For as long as humans and pre-human ancestors have been on the planet -- roughly 2.6 million years or so, we have been eating meat. In fact, recent studies have suggested that had it not been for our carnivorous consumption, humans would not have evolved the way that we did. Over the millennia our tastes have changed but not our love of meat. These days consumers - who spent more than $122B in 2023 on meat - are seeking out high quality, artisanal, organic and sustainable meats. Which is good ne...
Jul 22, 2024•30 min
If you subscribe to an online news service, you’re used to getting notifications about news stories the algorithm thinks might impact you. In Southeast Louisiana, you’ll pretty regularly see variations on the headline, “Sea Level Rise Threatens Coastline” or “Louisiana Loses a Football Field of Wetlands Per Hour.” If you’re like most people, you keep scrolling. Or, maybe you read the article, shake your head at the dire situation, but shrug it off because, well, what can you do? The reason you c...
Jun 24, 2024•28 min
Arts and music are essential elements of any real community. They unite us, bring out the human spirit and remind us of the incredible gifts and talents and good things we can do when we let our creativity fly. Baton Rouge isn’t particularly known as a high brow kinda place as far as the arts are concerned but there are plenty of hidden gems, and you don’t have to scratch the surface hard to find outlets and venues that are showcasing the best of the musical, visual and performing arts. Jason La...
Jun 19, 2024•30 min
Louisiana ranks last in a lot of lists but one area where the state is pretty close to the top is in the number of lawyers per capita. That’s right, Louisiana is 11th among the 50 states in terms of the number of attorneys in the state. While that means you won’t have trouble finding someone should you need to file a lawsuit or negotiate a contract or divorce your spouse – it’s probably a safe bet that they’re not necessarily all good lawyers or happy lawyers because, let’s face it – it’s a diff...
Jun 11, 2024•29 min
Baton Rouge often gets a bad rap for being a belt and suspenders kind of town, where people eat in chain restaurants and go to movie theaters and don’t do the kind of interesting, unique things – be they related to food, music or festivals – that are so characteristic of some fo sthe state’s other big cities. But its’ simply not true! And bright young entrepreenuers are taking risks to dispel those misconceptions. Bread Steven Gottfried is owner of the St. Bruno Bread Company , a commercial arti...
May 21, 2024•28 min
Safety in the workplace may not be the kind of thing most people think about, but if you work for a company with more than a handful of employees -- and particularly an industrial or construction company that involves heavy machinery or dangerous chemicals -- safety is paramount to what you do every day and is top of mind of important people in your organization. In fact, it's so important, there are whole categories of employees who do nothing but safety-related stuff and finding them and hirin...
May 14, 2024•28 min
In March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic reached alarming levels of spread - more than our health care system was able to handle - so public health officials ordered state and local governments to shut things down. Aand our lives were forever changed. It's strange now to think back on those weeks; how we adapted and coped, and what we learned about ourselves, our businesses and institutions and our communities. It was difficult and stressful, tragic for many, exciting for others, and creative ent...
May 08, 2024•27 min
Much as we love to tout our fun loving lifestyle in south Louisiana, we have some of the worst health outcomes in the country – including the highest rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and infant mortality. On this edition of Out to Lunch, Jim Engster sits in for Stephanie and is joined by two lunch guests who both head up institutions in Baton Rouge’s growing Health District. Beyond providing reactive medical care to these already existing health issues, John Kirwan, Rene Ragas and their r...
May 01, 2024•26 min
Sometime around 100,000 years ago, what we think of as modern humans started wearing clothes. In the centuries since, the outfits and accessories we people have come up with have evolved from utilitarian garments to elaborate expressions of our culture and creativity. Clothes and accessories are fun, fanciful and define who we are. Baton Rouge entrepreneurs are building successful businesses that capitalize on our desire to define ourselves by what we put on our bodies and atop our heads. Karla ...
Apr 10, 2024•28 min
Technology has opened doors in so many industries and enabled us to do so many things we couldn’t even imagine in the past. At the same time, we’ve made things more complicated for ourselves, creating systems that don’t always talk to each other and languages we don’t understand. On this edition of Out to Lunch, two lunch guests who are helping break through the clutter, with products and services that are enabling our tech systems to work for us more effectively - and helping businesses better ...
Mar 27, 2024•27 min
Healthcare is big business, and it’s only getting bigger. In 2021, healthcare expenditures topped $4B in the U.S. By 2028, that figure is expected to reach $6.2B. Within this growing and rapidly changing sector, nurses play an outsized role. They comprise the largest component of the healthcare workforce, they're the primary providers of hospital patient care and they deliver most of the nation’s longterm care. They’re also helping to lead the charge in new ways of delivering care, creating comp...
Mar 20, 2024•28 min
Despite the ease and convenience of online shopping, which enables us to procure almost anything we want from anywhere in the world in short order, there’s still something wonderful about buying clothes, apparel, decorations for the home or, really anything for that matter, from a store that we know and love and a brand we have come to trust. Baton Rouge - which likes to call itself "a big small town" - has several homegrown brands that have been in business for generations. In the years since K...
Mar 13, 2024•28 min
I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying, “Beauty is only skin deep.” It’s meant to be a reminder – and a reassurance – that there’s more to a human being than appearance. While that’s true, our appearance is vitally important to us. You only have to spend 5 minutes on social media to reaffirm that’s as true today as it ever has been. Our appearance used to be a kind of genetic lottery. Not so much any more. Today you can get your hair, eyes, nose, lips, breasts, tummy, and butt lifted, sculpted...
Feb 28, 2024•29 min
Downtown Baton Rouge has come a long way over the past two decades, thanks to a lot of careful planning, tireless advocacy, public and private investment, and a commitment from a lot of small businesses to set up shop in the capital city’s historic center. Stephanie's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch Baton Rouge are are two of those small business owners and have unique insights into what it’s like doing business in the heart of always-evolving downtown Baton Rouge Saskia Spanhoff co-owns ...
Feb 14, 2024•28 min
Real estate development is one of those high stakes businesses where, most of the time, people with a stomach for taking risks, and a lot of money – or at least access to a lot of money-- put together really ambitious plans for a piece of land, convince others to back them and then build apartments or shopping centers or new office buildings and sell them at a profit, not including the hefty developer’s fees they pay themselves along the way. It’s a rich person’s game and most everyone else is l...
Feb 06, 2024•28 min
If you turn on the news any time, any day, you’re bombarded with stories about climate change and natural disasters, political strife and polarization, and the world poverty that is driving unrest and a migrant crisis. Any one of these issues - not to mention the local problems at home - is too great for any of us to solve. And yet, some of us feel so compelled to do something. But what? Dawn Brown is Water Services Director at Matrix New World Engineering , a New Jersey based engineering firm s...
Jan 24, 2024•28 min
As Louisiana tries to grow its workforce we hear a lot about the energy industry, healthcare, and the food and hospitality sectors for which the state is so well known. Today we’re visiting with two guests who are creating opportunities in two other areas – tech startups and film acting - helping budding entrepreneurs and aspiring actors create companies and film careers. It might not sound like these pursuits have much in common. You might be surprised. Stephen Loy is Executive Director of Nexu...
Jan 17, 2024•28 min
For more than a decade now, we’ve been talking about the changes brought about by e-commerce and how fewer and fewer of us are venturing out to malls and shops and opting instead of the convenience of e-retail platforms. As this brave new world of online shopping continues to evolve, we’re seeing an ever-growing and fascinating landscape of entrepreneurs who are using pieces and parts of the new technology, mixing the old with the new, the virtual with the real, and coming up with new iterations...
Jan 10, 2024•32 min
This is a show about business. Not a place you’d typically turn to for dating advice. But on this edition of Out to Lunch we’re talking about the business of dating, love, and marriage. For past generations – your parents or grandparents - charting a life course seemed to be a lot simpler. Especially for a woman. You graduated from high school, you got married to your high school sweetheart or a guy you met in college, and everybody lived happily ever after. Then we hit the 1970’s, and 50% of ma...
Dec 06, 2023•30 min
Paris. London. Rome. Baton Rouge. Yes, your next piece of stylish designer clothing might come from right here. South Louisiana is known for food and music and other artistic and creative cultural expressions so perhaps it’s surprising that we’re not known for our clothing designers. With so much inspiration to draw from, meet the crestive forces behind two local clothing lines. Dave Duncan is co-owner of Jack Duncan Design , a sustainably made menswear brand that creates shirts for the everyday...
Nov 28, 2023•28 min
The bulk of Louiaisna's population, living in cities like Baton Rouge and New Orleans, probably don’t think much about it, but farming is a significant sector of the state’s economy. Nearly one-third of the state’s land is farmland! There are 27,400 farms in Louisiana, though it’s a rapidly changing and challenging way to make a living. Even given the obstacles though, there is opportunity for a new generation of creative cultivators who are practicing new ways of raising livestock, growing crop...
Nov 15, 2023•31 min
We live at an interesting nexus today, where so much of our economy is focused on building processes and systems that enable us to exist in the virtual world while at the same time we continue to build and develop the physical world in which we also exist. Maybe one day, one of those worlds will overtake the other. For now though, we seem to have one foot in each world and pass between them multiple times every day. Navigating our journeys through both of these worlds creates unlimited opportuni...
Oct 24, 2023•30 min
As our economy and society have become more complex, we’ve started to rely on big data, data driven solutions and AI analytics to describe what we do, what we buy, and where we choose to invest. Where does all this data and information come from? And how can these analytics really help us and our businesses do better? Rachel Verron is founder and CEO of Ruby Research , a Baton Rouge based company that offers data, research and analytics services to nonprofit and government clients. Ruby Research...
Oct 18, 2023•29 min
As we’ve all heard, America is aging and the numbers are pretty startling. People 65 and older represented just 16% of the population in 2019. By 2040, they’ll make up nearly one fourth of all Americans, and those numbers are expected to continue to climb. Part of the reason people are living longer is because of new technologies and innovations in the healthcare sector that are enabling providers to deliver more effective care in new and more efficient ways. It’s a space full of challenges and ...
Oct 11, 2023•29 min
It’s no secret that Baton Rouge and the surrounding parishes are home to some of the largest petrochemical plants in the world. We’re also a hub of activity when it comes to climate and resilience because of our sinking coastline and rising seas in an era of climate change. The intersection of these vast and important fields create some interesting opportunities for companies that also are based here and training young people to work in those companies in the future. Mark Fallon is CEO of APTIM ...
Sep 27, 2023•30 min
Louisiana continues to rank behind almost every other state in the country in terms of its educational outcomes across the board – from Pre-K through post secondary. But buried under those bad stats, are some bright spots – success stories of programs and schools that are finding ways to prepare students and train them for the jobs of the future. On this episode of Out to Lunch, meet two of the leading lights of the Baton Rouge education system. Tina Holland is President and CEO of Franciscan Mi...
Sep 20, 2023•31 min
It can be threatening if not downright scary sometimes to consider the extent to which apps and Artificial Intelligence now run our lives. But it’s also exciting to think about all the ways that this technology can be used to cure diseases or build sophisticated satellite systems or even do simple things - like helping us do the laundry! Or training a new employee on how to do their job. AI Laundry Chris Hilliard is co-founder of Suds Laundry Service , a traditional laundry service with a distin...
Sep 13, 2023•27 min
Real estate is something that touches all of us. Even if we don’t own our own home, we have to rent which means the economic forces that impact buyers, sellers and investors impact all of us. COVID was a major disrupter of all segments of the real estate market. And the post-COVID era is no less unprecedented. Which makes every day at the office an interesting one for those who work in the real estate business. Dave Lakvold is a commercial real estate appraiser and owner of The Lakvold Group , w...
Aug 02, 2023•28 min
We focus a lot in our society today on those who make their living in front of the camera, whether acting or influencing or prognosticating on important things. But those who shoot those images and videos have equally interesting stories to tell, and businesses they have built doing it. They also have a unique perspective that comes from looking into that two-dimension view-finder that informs their work, and in some instances inspires them to do bigger things with far-reaching impact. John Jack...
Jul 25, 2023•28 min
While the men and women who serve in the military make untold sacrifices to serve their country, when they come home they face a unique set of challenges – especially when it comes tt starting a business. According to the most recent statistics, in the United States today, fewer than six percent of all businesses are owned by military veterans. And of those roughly 338-thousand veteran-owned businesses, only 10% are owned by Black veterans. A handful of them are in Baton Rouge. Craig Stevens is ...
Jun 21, 2023•27 min
