In the 1800’s Thomas Edison invented, among other things, the light bulb, the record player, and the first motion picture capture device which paved the way for the birth of movies.

Was Thomas Edison a genius? In response to that question Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

Meaning, you can have a great idea, but you also have to have the tenacity and work ethic to bring it to life.

So, how do you do that?

New Orleans’ two most recently successful companies, Lucid – which sold for over one billion dollars, and Levelset, which sold for 500 million -  were both founded with assistance from business accelerator, The Idea Village.

Today, a lot of entrepreneurs owe their foundational steps, and their growth, to business accelerators and incubators.

Okay, but what if you have a great idea for a business, and you don’t get accepted to a business incubator? Or maybe you live in a place where there is no incubator, accelerator, or even anyone who can give you any business advice at all. Then what do you do? 

Then, you ask Solomon.

Solomon is an AI-powered business accelerator. But the business guidance you’re going to get from it is not generic AI advice pulled off the internet. Solomon’s business advice is drawn from the experience of real humans, who Solomon refers to as “Luminaries.” One of these luminaries is Chris Meaux.

Chris is the grandfather of Louisiana startups, the founder of the revolutionary food delivery app Waitr. At Waitr Chris came up with the technology that took food delivery beyond pizza and Chinese food to all restaurants, and paved the way for a generational change in dining in.

Today, Chris is Co-Founder of a company called QiMana. It’s the company that created Solomon.

Peter's other lunch guest, Chuck Perrett, had an architectural inspiration. Chuck is not an architect. He grew up in a family business that printed architectural blueprints. With the advent of the internet, architects started relying less on printed blueprints and instead started emailing contractors and sub-contractors.

Now, if you’ve ever tried to organize anything more complex than dinner for two by email, you know what a cluster that can turn into. So, imagine how unwieldy an email chain gets when you’re trying to communicate about construction and design issues with contractors and sub-contractors.

That’s why Chuck Perrett was inspired to create Centerline, a cloud-based data management for architects that pulls all of their project-related information out of their inbox and puts it into what’s called a Project Information Model.

Chuck launched Centerline in 2021, began taking clients in 2022, saw 350% growth in 2023, and today the company has architectural firm clients across the country.

There are only so many hours in a day. You can fill them doing any number of things. You can go to work, you can come home and relax, maybe go see a movie, watch TV, write poetry, play sports...  Or you could invent an online business consultancy Or reinvent architectural communication.

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.

Maybe this has happened to you. You stumble onto a great new show on Netflix - and when you tell your friends about it, everybody seems to know about it already. But for some reason you never got the memo.

Peter's lunch guests today don’t have shows on Netflix, but they both have unique stories and successful businesses that maybe you know all about, but in Peter's orbit they’ve flown under the radar. Until now.

Haley Saucier is the owner of Espiritu Mezcaleria and Cocina. It’s a Mexican restaurant. But it’s Haley’s focus on Mezcal that sets her business apart  - not just from other New Orleans restaurants but from bars and restaurants everywhere.

With over 100 types of Mezcal and tequila, Espiritu offers a specialty Master Mezcal Certification program that’s the only school of its type recognized outside of Mexico. It’s so legit that if you take the Mezcal course at Espiritu you get Mexican college credits. And that’s just one aspect of Haley Saucier’s intriguing business and life story.

Danielle Smith has an equally intriguing story and business. 

Danielle is the owner of Elektra Cosmetics. The company specializes in glitter.

Danielle was working in healthcare when she bought Elektra Cosmetics for $5,000 off a person she met at a burlesque conference. That was 2016. When Danielle moved to New Orleans she started selling glitter to burlesque performers and cheerleaders. Then she realized she’s living in a city where women don’t quit glitter when they age out of shopping at Claire’s.

Today Danielle calls Elektra Cosmetics, “glitter for grownups” and her average customers are women from 30-60, including soccer moms and sports fans.

Elektra Cosmetics has over 100 different types of glitter gels. They’ve supplied glitter to corporate clients like Nike, Crown Royal, and Dr Pepper. And, probably needless to say, Danielle has left her career in healthcare to dedicate herself to brightening the world with glitter.

People have various explanations for why things happen the way they do. Haley was  kind enough to cover a couple of bar shifts for a friend - and that led eventually to her becoming an authority on Mezcal and owning Espiritu.

Danielle's unplanned encounter with a person who was selling a glitter company led her away from a life in healthcare and into a career in cosmetics.

Whether you put these inciting incidents down to the Universe having a plan for you, sheer chance, or simply a series of bold decisions, there’s no doubt that the hard work that both these entrepreneurs have put in since starting down these paths is what has turned these intriguing ideas into booming businesses.

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.

I’m going to hit you with some statistics. About women.

Here’s the first one: Around 50% of the population in the US are women. You probably knew that one. 

Here’s another one. Women-owned businesses. According to the National Association of Women Business Owners, 42% of existing US businesses are owned by women. So, pretty good. Right?

Now, we move on to entrepreneurs. This one’s not so good. Of all the people who start up and run a new business – only 20-25% are women.

So, now we get to - the percentage of venture capital invested in those startup businesses. What percentage of venture capital goes to women startup entrepreneurs? You’re probably picking up on the trend here: downward. We’ve gone from around 50%, to 42 to 25. So, if this downward slide were to continue steadily, you might expect women entrepreneurs only receive 15% of all investment capital in the US. That would be pretty dismal. Wouldn’t it? Given that they make up 25% of the startup population. The actual statistic is 2%.

As extraordinary as it may seem going into the second quarter of the 21st century, women entrepreneurs in the United States receive merely 2% of all venture capital. That’s why, here in New Orleans, Jane Cooper and her colleagues run an investment company called Flamingo Funders.

Flamingo Funders are a group of women investors who invest in women founders. They started in 2022 and so far they’ve invested close to quarter of a million dollars in 6 companies.

Tiffany Langlinais started her business, Freret Napoleon, in 2014. Back then Tiffany was making handmade jewelry out of oyster shells. She went from selling a few, to getting featured in several fashion shows, and soon her jewelry was available in 55 stores across the country. Tiffany figured if she could take her own product and market it successfully, she could probably do the same for other people’s products too.

That’s why today Freret Napoleon is a marketing firm that offers a wide range of services and boasts an impressive list of clients as interesting as Cane River Pecan Company and Piety & Desire Chocolates, and as diverse as Brennans and The Bulldog.

The namesakes of Tiffany's company, Freret and Napoleon, were both men who had an impact on New Orleans. William Freret was mayor of New Orleans in the 1800’s, and Napoleon was… well, without the Louisiana Purchase who knows what the fate of New Orleans may have been?

Throughout the history of New Orleans there have also been a number of significant women, including Marie Laveau, Ruby Bridges, Mahalia Jackson, and in business the colorful Norma Wallace.

Flamingo Funders may well find and fund the next successful woman to come from New Orleans, and Freret Napoleon may well get to represent them. That would be a certain kind of poetic justice.

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.

People typically get invited onto shows like this because they’re successful. So, it will come as no surprise to you that my two guests on Out to Lunch today have success stories. What might surprise you, is the magnitude of their success.

Cathy Deano is the founder of Painting With a Twist. It’s a pretty simple concept: you get one or two friends together, you go to a Painting With A Twist studio, you get given a canvas and paints, and with the gentle guidance of the resident artist, you sip wine and paint a painting.

Cathy lives in Mandeville and founded the company in 2007. When her local studios started getting popular, Cathy started franchising the concept. Today, there are over 230 Painting With A Twist franchises, in 38 states. Over 5 million people have created over 10 million paintings. 86% of Painting With A Twist customers have gone more than once, and 51% have visited 6 times or more.

Painting With A Twist is a genuine franchise success story. And its corporate headquarters is still in Mandeville.

Sami Khan is a graduate of Tulane Business School, and the creator of an online game called Atlas Earth.

The world is divided into two kinds of people. Those who say, “Wow, Sami Khan is here?” And those who say, “What the heck is Atlas Earth?” If you fall into the latter category, Atlas Earth is the number-one ranked, top-grossing gaming app in its category in the United Sates - and in every other country where it has launched.

It’s a digital re-creation of the real world in which players buy digital real estate that corresponds to real estate properties on earth. You can’t buy just anything though, you have to be in actual real-world proximity to what you’re buying.

Players buy and sell properties using digital currency called “Atlas Bucks,” which they can also earn by buying real-world products at participating vendors like Sonic, Popeyes, and Jimmy Johns.

Atlas Earth is a hybrid digital-real-world experience, like Mark Zuckerberg was envisaging when he launched Meta. Except Atlas Earth has over 850,000 monthly users, three times more than Meta’s Active Universe had at its peak.

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’re a visual artist and you have an idea for something you want to create, there’s not much standing between you and making your vision a reality. Maybe just a piece of paper and a pencil.

However, if your idea for a new creation is a business, well, things are a bit more complex. If you grew up in a community or a family who were not business-people, or you didn’t get a business education, you might have little idea of what is even required to launch a business.

On top of that, if you’re a member of a minority community you may find there are other layers of difficulty that present even more obstacles. And this is where a New Orleans organization called Camelback Ventures comes in. Camelback Ventures describe themselves as “a rigorous venture accelerator, providing capital, coaching and community for innovative entrepreneurs.”

Because, they say, genius is equally distributed, but opportunity is not, they’re here to right the balance. The CEO of Camelback Ventures is Shawna Young. 

Once you’ve got your business up and running, a big problem you come up against is growth. You need to hire people. You need to pay them. And you need to keep them happy, so they don’t leave. Each one of these steps is more challenging than you might think at the outset.

Hiring requires finding the right people, and knowing how to interview them, so there are no surprises later. Paying employees requires complying with a maze of taxation and accounting procedures. And holding on to good employees requires knowing something about incentivizing a workforce.

You probably didn’t get into business to do any of this. And if you don’t want to deal with it you can turn to a local payroll and HR company, called Crescent Payroll and HR. The founder and president of Crescent Payroll and HR is Sanders Offner.

There’s a difference between a great idea and, well, everything that follows. Getting married is a great idea. Being married is a whole other thing. Similarly, starting a business, though far from simple, is largely exciting and fun – it’s a challenging process of discovery.

Running a business, on the other hand, is an exercise in constant problem-solving that ranges from coping with the mundanity of office supplies to the grand vision of growth. Shawna is focused on starting businesses. Sanders is focused on running them. These two processes are inextricably interdependent in a manner that’s best expressed by Frank Sinatra and lyricist Sammy Cahn: “You can’t have one without the other.”

Andrew Ward sits in for Peter Ricchiuti on this edition of Out to unch, 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 can do a lot with money.

After you’ve spent it on necessities like food, housing, and education, if you’ve got money to spare you can buy stuff.

Or, you can use your excess money to make more money.

There are fundamentally two ways of doing this. Investing. And gambling. There are people who will argue that those two are actually the same. It’ll be interesting to see if my lunch guests today draw any similarity between their two occupations – which are, investing and gambling.

On the investment side, Mike Eckert is Chairman of an organization called Gulf South Angels. The word “angels” refers to angel investors. These are people who put money into very early-stage businesses where there might be little more to invest in than a concept, a business plan, and an enthusiastic founder.

The last time we met Mike was 2014. At that time he was launching a New Orleans angel investment group called NOLA Angel Network. That was to become the nucleus of the current, much larger organization. 

Gulf South Angels network is spread across 12 states. There are around 135 angel members. And to date they’ve invested over $20m in a diverse range of companies, from aerospace to pet food.

And so, to the other method of using your surplus capital to generate more money: gambling.

If you’re a certain age you may remember a time when there was no legalized gambling in the state of Louisiana. The state legislature eventually figured out a way to compromise between the anti-gambling faction and the pro-gambling folks, by allowing gambling, without actually allowing it. They achieved this seemingly impossible feat by permitting gambling only on riverboats, not on land. But they also allowed riverboats to tie up to a dock, and didn’t require them to actually sail anywhere.

One of these gambling vessels was the Treasure Chest Casino Riverboat, tied up to a dock in Kenner.

Well, as they tend to, times change. Somehow, the non-gambling folks were won over and today Louisiana has a number of what we still call, “land-based casinos.”

In June 2024, just over the levee from the riverboat, a much bigger, land-based casino and entertainment center, called The Treasure Chest, opened in Kenner’s Laketown neighborhood. The Director of Marketing at Treasure Chest Casino is Rodney Miller.

In the 1980’s, a book about deal-making called “Getting To Yes” popularized the concept of “win win” – conflict resolution in which both parties feel they have benefited, rather than one side winning at the expense of the other.

This same feeling - that everybody benefits - is the core belief of both casinos and angel investors.

At the casino, the theory goes, even if you don’t come out ahead financially, you’ve had a good time. And, like any other pastime, hopefully you only spent discretionary capital, not your rent money.

With angel investing, the theory goes, you’re risking your own money by sinking it into somebody else’s dream - but if it works out, everybody wins.

Whether this is how you think the world works, or whether you’re more of a cynic with less of a Pollyanna perspective, there are always going to be people with discretionary income looking for a way to invest it. Whether that’s gambling or angel investing, for Mike and Rodney it’s win-win.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We use numbers to measure all kinds of things. Inches, pounds, degrees, birthdays…

Numbers that denote height, weight, and temperature, are culturally neutral. Numbers that measure years are not. We give select numbers of years special  significance. 18, you can vote. 21, you can buy alcohol. 65 you can collect social security.

We regard numbers that measure decades as milestones. One hundred is the big one. 50 years - half-way there – and 25 years - a quarter-way there - are big deals too. So, when 2025 rolled around we went looking for businesses for whom this quarter century point was significant. We found two.

Café Reconcile was founded in 2000. Their 25th birthday is 2025. They’re a restaurant and a workforce development program. They hire kids aged 16-24 who are at risk or might have already made regrettable decisions. They train these young people in all aspects of the hospitality industry, with the goal of graduating them into careers in New Orleans restaurants, hotels, and other places of employment beyond hospitality.

And talking of the significance of the number 25, Café Reconcile has been recognized by no less than the New York Times as one of New Orleans’ 25 best restaurants.

Our other business for whom 2025 is a significant milestone is a small Mid City ice cream store and bakery with a giant reputation and massive following, simply named after its founder, Angelo Brocato.

Angelo opened his store in 1905, making 2025 the business’s 120th birthday. Today, Angelo’s grandson, Arthur, owns and runs the business.

If you had $10 for every time someone said, “New Orleans is known for its food” you’d be able to pay for a lot of meals at Café Reconcile and buy a lot of Angelo Brocato’s ice cream.

But that sentence is a little misleading.

If you live here, you know it’s not our food we’re known for. It’s the history, the culture, the time, the love, and the intangible elements that create this unique city that somehow find their way into the food. It's not the catfish at Café Reconcile or the Mint Chocolate Chip gelato at Angelo Brocato’s… Well, okay it is that – but it’s also people like Kheri and the quarter century of caring at Café Reconcile, and like Arthur, his  family and 120 years of joy at Angelo Brocato’s that make New Orleans 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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Not too long ago, people who had an office job talked about “being chained to a desk.” Today, a desk job is the most liberating of all employment options. Your desk can be at your house, in a coffee shop, in your van, or at what’s come to be called a “co-working space.”

Co-working spaces are typically modeled after the re-imagined office that was born back in the day when Google and Facebook were startups. It’s a mashup of an office, coffee shop, private club, and event space. And the best part is, the boss is never going to walk in – because there is no boss. You rent the desk yourself on an annual or monthly basis.

Peter's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch both have co-working spaces – one on the Northshore in Covington, the other in New Orleans, in the Arts District.

In Covington, Bradley Cook is Co-Founder of Palette Northshore, modeled to some extent after sister Palette co-working spaces in Florida and New York. In New Orleans, Hugh Breckenridge is Community Manager at The Shop Workspace in The Contemporary Arts Center on Camp Street. The Shop also has locations in Salt Lake City and Brooklyn, New York.

If you listen to podcasts and radio shows about business, or keep up with the finance punditocracy on TV, you’ll hear people pontificate about “The Future of Work.” 

Like everything else about the future, nobody knows anything. Not for sure, anyway. What we do know, though, is the tyranny of the office cubicle is a relic of the past. Multiple studies find a significant majority of white-collar workers prefer some form of remote work, and over 30% say they would quit a job if they were compelled to show up at the office every day.

This demand for the freedom to work out of the office will more than likely ensure the popularity of co-working spaces well into any foreseeable future.

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.

In most cities in the US, after you’ve blown it out on New Year’s Eve, if you want another socially approved excuse to party you have to wait a bit. Memorial Day is 5 months away. At best you might be able to get away with Spring Break – that’s about 4 months.

Here in New Orleans, you have less than a week till the next round of society-sanctioned excessive eating, drinking and socializing begins. January 6th is 12th night, the official beginning of Mardi Gras. That’s when the first parades begin. And, traditionally, when bakers start selling king cake.

Since 2019, it’s also opening day of a king cake lover’s paradise: King Cake Hub.

King Cake Hub is Jennifer Samuels’ 2-month a year business. It’s a single location where you can get practically every variety of king cake available in New Orleans. Currently there are 80 of them. They’re baked by 25 different bakers. And the King Cake Hub collection is curated - meaning Jennifer tastes and approves every king cake.

New Orleans - a city on the banks of the Mississippi River - takes its name from Orléans, a city on the banks of the Loire River, in France.

We can argue about who New Orleans’ most famous citizen is – probably Louis Armstrong - but undoubtedly Orléans’ most famous citizen is The Maid of Orleans. Her name was Jeanne d’Arc and she became known to the English-speaking world as Joan of Arc.

Joan of Arc’s birthday is January 6th. Which is also, as I mentioned, 12th night, the first night of Mardi Gras. It was that fact, and the feeling that 12th night wasn’t being celebrated with enough inclusive diversity in New Orleans, that led Amy Kirk Duvoisin to found the Joan of Arc Project.

The flagship activity of the Joan of Arc Project is the Joan of Arc Parade, on 12th night. It’s a walking parade set in Joan’s era, the 1400’s, with medieval costumes, music, characters on horseback, and roving entertainers like jugglers and stilt walkers. The paraders have Medieval throws – and king cake.

If you don’t know anything else about New Orleans, you know we’re the home of Mardi Gras – the biggest, rowdiest, annual street party in the country.

If you live in New Orleans, Mardi Gras is more than just a party. It’s more than just a whole lot of parties. It’s part of the fabric of the city – from our culture to our economy. And, like other aspects of culture and economics, it’s not static. It changes. And evolves. These evolutions are mostly the result of innovations that come from the creative minds of New Orleanians, like Jennifer Samuels and Amy Kirk Duvoisin.

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.

We’ve long known, in the US, that our global economic advantage rests on an educated workforce. To that end, a couple of generations ago, America was virtually alone in providing free, readily available high school education.

As knowledge-based industries have grown, so has the demand for a higher-educated workforce. Today, over 60% of US high school graduates go on to college. That’s almost twice the number of other OECD countries including Japan, Germany, and France.

This has created a segment of the finance industry that loans money to students. Students who then graduate with debt significant enough to prevent them from doing other things, like buying a house. At the same time, we have a housing crisis in the US. According to NPR’s reporting, right now we have a shortfall of up to 7 million houses.

Education, debt-distribution, and the housing shortage might seem like huge, intractable macro-economic issues. But, locally, right here in New Orleans, Aaron Frumin is doing something to correct them.

Aaron is founder and CEO of unCommon Construction. It’s a construction company that builds houses. And it gets a significant portion of its workforce from high schools. High school students spend 100 hours each semester as apprentices, learning all aspects of construction, from swinging a hammer to team leadership.

We first met Aaron back in 2018, when unCommon Construction was just getting rolling. Today, unCommon Construction has filled 500 apprenticeship positions, distributed over half a million dollars in scholarships, and over 80% of kids who graduate from their work-skills program go into the construction industry.

Also back in 2018, we first learned about an atypical property development company, Alembic Community Development. Alembic partners with non-profit organizations, or like-minded for-profits, to develop real estate in typically disadvantaged communities. In other words, they build houses, community and commercial properties, in neighborhoods that are unattractive to most investors.

Starting out in New York, Alembic opened its doors in New Orleans in 2007. In 2008 Mike Grote joined the company as Director of its New Orleans office. It’s a position Mike still holds today.

There are a lot of things in New Orleans that are different from most other cities in the country: Gumbo, Bourbon Street, second-lines, muffulettas, Mardi Gras, the list goes on. But our much-vaunted fun-first lifestyle doesn’t immunize us from the problems that afflict the rest of the country - especially around the issues of affordable housing, and alternatives to debt-laden college education.

While the public image of New Orleans focuses on frivolity, and while Aaron and Mike enjoy Mardi Gras and live music as much as any other New Orleanian, they’re both making significant contributions to solving serious, nationwide problems. We're always happy when Out ot Lunch can shine a light on New Orleanians like Aaron and Mike and businesses like unCommon Construction and Almebic Community Development whose contributions to our city and country are overshadowed by the brighter lights of food and fun.

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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