It's Acadiana: Out to Lunch

As Out to Lunch prepares to go back to hosting live lunches, for inspiration we're taking a look at some of our pre-Covid shows. Here's an Out to Lunch Best of: The Music Business.

If you're in the music business and you can get a dollar for every time somebody says "The music business is changing," you'll probably make more money than however you're making it now in the music business. 

Yes, Acadiana is rich with music, but music makes hardly anybody rich. And getting rich is besides the point. For the most part, the people who play the music that makes South Louisiana famous do so part-time. That includes all those Grammy winners you hear about. 

Sure enough people get by. There’s never a shortage of gigs. And playing Zydeco or Cajun music can be good supplemental income. Plus it’s a great time.  But long term, it’s tricky if not impossible to build a safety net or nest egg that most American workers accumulate over their careers. 

Musicians can’t really retire — not that they would want to — and that means major needs can go unfunded and unmet in the twilight of most careers.  Christiaan Mader's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch Acadiana are both dealing with this problem, albeit from different angles. 

Major Handy is by all accounts a  living legend in blues and Zydeco. A world traveler. A raconteur, and an auto mechanic. At 72 years old, he’s deeply familiar with the challenges of being a working musician past the traditional retiring age. But he’s a consummate pro and fighter. He suffered a stroke at the beginning of 2020 but is already back on the beat, set to play some gigs in France later this year. Major is also involved with the Music Makers Relief Foundation, a nonprofit that supports and documents traditional musicians in the Deep South.

John Williams is president of Love of People, a nonprofit started by his family in the 1990s, but is best known for Blue Monday, a program he launched in 2016. Blue Monday raises money to help aging musicians pay for medical care and living expenses through an monthly concert and dinner series staged at Rock and Bowl here in Downtown Lafayette. Love of People runs several different initiatives including Musicians Etude, We Care and the Lending Closet, which compensates local musicians who donate their talents to benefits with credits to buy goods and professional services. John is also Executive Director of the Upper Lafayette Economic Development Foundation.

Out to Lunch Acadiana is recorded over lunch at The French Press in downtown Lafayette. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As Out to Lunch prepares to go back to hosting live lunches, for inspiration we're taking a look at some of our pre-Covid shows. Here's an Out to Lunch Best of: Saving Birds and Saving Schools.

Normally on Out to Lunch we're talking about for-profit businesses. But here in Acadiana - maybe more than anywhere else in the country - there are organisations and people dedicated to making a difference rather than a profit. On this edition of Out to Lunch Christiaan Mader is talking with folks who run nonprofit organizations that fill an important gap in community services, saving birds and saving schools. 

Even if your heart's in the right place, you still need to be able to find your wallet. Lafayette is not necessarily an easy place to raise money. People are generous here, no doubt about that, southern hospitality is certainly a local specialty. But people around here value independence and self-determination. Plus, they like a business idea to make business sense, which means they ought to make money and survive on their own. 

That presents a challenge to nonprofits large and small. How do you make big impact on a lean budget? How do you build for the long term when all the money you get goes to the important and expensive work that you’re doing now. 

Abi Broussard Falgout is the Executive Director the Lafayette Education Foundation. For close to 30 years, L-E-F has filled funding gaps for Lafayette’s schools and educators. The foundation is primarily a granting organization, with a tiny staff, and is best known for the annual Teacher Awards, a glitzy gala that celebrates the best teachers in Lafayette Parish. Abi took over as Executive Director in 2019. She’s also an entrepreneur who’s worked in marketing, real estate and hospitality. 

Letitia Labbie runs a wildlife rehabilitation center out of her house in Youngsville. Letitia founded her tiny but effective nonprofit, Acadiana Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation, in 1998. AWER has taken in more than 6,000 birds and small animals over the years, which she treats at often enormous cost, and often entirely on her own. Letitia is currently raising money to establish a permanent treatment center that’s not her house.

Out to Lunch Acadiana is recorded over lunch at The French Press in Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Travis Gauthier and more, at our website.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wherever you live in Louisiana, or anywhere in the US for that matter, you might have noticed something has changed in your local supermarket, in offices, and even in airports and hotels. That something is, plexiglass.

Those giant sheets of plexiglass that now stand between you and the person on the other side of a counter are called Sneeze Guards. Have you wondered where they suddenly all came from?

Peter Seltzer has laser cutters that he uses to make paper products at his company, Pete’s Papercrafts. When Covid came along, Peter switched from paper to plexiglass, and started making face shields and sneeze guards.

Peter started out by making over 13,000 face shields for members of the Ochsner Health System. That alone would be an extraordinary accomplishment, if it was the whole story. But it’s barely the beginning.

Peter has gone on to make thousands of plexiglass sneeze guards. And the reason that Peter knew about the initial PPE shortage is because, as well as being a successful entrepreneur, he's also a paramedic, and founder and Director of a paramedic training program for high school kids, called Gateway EMS Training.

Hotel

One of the local business sectors that has been hardest hit by the pandemic is tourism.

Jim Cook is uniquely familiar with all aspects of the leisure and convention tourist industry. Jim is General Manager of the Sheraton Hotel in New Orleans. He’s also a commissioner of the Downtown Development District in New Orleans, a past Chairman of the Board of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, and past President of the Greater New Orleans Hotel & Lodging Association.

When the tourist and convention business came to a sudden halt in March, it brought into stark relief just how dependent New Orleans has become on tourism. At some point the city seems to have crossed an unseen boundary. New Orleans used to be a place that people came to, just to experience everyday life. For a few days a person from somewhere else could eat, shop, drink, and listen to music like a New Orleanian. Now we discover that some of New Orleans most revered institutions – from famous restaurants to the French Quarter itself – can’t survive without a steady stream of tourists.

There are, apparently, other tourism business models that target specific types of tourists, not just high volume. The question New Orleans faces now is, Is there a way to retain a tourist and convention sector that doesn’t rely on 19 million tourists a year?

Photos from this by Jill Lafleur are on our website. There's more conversation about tourism here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you had to list two of the pillars of American existence you might choose Liberty & Justice. Or, maybe Equality & Opportunity. Well, how about Rent & Beef?

Rent

The pandemic has forced us to confront a number of economic issues that were due for examination. One of them is the rental market.

Even without the added stress of reduced pay or a lost job, renting can be a strained relationship, for both landlord and tenant. in 2019 Marco Nelson came up with an app called Rentcheck and it's already in use in all 50 States.

If you’ve ever rented an apartment or an office, you’ll have gone through the usually upbeat experience of moving in… and the typically much more painful process of moving out, which is usually the argument over the security deposit. The tenant wants her total security deposit back. The landlord says he’s not giving it back because of the hole in the wall. The tenant swears it was like that when she moved in… You’ve no doubt been through something similar to this, as either a tenant or a landlord.

What Rentcheck does is walk you through a series of steps that documents and records a tenant’s move in, and move out. Both the tenant and landlord have a set of time-stamped photos that they sign off on. And that, simply and efficiently, does away with all those ugly disagreements.

Beef

Dr. Shannon Gonsulin’s family have been raising cattle in South Central Louisiana since 1770. No, that is not a typo. SEVENTEEN 70. But it wasn't until 236 years later, in 2006, that Gonsulin Land & Cattle officially switched to producing fully grass-fed cows, with no hormones or processed grains.

Dr. Shannon Gonsulin comes from a family of ranchers. He's also a veterinarian. Dr. Shannon (as everyone calls him) owns Bayou Teche Veterinary Clinic, in Breaux Bridge, and Atchafalya Animal Clinic in Morgan City.

Being a rancher of organic grass-fed beef and a vet is a great combo. Not  because you don't have to pay vet bills when a cow gets sick, but because when you produce beef that is guaranteed to be hormone-free and anti-biotic-free, cows don't have the luxury of having a sick day. if they do they have to be removed from the herd and that severely impacts the farm's bottom line. So Dr. Shannon is very involved with preventive medicine. If you can prevent a cow from having a single sick day its whole life, are there lessons for human medicine?

Photos from this by Jill Lafleur are at our website. More conversations about grass-fed pork are here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Back when we first started making Out to Lunch in New Orleans, one of our earliest guests was a young woman by the name of Amy Chenevert. Amy had gone to a football game and realized that all the guys were wearing fan fashion, but there was nothing fashionable for women to wear on game day.

So Amy started up a company that made gameday apparel for women sports fans. That was back in 2007. During the 2019 football season, a new piece of women’s sports apparel started popping up. If you don’t have one yourself, you’ve probably seen someone wearing it. It’s a sparkly, sequined sports jacket, in appropriate Saints, Tigers, and other team colors.

That sparkly jacket marked Amy Chenevert’s return to sports fashion. After taking some time away from her business, Amy is back at the head of her company, Tru Colors Gameday. The company makes fashion items specifically for women to wear and take to the game on game day, centered on a very specific NFL women's fashion accessory, the clear bag. 

Game Day Every Day

the New Orleans Saints, the LSU Tigers, and every other successful sports team know how to go out on the field and win. Everybody knows their position. Everybody knows the rules. Everybody on the team knows exactly what to do. But they still have a coach. You can’t even imagine a football team without a coach.

When an organization with a lot of moving parts is dependent on communication and on-the-fly decision making, it makes sense to have someone who can stand back and see the big picture. Which is why businesses have coaches too. Like Julie Couret.

The companies Julie coaches are an impressive list that include GE, the Marriot, Sheraton, Entergy, Ochsner Health System, and many others.

Recently the question for a lot of businesses has gone from, “When will things get back to normal?” to “How do we survive if things never go back to normal?” Julie imparts a great deal of wisdom for businesses coping with Covid in this conversation.

Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website. More conversation about the future of the NFL season with Saints CFO Ed Lang is here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How’s the social distancing going? Are you managing to keep 6 feet away from everybody else? How do you figure out what 6 feet is? We’ve heard people describe it as the length of two supermarket shopping carts, or the same height as Drew Brees, if you can imagine Drew lying on the ground in front of you. 

If you’re working with other people in industry, in construction, on a factory floor, or even in school, it’s now become vitally important to know what six feet looks like. Getting within six feet of another person greatly increases the chances of catching or spreading Covid 19.  Once someone in the workplace or at school tests positive for Covid 19, and you have no idea what parts of the building they’ve been in or who they’ve been in contact with, the whole place has to shut down while it’s cleaned, and everybody has to get tested. So it’s vital – not just for health, but for keeping businesses open – that we know what 6 feet looks like.

A Baton Rouge company, Enginuity Global, is solving this distancing problem, with a product called the Proxxi Halo. The Halo is a wristband that alerts a user when they’re within six feet of another Halo wristband. The wristbands cost $100 each and since May, Enginuity Global has shipped tens of thousands of them to customers.

Dan Ducote is the owner and Managing Member of Enginuity Global.

Doctor Referral

This has probably happened to you: You go to your doctor, and she refers you to another doctor. A specialist. Do you know how your doctor decides who to refer you to? You might be surprised to learn that there is no established method. It’s more or less like recommending a restaurant.

When someone recommends a restaurant to you, it’s usually because they’ve been to the restaurant. But when your doctor recommends you go see a mental or behavioral health professional – like a psychiatrist or therapist - there’s a very good chance your doctor has never actually seen this person professionally herself. So, what is your doctor basing this recommendation on?

Maybe the therapist is someone your doctor knows personally. Or maybe she’s heard good reports from other patients. Don’t you think there ought to be a better way for medical professionals to find and refer each other? 

That’s what Trevor Colhoun thought too. Trevor’s company, Trusted Provider Network, transforms medical referrals and recommendations into a more medically sound and logical system.

Trusted Provider Network is not for consumer recommendations. It’s not like a medical Yelp. It’s for medical professionals only. But it’s not LinkedIn or Facebook for doctors. So, what is exactly is Trusted Provider Network? How does a doctor use it?

Find out more about telehealth here.

Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this edition of Out to Lunch, Peter Ricchiuti, Stephanie Riegel and Christiaan Mader meet at the nexus of the Latinx Hub City Pang Wangle. Okay, let's unpack that:

LatinX

There’s no two ways about it – this is a tough time to be in business. There is help available to get through this rough patch – in the form of business loans, and even grants. Some are through Federal agencies, some are from State agencies, and there’s money available from city governments in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette.

Getting a hold of this money is not easy. Typically, businesses benefit by being a member of a business alliance to help them navigate the maze of regulation and bureaucracy.  But some businesses are too small to join alliances like the Chamber of Commerce. For those small owner-operator businesses, getting access to financial expertise of any kind is challenging.

You might be a great hairdresser, house painter, or plumber, but that doesn’t mean you have great – or even any – business skills. Now, imagine having the added problem of not being able to speak English. That’s the position many Latinx self-employed people find themselves in, in Louisiana. And that’s why there’s an organization called El Centro. El Centro provides business assistance for Latinx entrepreneurs.

Lindsey Navarro is Executive Director of El Centro. There’s a local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, but that’s not El Centro. If there was ever an organization that truly exists to help the little guy, it’s El Centro.

Pang Wangle

Before a previous disaster, Hurricane Katrina, blew Stephanie Riegel and her family to Baton Rouge, Stephanie was a journalist and news anchor at WWL TV in New Orleans. One of Stephanie’s colleagues there was fellow journalist, Jennifer John.

Stephanie is still a journalist but Jennifer John is not, she’s the founder and CEO of  a company with an intriguing name, Pang Wangle.

The story goes that while Jen was out in the field reporting, she was so sick of getting bitten up by mosquitoes and other bugs that she created a line of bug resistant clothing for women: scarves, wraps, pants, hats, and bags that are not only stylish and lightweight for life outdoors in the South, but they’re also impregnated with a safe and long-lasting bug repellant.

Things had been going pretty well since Jen launched Pang Wangle at the end of 2017. And then along came Covid 19. But, instead of decimating Jen’s business like so many others, the pandemic got Pang Wangle coverage in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, New York Lifestyles magazine, and on a coveted Buzzfeed list.

Hub City

Over the course of the last few months, journalists have found themselves asking what seems like an endless list of questions for which there are often no known answers. How long will this economic downturn last? What happens when your government assistance runs out? What is the future of education, of the tourist and convention business, the entertainment industry, air travel… The list goes on.

But, in the midst of all this uncertainty, there is one economic question that we get a definite answer to on this edition of Out to Lunch Louisiana. And that question is – Why, during the course of this pandemic and unprecedented economic uncertainty and record unemployment – why are bicycle sales through the roof?

To answer that question, we’re not turning to an economist or financial pundit, we’re turning to Meg Arcenaux, owner of Hub City Cycles in Lafayette.

You can also check out other bike related conversations.

Photos by Jill Lafleur at our website.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this edition of out to Lunch, Peter Ricchiuti and Christiaan Mader discuss the daily ritual of deleting email, but not dog dating email.

Email You Don't Want to Delete

Opening this segment of Out to Lunch, Peter says, "I’m always wary of hosts of shows like this who start off a story with, “If you’re like me…”  But I’m willing to go for it right now, because I bet there is one thing we have in common.

"If you’re like me, you checked your email today, and went down the list going delete, delete, delete, delete. The email from Amazon trying to sell you something you bought last week. The email from some company you can’t remember – maybe they were the people you bought those flip flops from… It’s like this every day, right?"

Now picture this. A marketing email from a company that sends you information about something you’re actually interested in. Maybe it’s the flip flop company, but they’re not sending you information about flip flops, they’re telling you about an advance in Alzheimer’s research, which you actually are interested in. Or a recipe for chocolate cake, which, strangely enough, you were just thinking about baking.

This would brighten your whole email experience. And on the other side of the equation, if you’re the company sending the email, your clients will actually open the email, read it, and appreciate you. That’s how the A.I-driven email marketing company RASA.io works.

If you’re thinking, “Well, that’s a great idea,” it’s way past the idea stage. Rasa.io has 20 employees and they send out 15 million emails a month.

Jared Loftus is Chief Operations Officer at Rasa.io. The secret to the success of these A.I-generated emails is their personalization. Peter says, "Suppose Christiaan and I bought the same flip flops, but I’m interested in brass bands and the oil business, and Christiaan is interested in progressive jazz and football. We both get email from the same flip flop company, but the emails we get are tailored to our specific interests."

The obvious question is, “How does a flip flop company know all this about me?” Where is this information coming from that allows a company to target clients so specifically? It's a fascinating concept and a fascinating company. Almost as fascinating as dog dating.

Dog Dating

We’re still feeling the effects of the lockdown. There are two segments of the population that the lockdown had a big effect on: dogs, and single people who like to go on dates. If you’re a dog, the lockdown was awesome – you had company 24 hours a day. If you’re human, single, and looking for somebody to date, well, the lockdown was challenging. 

In the Venn Diagram of those two populations, dogs and daters, you can add Leigh Isaacson D’Angelo. Leigh is neither a dog, nor dating – she’s a married human, with a business called DIG.

DIG is a dating app for dog owners. The concept is, if you love your dog, and dogs in general, it’s good to weed out - at the very beginning of the dating process - potential partners who don’t like dogs. And DIG is big. It’s on the ground in 15 cities across the country. The biggest DIG communities are in New York and Los Angeles, and they're about to break into Europe.

And breaking news! DIG is expanding into animal loving world, with Tabby, the cat person's dating app!

Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website. For more conversations about dogs, Traci Pecot talks about her business that matches up lonely dogs with lonely people, and Jacey Simon talks about her business that pampers pets.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Although most businesses in the US and around the world are hurting as a result of the global pandemic, some businesses are booming as a direct result of the lock-down. Yes, there is an upside to Covid 19.

Pang Wangle

Before a previous disaster, Hurricane Katrina, blew Stephanie Riegel and her family to Baton Rouge, Stephanie was a journalist and news anchor at WWL TV in New Orleans. One of Stephanie's colleagues there was fellow journalist, Jennifer John.

Stephanie is still a journalist but Jennifer John is not, she's the founder and CEO of  a company with an intriguing name, Pang Wangle.

The story goes that while Jen was out in the field reporting, she was so sick of getting bitten up by mosquitoes and other bugs that she created a line of bug resistant clothing for women: scarves, wraps, pants, hats, and bags that are not only stylish and lightweight for life outdoors in the South, but they’re also impregnated with a safe and long-lasting bug repellant.

Things had been going pretty well since Jen launched Pang Wangle at the end of 2017. And then along came Covid 19. But, instead of decimating Jen's business like so many others, the pandemic got Pang Wangle coverage in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, New York Lifestyles magazine, and on a coveted Buzzfeed list.

Hub City

Over the course of the last few months, journalists have found themselves asking what seems like an endless list of questions for which there are often no known answers.

How long will this economic downturn last? What happens when your government assistance runs out? What is the future of education, of the tourist and convention business, the entertainment industry, air travel… The list goes on.

But, in the midst of all this uncertainty, there is one economic question that we get a definite answer to on this edition of Out to Lunch Louisiana. And that question is – Why, during the course of this pandemic and unprecedented economic uncertainty and record unemployment – why are bicycle sales through the roof?

To answer that question, we’re not turning to an economist or financial pundit, we’re turning to Meg Arcenaux, owner of Hub City Cycles in Lafayette.

You can also check out Meg's previous appearance on Out to Lunch Acadiana.

Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whatever else has happened to you over the past few months, you’ve more than likely been keeping up with everything that’s going on, by checking the news.

Along with NPR, some of Louisiana’s most reliable news sources are the local New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Acadiana editions of the daily newspaper, The Advocate. Both in print and online.

The Publisher of all of the editions of The Advocate is Judi Terzotis.

The last time Judi was on Out to Lunch, back in February - which now seems like a lifetime ago - she was talking about how The Advocate was bucking national newspaper trends. In the face of shrinking circulations and streamlined newsrooms in most other places, The Advocate was hiring reporters, it was growing newsrooms, it had recently acquired the New Orleans Times Picayune,  it was seeing new revenue streams from merchandising and live events… Everything seemed to be humming along.

Then Covid 19 hit. Now, when you go to the Advocate’s website there’s an advertisement that says “Our Covid 19 news team needs your help,” and there’s a “Donate” button. It’s been reported that journalists at The Advocate have taken pay cuts, and that 10% of the New Orleans newsroom has been temporarily furloughed. What was it about the pandemic that turned The Advocate from an outlier media success story into a newspaper that’s having a tough time?

Latinx Entrepreneurs

There’s no two ways about it - this is a tough time to be in business. There is help available to get through this rough patch – in the form of business loans, and even grants. Some are through Federal agencies, some are from State agencies, and there’s money available from city governments in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette.

Getting a hold of this money is not easy. Typically, businesses benefit by being a member of a business alliance to help them navigate the maze of regulation and bureaucracy.  But some businesses are too small to join alliances like the Chamber of Commerce. For those small owner-operator businesses, getting access to financial expertise of any kind is challenging.

You might be a great hairdresser, house painter, or plumber, but that doesn’t mean you have great – or even any - business skills. Now, imagine having the added problem of not being able to speak English. That’s the position many Latinx self-employed people find themselves in, in Louisiana. And that’s why there’s an organization called El Centro. El Centro provides business assistance for Latinx entrepreneurs.

Lindsey Navarro is Executive Director of El Centro. There’s a local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, but that’s not El Centro. If there was ever an organization that truly exists to help the little guy, it’s El Centro.

Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are on our website. Judi Terzotis talks more about the business side of The Acadiana Advocate here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.