It's Acadiana: Out to Lunch

There are very few things that can we all agree on. Employers, employees, politicians, and parents have a range of divergent views on most subjects. Except one. Education. Everybody agrees that education is the fundamental driver of a healthy economy and a healthy society. We attribute a good education system to everything from full employment and a low crime rate to individual self fulfillment. From that position of unity, we very quickly return to our more familiar positions of vastly different opinions and lots of them when it comes to deciding how exactly we ought to educate children. Vanessa Williams is a proponent of a style of education called Montessori. It s been around for over 100 years. It can be found all around the world, including 4,000 Montessori schools in the United States. Vanessa founded the Ashton Grace Montessori School in Lafayette in 1993. Sasha Nick believes you can teach any subject through art. That s what she does at her children s art studio, The Little Paintbrush. Sasha founded The Little Paintbrush in Lafayette in 2004 and has classes for both kids and adults that range from straight ahead art class to Summer camp and painting parties. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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Wherever you are right now, take a look around. If you re in the car, check out the dashboard. You probably take it for granted but somebody had to design every component of it. If you re at your desk, everything that s on it from your computer to business cards to coffee mug had to be designed by somebody. Strangely, seeing every single thing in the world has to be designed, it s amazing how few designers you run into. To rectify that, Peter Ricchiuti has invited two very different Acadiana designers to lunch. Lisa Bourqe designs houses and spaces we work and live in. Lisa is an architect and residential and retail designer whose work you can find here in her native Acadiana and in California. Jared Stepp s designs can be found all around the world. Jared and his partner at i10 Distribution design cables and earbuds for the iPhone that users worldwide agree are superior to the stuff that Apple makes. That s a big deal. The diffrence between "by design" and "design by" is subtle but significant on this edition of Out to Lunch. Photos at Social by Gwen Aucoin.

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Although Lafayette is a bustling city we like to believe we re a small town where, if we don t all know each other, we know of each other. Jezebel Lobelia may be the exception that proves the rule. Although Jezebel is known nationwide, it s possible you ve never even heard of her. From her home studio here in Lafayette, Jezebel Lobelia is the creator of fashionwear that she sells under the label Jezebel s Fascination. Jezebel sells on average, across the country, one piece a day. In the world of hand crafted designer fashion, that is significantly successful. Jezebel s company is called Jezebel s Fascination because the fashion items she s making are called fascinators creations of fabric and feathers worn on your head, kind of like the exuberant decoration you might see on a woman s hat at the Kentucky Derby, without the hat. Karen Thibodeaux also makes fashion items. Karen s business, Sew What, designs and manufactures women s clothing. Karen is the creator of a line of Cajun inspired clothing called VaCajun. Karen s company is headquartered in Branch, Louisiana, where the company is a big deal it is the town s single biggest private sector employer. In this conversation Peter Ricchiuti gets to meet the biggest deal in Branch Louisiana and the most fascinating woman in Lafayette. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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You ve probably had this experience You go to a great restaurant; you really like it and you go back regularly. But there s hardly anybody in there. Ever. The even stranger thing is, the restaurant across the street is not nearly as good, but it s always busy. Why is that Well, there may be a number of reasons. But the principal ones are usually marketing, branding, advertising, and perception. All of which can be grouped under the banner of what is commonly called "Getting Your Name Out There." On this edition of Out to Lunch, Peter is joined by two folks who specialize in getting your business s name out there. Chad Cole does it literally. He ll write your name in neon, in LED lights, or in shiny paint, and he ll hang it where the world will see it. Chad is the President of the Universal Sign and Manufacturing Company. You see his signs all over Acadiana. Cherie Hebert will get your name out there on social media, in the newspaper, on radio, TV, billboards... she ll even write your name across the sky if that seems like a good way to get your name out there. Cherie is a founder, partner and brand strategist at BBR Creative. BBR is a powerhouse advertising, design, and marketing firm in Lafayette. It s been in business for 27 years and has 37 employees. You can have the greatest idea in the world or the greatest restaurant but if you don t get your name out there nobody s going to know about you. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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Here in Acadiana there s one thing we can all agree on. No matter what our politics, our age, our ethnicity, or anything else that separates us, the one thing we all have in common is a love of Cajun food. You don t have to be Cajun or even raised in Acadiana to be an expert on the exact way you like your gumbo, boudin, and everything else that s native to our neighborhood. And God forbid you have to leave Acadiana for work or some other reason and live somewhere else. Then what do you do Up until now you ve had to rely on somebody here sending you a care package. These days though, things have changed. Now if you re living out of town you don t have to ask your sister in law to pick you up some Swamp Pop and ship it to Seattle at some enormous cost. Now you can call Tara Guidry. Tara s recently founded business is called Cajun Crate. It s a monthly care package from Acadiana, curated and delivered to wherever you are, or wherever you d like to send someone a gift of Cajun goodies. For a part of the world that is so food centric, Acadiana is missing a couple of essential pieces in the food chain. There is no food incubator like they have in Baton Rouge at LSU to help food based entrepreneurs. And there s no infrastructure to facilitate the current passion for what s called farm to table getting fresh local farm produce into restaurants. Zack McMath is stepping into both these gaps. Zack is combining his business skills and his passion for food to found McMath Food Group. McMath Food Group includes a network to connect farmers to local markets, and a brand new facility with two commercial kitchens, one for food entrepreneurs and another for caterers and food trucks. Zack is calling this combined contribution to the food economy the Acadiana Food Hub. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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If you listen to this show and you ve made it all the way to the end, you ve heard Peter Ricchiuti say, "Our Acadiana business consultants are Pete Prados from Innov8 Acadiana, Zack Barker from the Opportunity Machine, and Dr Blake Escudier." Pete, Zach and Blake all do great work helping people launch new businesses. But it doesn t matter how great of an idea you have a for a business or how helpful your consultants are, if you don t have one essential ingredient. And that is investment capital. Or as it s called in some circles, money. Running up debt on your credit cards and your friends and family chipping in can only get you so far. The next step is to find somebody who has access to real capital and believes in you, even though in the early stages of starting a business you might have very little to show for your idea other than a business plan. At this stage you can turn to what s called an Angel Investor. An Angel is someone who is prepared to invest in your business and in you, and risk real capital on your crazy idea. Here in Acadiana, Angel investment has been hard to come by. Until now. The founder of Innov8 Acadiana and our business consultant Pete Prados is the director of the recently founded Acadiana Angels. If you re looking for an example of a crazy idea that s just crazy enough to work, how about this one It s called Yellow Jacket. It s a case for your cell phone. So far you re probably thinking "A cell phone case Big deal." Well, wait till you hear the next sentence. The Yellow Jacket cell phone case is also a 7 million volt stun gun. Yes, The Yellow Jacket cell phone case is a 7 million volt stun gun The CEO of this crazy product is Chris Zavala. Imagination, creativity, and intelligence are not the sole properties of Silicon Valley. We ve got our share of impressive thinkers here in Acadiana. And now we have our share of people with money to back them. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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There was a time when you could go out to lunch and ask somebody at the table, "What do you do " and you could be pretty confident you d understand the answer. These days things aren t quite so simple. Take, for example, Peter s guests on today s show Tom Allsup and Will Labar. Will has a pretty straight forward job title. He s the Vice President of Consulting Services at a company in Lafayette called CGI Federal. For the past 38 years CGI Federal has worked with government departments as diverse as Defense and Treasury and everything in between, to do... Well, what Will and CGI actually do is where it starts to get a little more complex. What it looks like CGI Federal do is run the Federal Government. Tom Allsup s job description is even more inscrutable. Tom works for a company called Perficient. He s their "Director of Delivery, PMO and MSO." Do you have any idea what that means Perficient is a major American company that trades on the NASDAQ and has offices across North America, and in India and China where they... Well, Tom is going to explain. If you needed any proof that we re not living in your grandfather s Lafayette, this conversation is it. By the end of it you ll have a lot more insight into what s going on. Actually, well before the end of the show it all starts to make sense. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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We hear a lot about how manufacturing in the United States has declined over the past couple of decades. And we hear an equal amount of talk about various plans to bring it back. Some parts of the Acadiana economy are tied in to the national economy. And some, well, just aren t. Like Faulk s Game Calls. In what used to be the family home, the 4th generation of the Faulk family have been making duck and goose calls for neaarly 90 years. This is one product that is not being outsourced to China. But, perhaps surprisingly, you ll find Faulk s Game Calls all around the world including Russia and, ironically, Turkey. The Marketing Director of Faulk s Game Calls is founder Clarence Faulk s great grandson, Canaan Heard. If things go well for Teresa Rymer, her great grandaughter might be sitting at a table like this 90 years from now telling the story about how the family is still making Stethies. Stethies are customized, personalized stethescopes. The ubiquitous piece of medical equipment that s draped jauntily around doctors necks on TV and that s held against your chest when you re in the doctor s office. Teresa is not a medical equipment technician, she s an entrepreneur and a creative designer who has come up with the idea of putting designs on stethescopes rubber tubing. So that when you go to the doctor she might raise your heart rate by using a stethescope that has the Atlanta Falcons logo on it. Or Mickey Mouse, or Elvis... the possibilities are endless. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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If you re at home right now, maybe you ve got some yogurt in the refrigerator. If you re in the car, you might have a pen in the cup holder. Probably one of those free pens you got from a bank, or an insurance company, or the plumber. And if you re at your desk, you more than likely have a computer keyboard in front of you. All these items have something in common. The keyboard has keys with letters printed on them. The pen has a name and phone number printed on it. And the yogurt has a pastoral scene and the container s contents printed on it. All this printing is done by specialized printers that transfer ink onto all these various odd shaped surfaces. One of these printing methods is called Ink jet. And one of the well known brands of inkjet printing is LogoJet. In 2015 Logojet was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America. Previous companies who have made it onto this list include Pandora, Toys R Us, and 7 11. Unlike these other companies, LogoJet is right here in Lafayette. Its founder and president is Susan Cox. Long before anyone had figured out to how to put a logo on a plastic yogurt container, people were putting images on flat surfaces like canvas. They used a much slower and more painstaking method. A small brush. Coming up with an idea, painting it onto canvas, framing it with wood, and selling it that s a business model that s stood the test of time. Even though we can print thousands of images an hour, or steal them off the internet, we still greatly value original, hand created paintings of artists. Especially those whose work records and reflects our unique culture. Like the striking and beautiful paintings of Lafayette artist, Herb Roe. This is a fascinating conversation that demonstrates the incredible breadth of businesses and occupations in Acadiana. It s also a great lesson in the science of oil painting, the nature of entrepreneurship, and the triumph of love over all. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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There have always been people who believe the end of the world is just around the corner. Like people who say that honking at a red light makes it turn green, eventually they re going to be right. When the end of the world gets here, if you happen to be home in Acadiana, make sure you know where to find Peter s two lunch guests on this edition of Out to Lunch. Jess Fike will make sure you have fresh water. Marcus Descant will make sure you have fresh food. Jess is the President and CEO of H2O Inc. H2O can turn just about any water from seawater to sewerage into water for drinking and bathing. Which is what they are doing in places as diverse as oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and in the country of Mexico. Marcus is a horticulturalist. He s the owner of The Urban Naturalist in Lafayette. Marcus specializes in creating an Edible Landscape, environments that look nice and taste good too. It s both an ancient and hip new trend in domestic agriculture. Instead of planting flowers in your front garden, what about purple okra Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.

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