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 inten...
Jul 27, 2025•33 min
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....
Jul 20, 2025•32 min
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 rea...
Jul 13, 2025•31 min
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 he...
Jul 06, 2025•27 min
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 ...
Jun 22, 2025•31 min
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 Cen...
Jun 15, 2025•32 min
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 d...
Jun 08, 2025•30 min
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 s...
May 25, 2025•29 min
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...
May 17, 2025•31 min
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 c...
May 11, 2025•34 min
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, Lu...
Apr 20, 2025•34 min
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 restau...
Apr 14, 2025•28 min
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 p...
Apr 07, 2025•32 min
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 w...
Mar 31, 2025•34 min
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...
Mar 24, 2025•31 min
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 investm...
Mar 17, 2025•34 min
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, w...
Feb 24, 2025•32 min
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 ...
Feb 17, 2025•32 min
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 begi...
Feb 10, 2025•29 min
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...
Feb 03, 2025•31 min
New Orleans has given the world all kinds of music. We refer to ourselves as the birthplace of jazz. We’re one of the principal breeding grounds of funk, bounce, and brass band music. And then there’s a style of piano playing that’s so identifiably from here it’s simply called, “New Orleans piano.” Generations of legendary New Orleans piano players became identified with the places they played. Fats Domino at the Dew Drop Inn. Professor Longhair at Tipitina’s. James Booker at The Maple Leaf. Tod...
Jan 20, 2025•28 min
If you’re not a musician, you might occasionally think how great it would be to be a musician. If you are a musician, you might occasionally think how great it must have been to be in The Beatles. New Orleanian Bruce Spizer is not a musician. He’s a lawyer and an accountant. But, not only has he occasionally thought how great it must have been to be in The Beatles, he’s written 16 books about them. Bruce is a world-renowned Beatles expert . He’s been a guest on practically every major American T...
Jan 13, 2025•31 min
Hi, it's Peter Ricchiuti. I’ve got a scenario I want to run by you, and I want your opinion. Here’s the situation: It’s morning. I get ready to leave the house. I pick out an outfit, get dressed, I look great. Then my wife says, “You can’t go out looking like that. That shirt doesn’t go with those pants. That tie is hideous. And 1998 called and wants its jacket back.” So, here’s my question. If I think I look great, do I look great? Or is there such a thing as objective, universally agreed style...
Dec 16, 2024•31 min
When you’re talking with someone and they want to know what final conclusion you want them to draw from your conversation, they might ask you, “What’s the bottom line?” The origin of the term, “the bottom line,” is business accounting. It refers to the literal bottom line of a financial statement - a company’s profit or loss. This literal bottom line is what we typically regard as the sole point of a business: the bigger the profit, the better the business. But today there are also businesses we...
Dec 02, 2024•32 min
When we text each other we use acronyms and abbreviations like OMG and LOL to convey meaning and emotion. And then there’s IRL – In Real Life. We use that to signal that we know the difference between the digital universe and reality. Online, you can play a first-person-shooter game with other people. In real life, you can join the US military and learn to use an M4 assault rifle. It’s the standard issue weapon designed to shoot and kill enemy combatants. It doesn’t get much more IRL than that. ...
Nov 18, 2024•32 min
The common wisdom we’re taught when starting up a business is, “Solve a problem that needs solving.” But the truly exceptional success stories of our time have not followed this advice. When Coca Cola came along, nobody who was enjoying a long, cool glass of lemonade was clamoring for a sweet, syrupy, brown drink. When Uber came along people weren’t fantasizing about getting into a car with a total stranger. And when Jeff Bezos started selling books online, nobody in their right mind would give ...
Nov 11, 2024•31 min
What is fear? Fear is a natural response to a perception of danger. All creatures on earth have it. We use fear to spur us into action - to run or take other steps to save our lives. There are many studies listing specific fears of different societies. Believe it or not, here in the United Sates, one of our greatest fears is public speaking. In numerous studies, the fear of public speaking ranks number one – higher even than the fear of death. I’m not a psychologist, sociologist or neuroscientis...
Oct 21, 2024•32 min
When you have a business that sells a product, you have two choices. You can try and sell it to everyone earth, like Coca Cola, or you can concentrate on a more targeted market. The Coca Cola model is called Mass Marketing. The targeted approach is called Niche Marketing. Sometimes businesses say they have a niche market as a euphemism for the fact that very few people are buying their product. But there are businesses whose products are legitimately very niche. Like, for example, human breast m...
Oct 14, 2024•30 min
If you’ve lived in New Orleans for any length of time, you’ve experienced your share of natural disasters. We even measure time here by hurricanes. We put events in context by describing them, for example, as “Before Katrina” or “After Ida.” After each one of these disasters, affected homeowners make a claim with their insurance company. Now, I don’t like to generalize, and I don’t have any statistical information to back this up, but I’m pretty sure you’ll agree with me on this… Even though ins...
Oct 09, 2024•30 min
In the course of childhood, we have innumerable experiences. We spend a portion of our adult lives trying to recover from the ones that scar us. But there are also positive experiences. Joyful times and meaningful relationships stay with us. They come to define happiness. For Brittney Hawkins Dobard, one of her happy-place emotional touchstones was with her grandmother in her kitchen, baking cookies. As a kid, Brittney called her grandmother, “MoMo Gerald.” As an adult, Brittney was in car sales...
Sep 23, 2024•29 min
