morial Convention Center is battling a huge drop in revenue while in the midst of a $557 million renovation and modernization plan.

In this week’s podcast, we talk to convention center president and general manager, Michael Sawaya, and Jerry Reyes, newly-appointed president of the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority —the governing board of the convention center — about the present and future of this critical, multi-billion-dollar revenue generator.

 The COVID-19 pandemic means that nonprofits have had to find new ways to raise funds, restaurants have devised new ways to sell their services and every business has a new story to tell. On today's podcast, we talk to new Gambel Communications CEO Amy Boyle Collins about the challenges her New Orleans clients are facing, the strategies they've employed to survive and how the public relations industry has evolved in the time of the coronavirus.

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Amy Boyle Collins is the new chief executive officer of New Orleans public relations firm Gambel Communications. Collins holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication from Loyola University New Orleans. She received her master’s in mass communication from Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communications. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Collins took a break from communications consulting and spent six years leading the Young Leadership Council, where she developed the downtown Wednesday at the Square concert series.

During the early part of her career, Collins worked in sports marketing for the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation, Super Bowl XXXI Host Committee, New Orleans Brass Hockey Team, Louisiana State University Athletics and University of New Orleans Athletics. During her career, she has worked in the communications agency business on teams at J. Walter Thompson Worldwide, Logan Marketing, Deveney Communication and P.R. PR, Inc.

With commercial airlines limiting flights and concerns over the safety of travel at an all-time high, Ron Silverman, chief business officer for XO — the first global digital marketplace for private aviation — says XO has seen its national customer base grow to five times pre-COVID-19 levels, with many of those travelers experiencing private aviation for the first time.

Options now exist, he says, that make flying private out of cities like New Orleans for both business and pleasure more accessible than ever. Silverman explains these options and discusses the present and future of air travel in this new era with Biz New Orleans Managing Editor Kim Singletary in this week’s episode of Biz Talks.

Our guest on this week's podcast is Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder, who talks about Main Street Recovery, a new state program that will offer grants of up to $15,000 to reimburse businesses for pandemic-related expenses. Schroder also discusses the many potential challenges facing Louisianians in the months ahead as the state tries to recover from the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

On June 12, Dr. Kyshun Webster, through his company, Compassion Society Benefits, officially launched the nation’s first caregiver family leave insurance. Backed by Nationwide Insurance, it offers affordable premiums and provides up to 80 percent income replacement to aid employees forced to leave work to care for a family member.

In this episode of Biz Talks, we talk with Webster about this exciting new product, how it works, and the benefits it offers to both employees and employers.

As the national discussion about the Black Lives Matter movement continues, businesses and organizations nationwide are examining their policies to determine how to provide a more inclusive, anti-racist environment for employees, clients and customers. Stone Pigman attorney Heather Lonian, chair of the firm’s diversity committee, talks to BizNewOrleans.com about her work and what other organizations could be doing.

As New Orleans is becoming the new “Silicon Valley of the South” we’re also making the move to capitalize on our creative economy, and together that means jobs in technology across a wide variety of industries are only going to continue to grow. But how do we ensure everyone knows about and can access these incredible opportunities? That’s where NOLAVATE Black comes in.

Known as the “Great Connector” because of her unwavering passion for community and social justice, New Orleans native Sabrina Short is the founder and CEO of NOLAVATE Black, New Orleans’ Black Tech collective, which, among other things, is the creator of Black Tech Nola, the largest inclusive innovation conference in New Orleans.

In this week’s BizTalk, Short joins Biz New Orleans Managing Editor Kim Singletary to share more about the upcoming conference and talk with us about how opportunities in tech are more diverse and easier to access than many realize.