Philly Who?

Tony Luke, Jr. is a cofounder of Tony Luke's, a cheesesteak franchise with multiple locations. He's also an actor, TV personality, musician, and an anti-addiction-stigma activist.

In this Part 2 of a 2-episode series, you’ll hear how a small sandwich shop on a random corner in South Philly - that didn’t even sell cheesesteaks when it first opened - became the Philly cheesesteak sensation of the 90s. Tony, Jr. would take the momentum of a few press pieces and parlay it into viral TV commercials, multiple franchise locations, and a life of a TV and food celebrity.

But, the highest of highs would soon become the lowest of lows. Tony’s family would have a falling out about the direction of the franchise, which would be followed by a devastating lawsuit, the end of Tony’s TV show, and the heart-wrenching accidental overdose death of his son, Tony Lucidonio III.

Tony, Jr. now serves as an anti-addiction-stigma activist, educating and guiding addicts and their families towards better times.

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Tony Luke, Jr. is a cofounder of Tony Luke's, a cheesesteak franchise with multiple locations. He's also an actor, TV personality, musician, and an anti-addiction-stigma activist.

In the early 90s, Tony, his brother, and his father built and opened a small sandwich shop in South Philly. Back then, Pat’s, Geno’s, and Jim’s were the only names synonymous with Philly Cheesesteaks. But pretty soon, everyone was talking about Tony Luke’s.

Tony Luke’s would turn into a household name, and Tony Luke Jr would become the face of the franchise: starring in TV and radio commercials, and even getting his own show on Spike TV.

But, before his father even had the thought to build a sandwich shop, Tony Luke Jr’s story had already taken several shapes: from being a rough-and-tumble South Philly kid, to a budding Hollywood movie star rubbing shoulders with the cast of Rocky, to scoring a record deal as the crooner of an R&B band.

In part one of this two-episode series, you'll hear the crazy lives Tony Luke, Jr. lead before becoming a Philly Cheesesteak celebrity.

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Nicole Marquis is the creator of the plant-based fast casual restaurant chain HipCityVeg, currently with locations in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Nicole also created and runs the popular plant-based full service restaurants Charlie was a sinner. and Bar Bombón.

In this episode, you'll hear how Nicole was inspired to create a vegan restaurant chain when she read The China Study and understood the effects that eating meat had on human health.

Even her father was skeptical at first. But, after a diabetes diagnosis, Nicole guided him towards a plant-based lifestyle. After a few months, he lost 25 pounds, his blood pressure improved, and his diabetes went into remission.

Philly, though, was ready for Nicole's offering of plant-based comfort food. When the first HipCityVeg opened in 2012, it completely sold out of food by noon.

Since then, Nicole has been spreading her love of plant-based food throughout Philadelphia, and beyond.

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Liz Brown is the Managing Director at Backstage Philadelphia, an arm of Backstage Capital, a venture capital investment firm that invests in underrepresented founders.

Liz, who’s originally from Buffalo, New York, had no plans to ever live in Philadelphia. But once she got here, her love for the tech scene pushed her to cofound WebJunto, a software development company. WebJunto won the 2017 Tech in Motion Award for Best Tech Workplace for Diversity, and in 2018 Liz won the Rad Girl Award for Best Technologist.

In this episode, you'll hear her wide-ranging journey from high school dropout, to military veteran, to urban planner, to Tech CEO.

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Conrad Benner is the creator of Streets Dept, an online platform that highlights street art. It includes a photoblog, a podcast, and an Instagram account with over 140,000 followers.

In this episode, you’ll hear how documenting street art wasn’t always the plan for Conrad. But, once a life-changing bike accident forced him to commute by foot, he began noticing the overflow of public art around him. And so, he began learning: about the street art scene, about the rules, about the people, about the ethics, about who the artists are.

As his platform grew in size and influence, Conrad began using it to fight for change in Philadelphia. For instance, back in 2014 when SEPTA made the subways run overnight on weekends - that was in large part thanks to him.

Today, he continues to drive progress in the city, with a focus on protecting our public spaces from corporate intrusion.

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In 2011, Emily Foote Williams co-founded an online education platform to help prepare students for the professional world. That company, Practice, was recently acquired by Instructure.

In this episode, you’ll hear how she’s earned a Bachelors, Masters, and a Law Degree. After years of traditional education, a Drexel Law professor’s teaching style completely changed the way she looked at education.

She was so passionate about spreading this style of learning that she gave up her law career to help bring it to countless students via technology.

While the company has positively impacted over 200 thousand students, Emily’s journey hasn’t been without its challenges. In 2015, the company lost its CEO to the Amtrak Derailment.

She’s also lead Practice through fundraising and acquisition while having and raising children. In doing so, she’s become a role model for those who want to grow both a young company and a young family at the same time.

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David Gutstadt is the founder and CEO of the Fitler Club, a private lifestyle club opening soon here in Philadelphia. 

In this episode, you’ll hear about how being an endurance athlete gave David the mental toughness needed to complete a project on this scale.

Originally from Toronto, David at first didn't want to move to Philly. But, once he got here, he fell in love with the city.

Today, David is working to open a collaborative space for the city's creatives, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

Stay tuned to hear how the upcoming Fitler club turned from a mission into his calling.

IG: @dpgutstadt @fitlerclub @fitlerclubevents

TW: @DGutstadt @Fitlerclub

Web: fitlerclub.com

BIG NEWS: 

The next live episode of Philly Who?, will take place on May 1st, on the main stage of World Cafe Live. There, Kevin will sit down with Michael Solomonov and Steve Cook: the celebrity restaurateurs behind Zahav, Federal Donuts, Dizengoff, Abe Fisher, The Rooster, and Goldie. They’ll later be joined by Episode 7’s guest Becca Craig (Cake Life Bake Shop) and Episode 28’s guest Jesse Ito (Royal Sushi & Izakaya).

Tickets are on sale now! http://bit.ly/phillywholive

Thanks to our sponsor:

This episode of Philly Who? is supported The Civic—an adaptive reuse apartment building at 16th and Girard. What used to be a hospital is now well-designed micro, studio, one, and two bedroom homes for rent. True to its roots, The Civic is centered around hospitality and community, and has amenities including a roof deck, art gallery, doorman, golf simulator room, pet grooming station, and more. To learn more, or book a tour, or thank them for supporting the show, visit TheCivicPHL.com/phillywho.

Philly Who? is a Cue9 Production, with editing by Max Graham, music by Lee Rosevere, and artwork by Lauren Carhart. Hosted and Produced by Kevin Chemidlin with Associate Production by Angela Gervasi and Bryce Loebel.

Be sure to follow Philly Who? on Instagram and Twitter

Kiera Smalls is the Executive Director of Philly Startup Leaders, a nonprofit that connects Philly entrepreneurs to the resources they need to find success. Before joining PSL, she co-founded City Fit Girls, a running and fitness community for women.

In this episode, she’ll share how City Fit Girls was born after Kiera lost 100 pounds. She and her best friend started hosting workouts with their friends, and then their friends’ friends, and pretty soon CFG had grown into a fully-fledged fitness community.

She then went on to run marketing for Indego, Philly’s bike share program. While there, she introduced practices around diversity, equity, and inclusion that brought bikeshare to many different neighborhoods in Philly, and set standards that today are used by rideshares all over the country.

Today, she heads Philly Startup Leaders, where she currently works to help founders and technologists get connected to make their billion dollar business idea come to life.

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Richard Vague is currently one of the managing partners of Gabriel Investments and the president of the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival. He is also the author of The Next Economic Disaster, a book with a new approach for predicting and preventing financial crises.

Previously, he was co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas supply company that was sold to NRG Energy in 2011. Vague was also co-founder and CEO of two credit card companies – First USA, which grew to be the largest Visa issuer in the industry and which was sold to Bank One in 1997, and Juniper Financial, the fastest growing credit card issuer of the past decade, which was sold to Barclays PLC in 2004.

Vague currently serves on the Penn Medicine Board, the boards of the Franklin Institute, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, the Arts and Business Council of Greater Philadelphia and Friends of Rittenhouse Square. He serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy. Vague is also editor of the blog and email newsletter service Delanceyplace.com and of the website Debt-economics.org.

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In January 2018, Rebecca Rynhart was sworn in as the first woman City Controller in Philadelphia history. Before that, she served as Mayor Kenney’s Chief Administration Officer, and during the Nutter administration, she served as Treasurer and then Budget Director.

In this episode, you’ll hear how Rebecca initially worked in Finance on Wall Street. After years of seeing governments being taken advantage of by the private sector, she quit - and took a huge pay cut - to enter public service. That decision to leave Bear Sterns in the spring of 2008 turned out to be pretty lucky, as the entire firm collapsed 3 weeks later.

She would become Treasurer of Philadelphia at the height of the Great Recession. And, as you’ll hear, she had to make some tough calls to get the city through it.

Eventually, she craved the ability to affect more change for Philadelphia. So, she ran for office, and took on an incumbent. Despite heavy odds, she won, and is one year into her term as City Controller.

After listening to this episode, check out this week's episode of the Streets Dept Podcast with Conrad Benner - they also featured Controller Rynhart this week and talked more about what the Controller's office has done since she's been elected.

Support Philly Who?

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Venmo: @podphillywho,

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