It's Acadiana: Out to Lunch

What’s not to love about a doughnut? They’re fried, fatty, crispy, doughy and sweet. You can dip them in chocolate, stuff them with Bavarian cream and roll them in sprinkles. They come vegan, gluten free or covered with bacon crumbles. You can slice them half and use them as a hamburger bun.

Anything that good has to be sold by the dozen. And it should be easy to do, right?  Not so much.The doughnut business is cutthroat. It’s a crowded market out there and one dominated by customer loyalty. Plus, the hours are terrible. 

Why get into the business? Drake Pothier says because it makes people really happy. The chance to make someone’s day better is a great reason to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning.  

Drake owns Village Deaux in Maurice. He and his wife bought the shop in 2019, looking to diversify their income and find something new to sink their teeth into. They navigated the pandemic shut down and came out the other side with a doughnut shop that folks are driving to from all over Lafayette Parish. Which is saying a lot with all the good doughnut spots here.

Before running Village Deaux, Drake worked in communications and ran a successful insurance agency, which he sold in 2021. 

So everyone loves a doughnut, but not everyone likes politics. And that’s what Marie Centanni sells: ideas. Marie is a political consultant, running her shop Centanni Communications since 2009. 

Marie is a vet of the political scene. And her specialty is communicating public policy. That means taking a wonkish piece of legislation, dipping it in chocolate, stuffing it with bavarian cream and selling it to voters. Cynics may not like it so much, but it’s how the policy gets made. And I’m sure Marie has to get up plenty early in the morning to do it. 

During the 2021 Legislative session, Marie played a big role in communicating the push for tax reform, a process which took steering several pieces of legislation through a toxic political climate. Marie is a former broadcast journalist, worked as a staffer on Capitol Hill and served as press secretary to former Gov. Kathleen Blanco. She’s advised over 250 candidates through the Candidate Training Bootcamp at the Louisiana Free Enterprise Institute, the nonprofit arm of her top client the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.

Whether it's donut or doughnut, Democrat or Republican, Christiaan Mader has you covered on this edition of Out to Lunch Acadiana recorded live over lunch at Tula Tacos and Amigos in downtown Lafayette.

You can see photos from this show by Nathan Davis at our website. This is our first Out to Lunch show about doughnuts but you can hear more lunch table conversation about Acadiana pies here.

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I’m of the opinion that everyone can use an editor. It’s useful to have someone to bounce an idea off of and whittle it down to the sharpest point. 

Working with an editor can be kind of intense. It’s like therapy or professional coaching. You work through bad habits and confront flaws you didn’t know you had. 

This is starting to sound a bit like therapy. And maybe that’s a good thing. These days, folks are much more open about getting help. That used to be a taboo. Not so much anymore. 

And I don’t just mean “getting help” in the traditional sense, as in tackling stress or some other mental health problem. People are turning more and more to counseling for all kinds of things. 

How about work? Take it from me, running a small business is emotionally consuming. You get attached to your ideas and lose sight of the big vision. Change can be hard to swallow or even conceive. Sometimes, the biggest hurdle in professional development is ego. 

Business coach Jeff Martin helps his clients get over the hump to entrepreneurial maturity. He specializes in counseling mid-career professionals on how to find another gear in their growth, usually by taking a deep look at their work and helping business owners figure out what to focus on. Before starting his coaching business, the Company Growth Academy, Jeff was a serial entrepreneur himself. He knows what it’s like to get attached. Jeff is an Out to Lunch veteran for his custom men’s clothing line —  Short and Fat. 

Now let’s talk about counseling in the more conventional sense.

About 20% of Americans sought mental health counseling in 2019. But the practice of counseling in a social environment expands beyond mental health disorders.

Major life events can be difficult to navigate and our understanding of how stress works has changed dramatically. That’s why Marie Collins says her counseling center, the Acadiana Family Tree, adapts its services to pressing community needs. Marie is Family Tree’s executive director and a licensed counselor herself. The Family Tree started as a parenting resource center and has grown to offer a broad canopy of services: marriage counseling, anger management, trauma and addiction counseling. 

In the words of the inimitable Bill Withers, whether it's professional advice or personal  counselling, "We all need somebody to lean on." 

This conversation was recorded live over lunch at Tula Tacos and Amigos in downtown Lafayette. You can see photos from this show by Lucius Fontenot at our website. And here's more lunchtime conversation about counseling alternatives in Acadiana. 

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Acadiana is kind of a hidden treasure. Most folks think of New Orleans when Louisiana comes up, but the nooks and crannies of the state are what make it special. 

Hop on a rural byway and you can wind through all kinds of magical places. It’s a state you can stay-cation in and find lots of oddities and specialties. Pockets of cultures and traditions that are unseen even by folks just a few miles away. 

Take Highway 90 north from Lafayette and the roads will rise and fall on hills. You’ll pass through the Cajun prairies and catch a view of the land of Zydeco. Before long, you’ve left Francophone Louisiana behind altogether. 

Did you know there’s a Transylvania, Louisiana? Have you ever been to the Watermark Tavern by the river in Columbia, just north of Alexandria? 

Dixie Poche has, and she’s lived to write about it.

Dixie is a travel writer with an expertise in Louisiana’s hidden gems. For thirty years, she sharpened her pencil in technical writing and corporate communications in the oil and gas industry. Her childhood in a general store in Cecilia inspired her to seek out the histories of Louisiana’s small towns. She’s published three books on Louisiana culture and is currently working on her fourth — about small town Mardi Gras Courirs. 

Herman Fuselier is a familiar voice on KRVS. He's the host of Zydeco Stomp and has a storied history of his own — chronicling Louisiana’s cultural traditions.

Herman grew up literally next door to the world stage of Zydeco in Opelousas and spent years as a columnist and music writer in the Acadiana area. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Oxford American and NPR, and he’s the go-to guy for liner notes on big Zydeco records. In 2016, Herman published Ghosts of Good Times, which packs an authoritative history of Louisiana’s dance halls dating back decades.

Oh, and by the way, during daylight hours, Herman is the executive director of the St. Landry Parish Tourist Commission.

This episode of Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tula Tacos and Amigos in Downtown Lafayette. You can find photos at our website. And check out more lunch table conversation about words and music.

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What’s your shangri-la? Traditionally, in Acadiana, that might be the great outdoors. This is, after all, the sportsman’s paradise. 

Finding your piece of heaven usually comes down to the world around you. For a lot of folks, that means where you live — literally. Your home is your private paradise. For others, perhaps, it’s something less tangible. Shangri-la is not where you are but an extension of your imagination — a state of mind or a world you conjure far away. 

Either way, someone has to build it or help you find it. Christiaan's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch Acadiana are both in the business of making dreams come true.

Home

In the more conventional sense, Aimia Doucet helps families realize the traditional American dream — homeownership. She’s the mortgage lender and branch manager at GMFS Mortgage. 

Home buying has changed a lot over the years, and Aimia's specialty is helping buyers navigate the process, debunking myths and helping them find a home that suits them. She’s one of the top lenders in the state by loan volume and was ranked #1 in the Lafayette market in 2018.

Screen

What about the world of imagination? If you’re working with bits and graphics and not brick and mortar, the possibilities are, theoretically, endless. Game development and design has become more cinematic, more detailed, more expansive.

Joshua Perrodin is part of training the next generation of world builders at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment in Lafayette. The industry has exploded in the last twenty years, and programming and development have become in-demand skillsets. What students learn at AIE isn’t limited to gaming either. Programming and development is also useful in building simulations for training in other fields like the oil and gas industry.

This show was recorded over lunch at Tula Tacos and Amigos in downtown Lafayette. You can see photos from this show by Lucius Fontenot at our website.

And here's more lunchtime conversation about Acadiana real estate and creative thinking, with Geoff Daily and Peggy Grace.

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Brands can become institutions — legacies that outlast their founders and become fixtures in our lives. In Acadiana, if your brand is food, it can become sacred. That means you don’t mess with it. 

Now, imagine you inherit the institution or buy it. Well, on the one hand, you’ve got everything you need to succeed. As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Or if it tastes good, don’t fuss around with the recipe. 

But businesses are living things in their own way. There’s a balance to strike between what old customers expect and what new customers want. Growth comes with change and requires innovation. How do you do that with an institution? 

Christiaan's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch Acadiana are both at the helms of Acadiana food institutions. And when it comes to staples, there’s no brand more traditional than Savoie’s Foods. 

Open a pantry and you’ll find the same roux Ms. Eula Savoie first cooked in batches and sold in the family grocery store in Opelousas decades ago. Today, Savoie’s is a multi-million dollar food manufacturer and sells Cajun specialties like boudin, tasso and andouille sausage across the South.

Ms. Eula passed away in 2010 and the company is now in the hands of Freddie Lafleur, who is the company's CEO. Like most of the employees at Savoie’s, he’s been with the company for a long time. Thirty-seven years ago he started counting beans at Savoie’s as a company account. Now he’s in charge of the family-run sausage empire.

Robert Autin had two dreams as a kid: becoming a doctor and owning a restaurant. Today, Robert is a surgeon practicing here in Lafayette. And in 2017, he bought a restaurant, a Freetown institution: the Acadian Superette.

Since then, Robert’s put his stamp on the restaurant adding his own specialties to the menu — smoked meats, lamb, cochon de lait — on top of the Superette’s line of plate lunches.

Ms. Lynne, who sold the Superette to Robert and ran it since the 1990s, is still on hand to help him out. Robert has turned Ms. Lynne’s Superette into a hangout. He's added a patio, a bar, and now hosts live music and private events. Somehow, he still finds time to scrub in for surgeries.

You can find photos from this show by Lucius Fontenot at our website. And you can check out more lunchtime conversation about iconic Acadian food here.

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I work from home most of the time. And my desk is a pile of post-it notes, coffee mugs, knick knacks and unopened mail. I look to my left and my wife’s desk has the tranquility of a Buddhist temple. No wonder she gets more done. 

Getting organized is a kind of therapy. It also makes satisfying TV. Marie Kondo made the trade famous by teaching people to spark joy in their lives with precise and meditative organizing. But she was really the tip of a long spear. Home and commercial organization has been a profession for some time. There’s real value in having someone experienced in making spaces work do it for you. Organizing doesn’t spark joy for everyone. But being organized does.

Renee Ory of Amazing Spaces here in Lafayette has made a career of it since the early 2000s. Renee began her professional career in design, but switched to organizing  when she saw how many clients she worked with needed it. Amazing Spaces works with both residential and commercial clients, organizing home offices and streamlining warehouses for efficiency. They also provide move out and move in services, helping customers pack up and unpack with peace of mind.

Renee has a personal passion for organizing pantries and has a penchant for arranging space in older homes. Deep shelves are nothing a 20 foot lazy susan can’t fix. 

Cleansing inside you is just as important for your mental health as cleaning around you. We’ve traded wholesome nutrition in our diets for cost and convenience. According to one estimate, around 90% of Americans have traces of pesticides in their bodies from eating conventional produce. Spinach is apparently the worst offender. 

Besides the long-term health effects, big meals can make you feel pretty lousy after lunch. Clean eating can clear the way to a clean mind, and that’s what Beverly Boatner offers at Clean Juice Lafayette, the first local franchise location of the national organic juice chain.

Clean Juice offers made-to-order organic juices, smoothies, wraps salads and grain bowls. It’s the only all-organic juice bar in the city and they also offer juice cleanses: which are like home organizers for your body. 

Beverly operates Clean Juice with her daughter and both of them are teachers. They use that background to help customers understand what to eat for their health and why.

This show was recorded over lunch at The French Press in Lafayette. Photos by Kieran McIntosh are at our website.

Here's more lunchtime conversation about the Lafayette mind-body fitness connection.

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In theory, plants are a pretty simple product. The general principle of it is straightforward. You put something in the ground. Add some water, some nutrients. You wait, you harvest, you eat. Or maybe you stuff it in a wicker basket and sell it at the farmer’s market. 

But it’s really not that simple if you want to take something homegrown and market it. We run across products all the time that — in theory — you could make yourself. But maybe you couldn’t make it quite as well or as consistently or cheaply. 

That’s the hump to get over in taking backyard commerce to the marketplace. And it applies to folks selling produce like hydroponic lettuce or what business school types call “value added products” like an herbal tea. 

Or how about manglier tea? If you grew up in a Creole or Cajun household, you know what I’m talking about. If you didn’t, manglier tea is a French Louisiana cure-all made from a shrubby bush you probably have in your backyard. Traiteurs — faith healers — use it to treat all kinds of maladies. Your grandmother might have made it for you when you got a cold. It works. And like any medicine that works, it usually tastes awful.

Rayvin Silas-Chevalier has figured out how to make it more than a little palatable. Her company Blackbird Botanica brews manglier tea with honey, lemon orange and cinnamon. Her recipe is so good at helping the medicine go down, she can hardly keep up with the demand on shelves at local shops around Lafayette. Rayvin comes from a long line of healers. And it was her work as doula that first got her interested in herbal brewing. Her flagship product is Brave’s Brewed Manglier Tea — a Creole Immune Boosting Elixir.

Homebrewing and home growing can be rewarding, especially when it’s healing. But what if you want to scale up and bring that nutrition to a wider audience. 

That’s actually pretty tricky. Selling even lettuce on grocery store shelves takes an act of Congress — more specifically meeting USDA standards. But that’s what it takes if you want to do local — bigger. And that’s Kohlie Frantzen  is trying to do with his hydroponic farming concept — Helical Farms.

Hydroponic farming was an “a-ha” moment for Kohlie. The set-up, the machinery, the possibilities all seemed like a perfect fit for the skilled trades in Louisiana’s oil patch.

Helical’s top seller is lettuce, which they supply to several local restaurants. And the operation has partnered with food banks to stock pantries during the pandemic. 

This show was recorded live over lunch at The French Press in Lafayette. You can find photos from the show by Kieran McIntosh at our website.

Check out more lunchtime conversation about local health alternatives and healthy local food farming here.

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Creativity can be like gas in a tank. If you go, go, go, you burn it all up. Work/life balance in creative industries is really important. 

Business owners are paying more attention now to the environment they create for their employees. It’s not just about recruitment, either. It makes for a better product for your clients and customers. 

Talent needs a place to thrive. And running creative businesses in a secondary market like Lafayette means you’re often a training ground. Developing talent can be an important competitive advantage. 

Creative

Cherie Hebert created a garden for advertising talent when she launched BBR Creative with her partners in 1997. The firm has grown to compete on the national stage with award-winning campaigns for big brands like Tabasco, CC’s Coffee House and Cox Communications.

What got Cherie into the business was a passion for advertising design, a discipline with an important distinction from visual design. Advertising design is about sending a message, not just establishing a vibe. BBR creates messaging that cuts through the noise. With so much media noise pollution out there, it’s a tricky thing to do. At BBR, Cherie has created a space for her employees to create. They make a point to avoid burnout so their creative juices can refill. It’s an attitude that’s helped the firm attract gobs of talent over an impressive two decade run. 

Tattoo

Like good design in advertising, a good tattoo needs clarity. Strong lines. Stark contrast. An image that cuts glass. Or, as tattoo artist Coby Cox would put it, an image you can make out from across the bar. 

Tattoos aren’t rebellious like they used to be. Thirty percent of Americans have at least one tattoo. That’s about 100 million people. And the market for ink is getting more competitive but also more sophisticated. 

Coby has watched the industry change from his shop AAA Tattoo in Lafayette since 1997. AAA sets itself apart from other shops with an open environment. It’s the kind of place anyone can get inked without judgment, and where young artists can learn tricks of the trade. Coby knows what it’s like to be the punk kid in the tattoo shop. He got his first tattoo at 16 in the back of a Harley shop. In other words, AAA’s business strategy is to invest in people.

See photos from this show by Brad Bowie at our website. And check out Cherie's previous appearance on Out to Lunch Acadiana when she was in the tiny house business.

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Family is a big deal in Acadiana. That can be quite literally true. Family trees are large and deep-rooted, and that grounds a lot of us here. This area is known for having among the highest population retention in the nation.

That doesn’t necessarily make being a teenager in Acadiana any easier. Defining who you are and who you want to be can be challenging. All the more so perhaps as the community diversifies and what it means to be from Acadiana becomes more complex. 

Angst is angst wherever you are. And growing up in Acadiana can throw some unique challenges at you. There’s a dark side to joie de vivre. And in that shadow depression, anxiety and alienation lurk for teenagers coming up in a thorny world. 

Roy Petifils helps high schoolers navigate all that as a professional counselor. At one time, Roy sought a career in the cloth, but left the seminary to work at St. Thomas More Catholic High School in Lafayette. He figured out quickly that he connected better with students one-on-one than at the whiteboard and made the career switch to faith-based counseling. He’s an author, podcaster and public speaker and practices at Pax Renewal counseling center in Lafayette. Roy is also the host of the podcast, Today's Teenager.

Historically, Acadiana’s unique culture has been a grounding force folks growing up here. That’s come through tremendous effort over the decades to preserve and promote Francophone heritage in the region. The effect has been powerful for our traditions — music, food, art — but not necessarily for the French language. 

Speaking French natively is still waning, observes Lindsay Smythe Doucet. There was a time when most of us had a native French speaker in our families, but that’s not necessarily the case anymore, even as the broader culture has persevered. 

Lindsay has taught French and English in the public school system for over 15 years, most notably at Lafayette High. In 2021 she’ll make the leap into running a brand new French immersion elementary school in Sunset: Ecole St. Landry. The program emphasizes dialect and conversation in its curriculum, instead of harping on conjugation and grammar. The goal here is to teach kids a language in a way that allows them to express themselves, to get on Twitter or Instagram and TikTok and play with French in the same way they do their native tongue. The school will open with 100 kids.

See photos by Lucius Fontenot from this show, recorded over lunch at The French Press, at our website. And there's more lunchtime conversation about Acadiana families here.

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The Romans had a saying: In vino veritas: In wine truth. It’s due for an update. Vodka is much more transparent. The art of distilling vodka is the pursuit of purity. There’s nothing to hide behind. 

It makes a pretty good vehicle for a story to tell. And telling a good story is important if you want to get a leg up in the beverage industry. Of 220 million cases of alcohol sold each year in the U.S., 34% is vodka — the most among hard liquors. 

So how do you tell a good story? You start with a grain of truth. In JT Meleck’s case: that’s rice. A distillery born on a rice farm in Branch, Louisiana, JT Meleck’s vodka is a genuine Louisiana product, and in that respect it’s one of a kind in a distilling sector dominated by potatoes and rye. 

Mike Fruge started JT Meleck to add a new dimension to his family rice and crawfish farm. It’s no gimmick, either. JT Meleck is a premium spirit that doesn’t hide where it comes from. It’s named for Mike’s great great uncle who migrated to Louisiana to start the farm. The distillery is a new part of the business, and Mike still helms crawfish and rice farming operations, too. The label is also working on a rice-distilled whiskey. 

When you’ve got a story like Mike’s, you might not need a great storyteller to sell it. But some companies don’t have such a strong sense of who they are and why they are. That’s where Jan Risher comes in.

Jan Risher is CEO of ShiftKey PR and a columnist for The Advocate. She did her time as a journalist, too, and now teaches a course in memoir writing online. With ShiftKey, Jan puts her nose for a good story to work for her clients, digging into the details to find the kernel of truth that will resonate with consumers. 

We’re bombarded with storytelling and spin. Jan’s concept is pretty simple: how do you set your brand apart? Tell the truth.

So there's your Roman history update: In Vodka and PR Veritas.

See photos from this show by Jill Lafleur on our website. And check out Mike Fruge's previous appearance on Out to Lunch Acadiana where he talks about crawfish with sugarcane farmer Eddie Lewis.

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