When you walk into a home, a room, or a business, you typically have a single sensation. A place feels a certain way. That specific reaction is actually the culmination of a whole range of perceptions that include observations about dimensions, light, color, furniture shapes and sizes, painting on the walls, decorative touches, rugs, even scent.

You take most of these cues in at the same time and your decision about how you feel about the place can be almost instant. But the creation of an intentionally designed interior space can take months of planning and execution.

Chad Graci is a native New Orleanian who spent years creating interiors around the world and across the country – including 6 years in New York – before returning home and founding Graci Interiors in 2009. Today, Chad still works across the country, and  you can see his designed spaces in both homes and businesses locally here in New Orleans.

While Chad is working on creating subtle visual cues, Nate Shaeffer, is doing the exact opposite. He’s looking to make an instant impression on you that’s bright and colorful.

Pretty much all you have to know is the name of Nate’s company for you to get the picture. It’s, Big Sexy Neon. Nate is an artist and craftsman who hand-crafts neon – both signs and works of art. He’s one of only 300 neon artists in the US who work in neon.

There’s definitely something magical about neon. Maybe it’s the vibration of the light, maybe it’s the association with something exciting, like the Vegas strip or Times Square, or cocktails, donuts, or beer… Whatever it is, Nate is doing everything he can to keep it alive here in New Orleans.

Chad is likewise making the city a brighter place, but with less red and green amd more cream and white. That very balance - a bright exterior and sophisticated interior - is both a metaphor and literal description of life in New Orleans.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

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Fewer than 400,000 people live in Orleans Parish. Every year we  also have around 19 million temporary residents. Also known as “tourists.”

New Orleanians tend to think of these two populations as distinct – even at odds with each other. But in fact, our local economy is entwined with our tourist economy in ways you might not expect.

A great case study is a business called Chateau Sew.

Chateau Sew is a fabric store on St Charles Avenue. They sell sewing patterns, supplies, and specialty fabrics. The owner of Chateau Sew, Laura Fenner, also teaches sewing classes. There’s no bar at Chateau Sew. You can’t get  a hurricane. Or a muffuletta. Or a New Orleans T-shirt. But when it comes to customers, tourists outnumber locals. Apparently, they’re mostly a lesser-known sub-genus of tourist, called “quilters.”

When out-of-town quilters visit Chateau Sew they’re looking for unique fabrics they can’t get anywhere else. Fabrics like the creations of New Orleans fabric design company, Marillyn In The Moon.

Marillyn In The Moon’s fabrics are in stores in New Orleans, across Louisiana, and in Mississippi and Alabama.

The designer and manufacturer at Marillyn In The Moon is native New Orleanian, Robin Brou Antin.

Robin’s fabric designs are rooted in New Orleans culture, inspired by her family’s history of 9 generations in the German Coast of Louisiana, and her fabric is manufactured by a specialist in high-quality production in South Korea.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

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As a society, we’re generally focused on achievement. We celebrate when a person gets into college. And we celebrate when they graduate. In between, when it comes to winning monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily battles - like structuring your day to attend classes and study for tests; and how to budget to afford tuition, books, transportation, food, and rent – well, we typically leave people to figure that out on their own.

It turns out that’s an okay strategy for students who start out with reasonable financial resources. But, not so good for those who don’t. For low-income students who get into college, only 12%  graduate with a 4-year degree.

That’s the statistic that largely motivates an organization called College Beyond. College Beyond works with low-income students to assist them with finances, coaching, and navigating college to stay in the race to the finish line. Each year they work with over 350 New Orleans college students.

Clara Baron-Hyppolite is Executive Director of College Beyond.

If you go to college and get a degree in arts, communication, or journalism, you might want to go work for a newspaper.

The reason we still call it a newspaper is that it was originally news printed on paper. Today, most of us read the newspaper on a digital device, but there are still people who like to read the newspaper in its original form, on paper.

For those folks, they can subscribe and get the paper delivered. Or, here in New Orleans, they can pick up a copy of The Times Picayune by slipping quarters into a slot in a metal box, open a hinged door, and take a newspaper off the stack inside.

If you’re one of the people who gets your paper this way, have you ever wondered how the paper gets into the box? The answer to that question for 60 boxes around New Orleans is, Hector Garcia. Hector is an independent contractor who buys papers from the publisher of The Times Picayune, puts them in the boxes, then collects the quarters.

College Beyond is never going to be Apple or Amazon – but they just might be helping someone graduate who goes on to change the world.

And Hector is never going to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, but without people like him nor would anybody else, because the news would never get disseminated.

It’s true, we typically reserve accolades for people who are visibly successful, but the intensity of the spotlight is not a measure of true worth. In Hector and Clara's cases, the forgotten middle is a noble place to be. 

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

 

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There’s a difference between an unintentional and an intentional experience.

For example, you could be wandering down Oak Street at night and unintentionally hear music coming out of The Maple Leaf. It might sound great, but it sounds a whole lot better if you intentionally go into the club and stand in front of the stage.

Likewise with heat and humidity. Living in New Orleans you no doubt gain some benefit from unintentionally sweating in the sauna-like weather - but it’s not the same as the health benefits you get from intentionally stepping into a real sauna.

Eric Trombly is the owner of Luxe & Leisure Saunas. He designs and builds custom saunas and steam rooms. Yes, in New Orleans.

If you don’t want to commit to putting a sauna in your home or business, you can go take a sauna   - and do a lot more for your health and wellness - at Uptown Wellness + Aesthetics on Magazine Street.

Uptown Wellness + Aesthetics is a health spa where you can get a wide range of services including cryotherapy, cold plunge, IV therapy, red light therapy, and cryo-sculpting.

Jacob Tramontin is the owner of Uptown Wellness + Aesthetics. Jacob is a recovering attorney who was president of Go Auto Insurance before discovering his calling in the wellness industry and investing north of $1m to create his Uptown wellness spa.

It can take a long time to figure stuff out. 

As a society, it’s taken us decades to come to the realization that what we regard as “health care” isn’t actually taking care of our health. Getting medical attention when there’s something wrong with us is actually taking care of illness or disease.

More and more we’re coming to realize that taking real care of our health means taking preventive care - and each of us individually has to seek that out. There are lots of things you can do to stay healthy. Among them, sauna and the services you can get at a health spa are legitimate options.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. This week, air conditioning problems in our regular meeting room chased the show lout of its regular spot into a delightful hotel room, Room 17 to be exact.

You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

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People who own or run factories and refineries love to complain about how onerous it is to comply with the rules and regulations laid out by OSHA – the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. On the other hand, these same businesses brag about their safety record to attract and retain good employees.

A local New Orleans company, American Safety, combines both of these elements in its day-to-day business: it consults on workplace safety, provides employee safety training, and it also finds and provides skilled, trained industrial employees.

Corey Rosales is President and CEO of American Safety.                

On occasion, companies run afoul of OSHA. Usually it’s unintentional. Factories and refineries know they have to be OSHA compliant so for the most part they’re not setting out to cut corners or cheap-out on their employees’ safety. But things go wrong. Accidents happen.

When they do, companies have to answer to OSHA. To help them navigate through that process and to set them up for a compliant, safer future, companies typically turn to lawyers who specialize in labor and employment law.

One of our major sponsors at Out to Lunch is the law firm of Jones Walker. We’re taking advantage of that relationship today by inviting Jane Heidingsfelder to lunch.

Jane is a partner at Jones Walker and a specialist in labor and employment law. She started at the firm in 2004 and to date she’s written over 50 articles about various aspects of labor law. As a leading legal authority on OSHA, Jane has clients all over the country.

most of us, when we hear the term “Workplace safety” might react like we do during the safety instructions on a plane before take-off: We know it’s important, but we tune it out because we’ve heard it all before, and we hope it’s never going to happen.

Indifference, denial, and hoping are not strategies for creating a safe and healthy work environment. When an incident occurs that you’re not prepared for, it can plunge a great job - or a great company - into a healthcare, employment, financial, and legal nightmare.

Corey Rosales is dedicated to making sure that workday doesn’t come. Jane Heidingsfelder is also dedicated to heading off disasters before they happen, and to mitigating their after-effects when they do.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’ve got a high school kid in public school in New Orleans and your kid is interested in pursuing anything in the arts – like music, dance, theater, film, even creative writing – you find out pretty quickly, the school doesn’t have a budget for that.

To put on a play, publish a newspaper, learn dance, or most other musical and artistic pursuits, the funds required generally come from fundraisers, or parents’ pockets.

Now, when you get to a public high school like NOCCA – the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts – where education and excellence in the arts is the very reason for its existence – it would be impossible to expect bake sales or parents to foot the bill for those expenses.

So where does that money come from?

It comes from an organization dedicated to raising the funds that help power NOCCA, called the NOCCA Foundation.

Adonis Rose is a NOCCA graduate who has gone on to a successful career as a jazz musician. Adonis has won a Grammy, he’s played on every stage that matters - including Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center - he’s accompanied legends like Dianne Reeves and Wynton Marsalis, and since 2024 he’s been Executive Director of the NOCCA Foundation.

One of the arts your high school kid might like to study is film. If they do, maybe they’ll graduate and go to film school. And then, if they want to be in the film business they’ll have to move to someplace else where they make movies. Because everybody here seems to agree that apart from a few brief and wonderful years when we were known as “Hollywood South,” there’s no way to have a career in the film business in New Orleans.

Don’t tell that to Kenny Morrison.

Kenny has been making a nationwide career for himself as a New Orleans-based film-maker since 2001. He principally makes high-end and big-budget commercials – many of which you have certainly  seen - for the likes of banks, shoes, hospitals and insurance companies.

Kenny is what’s known in the film business as a triple threat – director, cinematographer, and an entrepreneurial film technologist, pioneering cutting-edge visual effects through his virtual-production company, Lucy XR.

It used to be generally accepted that there were real jobs – like lawyers, doctors and plumbers – and then there were b.s. jobs like actors, musicians, and film makers.

We don’t think so much like that anymore. Maybe it changed because an actor, Ronald Reagan, became one of the most popular Republican presidents of the 20th Century.

Jay Z had a successful career as a musician before creating a music business empire. Artists have made millions of dollars selling works of art in the crypto space as NFT’s. Online content creators clean up collaborating with fashion houses and sneaker manufacturers. The demarcation line between art and business has gotten blurred. Locally, Adonis Rose and Kenny Morrison continue to demonstrate that creativity and commerce can happily co-exist. And that’s a lesson we need to take to heart here in New Orleans, perhaps more than any city in the country.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans.

Andrew Ward sits in hosting for Peter Ricchiuti. You can find photos from this show at itsneworleans.com.

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I’m sitting at a table with two people: Patrick and Conway. In front of me, there’s a knife. I could use the knife to cut the food on my plate. Or I could lunge across the table and stab Conway with it.

If I did that, what would you say Patrick is supposed to do?

He could do nothing. He could call 911 – to get an ambulance for Conway and a cop to arrest me. Or he could intervene – try and subdue me before I hurt Conway or other people.

That is, in fact, more or less what Patrick Young actually does. Every day.

For 3 years Patrick was the Director of Gun Violence Prevention for the City of New Orleans. In 2024 he founded 4 Social Peace. It’s the first organization in the country dedicated solely to digital community violence intervention.

4 Social Peace focuses on the links between threats and aggression on social media, real world crime, and the struggles of people trying to re-integrate after being released from incarceration. It's rooted in Patrick’s lived experience.

Well, the good news is, I didn’t stab Conway Solomon, so I can tell you - he’s Co-Founder and CEO of a company called Wrstbnd.

We first met Conway in 2020 when we were doing Out to Lunch on Zoom because of the pandemic and Conway had plenty of time on his hands because nobody was going to a live event where they’d be needing a hi-tech electronic wristband to get in the door.

That was then. Today Wrstbnd is a real-world applied technology success story. It’s – as the name suggests -  a wristband - that’s also an integrated event organization gadget and platform - kind of like a live event version of the Apple Watch or the Oura Ring. A person attending an event gets an electronic wristband that, first of all, allows people to flow into a big event in almost real time without stopping to have a ticket checked.

The Wrstbnd knows whether people are VIPs or have special needs and tracks their whereabouts. It can be used for super-fast transactions – think,  speeding up the lines for drinks, food or merch.

Wrstbnd partners with international event promotion company AEG, one of the producers of New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Orleans is a city of neighborhoods. 73 of them. Each one of these neighborhoods has its own flavor, its unique characteristics, and residents who can tell you about people who were brought up there and went on to do something notable.

Claus Sadlier grew up in Old Metairie. It’s possible you don’t know who Claus is. If you’ve stopped at a coffee shop to grab a cup of joe to go - Claus is the guy who invented the paper cup you got your coffee in.

Back in the early 90’s, when to-go coffee was still sold in Styrofoam cups, Claus created an insulated paper cup. And sold the design to Dixie Cups for $170 million.

Claus went on to invent other stuff as well. Then in 2013, having conquered the world, he followed his heart back to New Orleans. He bought a home in the French Quarter and decided to use some of his good fortune to celebrate a singular New Orleans neighborhood and its claim to fame: prostitution.

In September 2024, after years of research, planning and design, Claus Sadlier opened The New Orleans Storyville Museum.

It’s been many years since New Orleans had a legal sex-worker district. But we’re still a city that proudly runs on our reputation for fun - from restaurants, bars, and  drinking on the street, to music festivals and corporate conventions.

A lot of this hospitality and tourist industry – and its allied occupations like security, sanitation, and infrastructure maintenance – is powered by people who don’t make a lot of money.

As the city gets more prosperous, these folks, who are the heart and soul of New Orleans’ economy, don’t benefit from gentrification if they don’t own a house. And if they’re renting, they can end up being priced out of their neighborhood.

That’s where Oji Alexander’s business, People’s Housing Plus, comes in. People's Housing Plus is a property development company. They buy land, build houses, and sell or rent them. But only to low and moderate income New Orleanians.

By controlling every step of the process, from financing through construction, houses are affordable. And with a stewardship program that continues after a sale, continued maintenance is affordable too.

It’s sometimes hard to describe to people who don’t live in New Orleans exactly what makes it such a unique place. Yes, it’s physically beautiful to look at, the food’s great, there’s always good music, it’s relatively affordable, and the climate is – with a few exceptions – mostly pleasant. But none of that adequately explains the actual experience of living here.

The next time you’re looking for a way to explain what that’s like, you might point to this episode of Out to Lunch. You could describe it  like this:

“In a historic building on the most exclusive tree-lined avenue in the city, as streetcars rattle by, a successful design engineer who invented the paper coffee cup and built a museum celebrating jazz, gambling and prostitution, has lunch with a property developer building houses for low income citizens – and nobody’s in a hurry to get anywhere when it’s over.”

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may have heard people who started up businesses talking about how they found investors. Typically, they’ll say something like, “We pitched our idea and raised X amount.”

It sounds simple. But when you dig a little deeper, delivering a successful pitch to investors is not quite as straightforward as describing your business as “The Uber of dating” or “Air BnB for pets.” Financing a startup requires convincing investors or lenders they’re taking a worthwhile risk.

Crafting this calculated risk into a convincing sales pitch - which can be in the shape of a business plan or a presentation known as a “pitch deck” – is a special skill. And it’s what Camille Terk does at her company, Terk Consulting.

Tey Stiteler came up with her idea for a business after she and her partner bought 4 acres of land near Poplarville, Mississippi.

Tey was looking for a reason to quit her desk-job and work outdoors. With absolutely no background in farming or horticulture, Tey started growing flowers. She grew a lot of flowers. And started meeting other people who grew flowers.

Tey began selling her flowers at markets and pop-ups around New Orleans. Then in 2024 when she went all-in and opened a brick and mortar business on Camp Street. It’s called, The Secret Spot Flowers.

There’s a question I’ve heard interviewers ask people. It’s, “If you could go back in time to when you were starting out, what would you tell your younger self?” I don't ask either Camille or Tey this question but there’s no doubt that if they, and most people, knew what roadblocks and curveballs and just downright weird, unexpected things were going to come up when they started down the path of founding and running a business, they might question their optimism and the wisdom of blind faith.

On the other hand, when things work out, as they have so far for Tey and Camille, the ups and downs become a bunch of great stories.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are countless myths and reports throughout human history of places where spirits come down to earth. Where the intangible meets the material world. In the US, there are few places that better demonstrate this crossroads than New Orleans. 

People have tried to explain how the joy of living here triumphs over everyday things like dysfunction and potholes, with slogans like “The Big Easy,” and “The city that care forgot.”

One of the locations you can witness this triumph of the spirit is the corner of Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas Street. No, not Rouse’s. Across the street. At Tipitina’s music club.

Keith Spera from the Times Picayune has called Tipitina’s, “a sacred space.” Dr. John called it, “The church of the funky saints.” And Jazz Fest co-founder Quint Davis has referred to it as, “The Vatican of New Orleans music.”

Tipitina’s was founded in 1977 by a bunch of young people who knew nothing about business, music promotion, running a restaurant, a bar, or a radio station – it was the original home of WWOZ. These folks just wanted a place that celebrated New Orleans musicians and gave them a stage to play on - and a guarantee they’d actually get the money that people paid to come see them.

In 2018, history repeated itself when the members of the New Orleans band Galactic bought Tipitina’s.

Musicians are not typically known for their firm grasp of the music business, but the doors are still open and the revenue streams have diversified, including a record business called Tipitina’s Record Club.

Robert Mercurio is the bass player in Galactic, part owner of the legendary Tipitina’s music club, and Co-Founder of Tipitina’s Record Club.

Besides music, there’s another strand of New Orleans where art meets commerce, and where, literally, the rubber meets the road. Motorcycle design and manufacture. It’s a lot less celebrated than our place in the history of music, but if you know a thing or two about motorbikes you’ll know my other lunch guest today, J.T. Nesbitt.

J.T designed and was part of the team that produced motorcycles called The Wraith, the G2 Hellcat and The Magnolia Special, for Confederate Motorcycles, and later an electric bike, The Curtiss One. They’re all elegant works of art and powerful machines.

Today, JT is designing and building a new line of bikes under the banner of his own company, Bienville Studios. Currently he’s building a bike called the Magnolia 4. We find out all about it in this edition of Out to Lunch but for now all you need to know is Jay Leno has one on order.

The Tipitina’s logo with the half-peeled banana is a New Orleans icon. For locals and live music lovers everywhere it’s as recognizable as the Nike swoosh or the Mercedes hood ornament. Nike and Mercedes spend millions of dollars each year to keep their brands in front of people. Tipitina’s brand is spread mostly by people paying them – to buy a T-shirt or baseball cap. The lesson being, when you have a product  people genuinely care about and cherish, it sells itself.

The same philosophy can be applied to the motorbikes coming out of Bienville Studios.

Robert Mercurio and J.T. Nesbitt are both at the helm of very different but equally unique and valuable New Orleans pieces of art and commerce.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.