It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch itsneworleans.com

The city of New Orleans is in Orleans Parish. For reasons that are mainly economic and infrastructure-related, Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish are inter-dependent. 

The two parishes are very different. The rivalry between them isn’t on the scale of the Saints and the Flacons, but it’s definitely real. If you live in Jefferson Parish, the basic perception is, “Sure, New Orleans has great restaurants and music clubs but it’s dangerous, dirty, and dysfunctional.” If you live in New Orleans, the perception is, “Sure, everything works in Jefferson Parish, but it’s sterile and soulless.”

Nothing illustrates the real-world differences between the parishes better than the business stories of this editon of Out to Lunch's two guests.

The Tale

In Jefferson Parish, the heart of the retail economy is Veterans Boulevard. There used to be a bowling alley on Veterans, called Paradise Lanes. In 1995 it was knocked down and replaced by a Barnes & Noble bookstore. The owners of the bowling alley retained a retail space in the New Barnes & Noble building. They called their new store Paradise Cafe & Gifts.

21 years later, in 2016, two of the owner’s granddaughters, sisters Jenny McGuinness and Jessica Woodward, along with their mom, Linda Dalton, transformed the store into a home accessories and gift shop, and called it Phina.

Next, they opened two more Phina stores – one on Metairie Road and another on Harrison Avenue. In 2023 they bought a company called The Basketry, that specializes in personal and corporate gift baskets. Today the combined companies have 50 employees and business is booming. 

Our story from Orleans Parish is equally successful. It’s based on a single word. A word that, if you live in Orleans Parish, has enormous practical and symbolic meaning: Potholes.

Nothing typifies the perception of the dysfunction of the city of New Orleans like the pot-holed state of our streets. In 2019, an anonymous person started an Instagram account illustrating the sorry condition of our streets. The name of the account is the sentence many New Orleanians say or think as they drive or bike around town, Look at This Effin Street. (On Instagram "effin" is the f-word. Because none of our podcasts are explicit we're sticking with "effin" to avoid the bot-police.)

The Look at This Effin’ Street Instagram account was an instant success. People started contributing photos of New Orleans streets and today the account has over 120,000 followers – including by the way, The City of New Orleans.

How do you monetize this kind of social media success? You can’t exactly sell potholes. But you can sell merch about potholes. And that’s what the anonymous founder of Look at This Effin Street did. He contracted with a local merch company, InkMule, to make stickers, baseball caps, T-shirts and other pot-hole merch.

The anonymous business-person behind this successful social-media driven venture is still anonymous. On this edition of Out to Lunch we referring to him as Effin Street.

Two Parishes

Next time you’re driving along Veterans Boulevard, Harrison Avenue, or Metairie Road, you might notice one of the three Phina stores. But you probably won’t think anything at all about the street you’re driving on.

If you keep driving east from there on surface streets, you’ll cross the parish line into Orleans Parish. At that point you may well find yourself remarking, “Look at this effin’ street.”

Jenny and Effin Street's respective experiences are model examples of the differences between Orleans and Jefferson parishes. But their histories and businesses are also representative of the synergy that exists between the two parishes and the people who live, work and play in both of them.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns on St. Charles Avenue in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Blake Langlinais at itsneworleans.com.

 
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In the world of American coffee culture, 1971 changed everything. That was the year Starbucks was born. For much of the country, Starbucks was the first coffee shop in their town.

In New Orleans, our first coffee shop opened in The French Market - in the late 1700’s. For a city not known for being on the cutting edge of business, we were 200 years ahead of the coffee game.

Today, we’re the country’s second biggest coffee importer, after New York City. In part that’s because we’re the home of coffee giant, Folger’s. But New Orleans has always been – and still is - a hub of green coffee markets.

Green coffee is raw, unroasted coffee beans. It’s the world’s second-largest traded commodity, second only to oil. One of the major players in the green coffee market is International Coffee Corporation. Besides importing and shipping beans, they do something called Q-Grading. Q-Grading is a specialized skill performed by people trained in the art of coffee tasting. People like Drew Cambre.

As Sustainability Manager at International Coffee Corporation, on an average day Drew will sample and grade 20- 40 different coffees. 

We drink a lot of coffee in the United States, but we drink around three times as much beer. The reason we drink all this beer is partly because it tastes good, but it’s also for the feel-good effect alcohol has on our brain.

Well, now, there’s another drink that’s competing with beer for both taste and mood-altering, and it’s not alcohol. It’s cannabis. THC to be exact. THC - tetrahydrocannabinol - is the chemical in cannabis that gets you high.

One of the country’s fastest growing manufacturers of THC sodas is a New Orleans company called Crescent Canna. Crecent Canna was already manufacturing and selling THC-based products when it launched its drinks division in 2022 - and saw its fortunes radically improve.

Today, Crescent Canna has a lab and brewery in North Carolina, a head office in New Orleans, sales in over 1,000 locations in 20 states, online sales in all 50 states, and the company’s CEO, Joe Gerrity, says the company is negotiating with major distributors with the goal of becoming the Budweiser of THC drinks.

Few of us have advanced degrees in medical science, but we all know that for survival, human beings have to stay hydrated. We could conceivably just drink water, but we long ago abandoned mere survival as the benchmark of human success. And that’s why we have flavored drinks.

Hundreds of years ago New Orleans was one of the earliest American cities to import and sell coffee. Today we’re becoming one of the earliest American cities to manufacture and export THC infused sodas.

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 are sayings in the English language that employ literal terms but have no literal meaning. For example, when we describe something as “black and white” we mean it’s obvious, not that there’s literally a black object and a white object.  When we say something’s “open and shut” we’re suggesting it’s inarguable, not that anything is literally open and shut – which, when you think about it, is physically impossible.

It’s the same with “above and beyond.” When we say someone has gone above and beyond, we mean they’ve exceeded our expectations. Whether or not my lunch guests today, or their businesses, exceed your expectations will depend on your personal expectations, but what makes them unique is that they literally go above and beyond.

Let’s start with above.

One of the many things tourists – and a few locals – do in New Orleans is, go on a swamp tour. This typically entails sitting in a boat that chugs through the swamp with a tour guide who tosses bits of chicken or marshmallows overboard to attract alligators.

Tyler Richardson took a look at an 8 acre block of Maurepas swamp near LaPlace and decided to go above it. Tyler built the world’s first and only fully aquatic swamp zipline. It’s called Zip NOLA. It’s a half mile, 90 minute zipline journey on 5 separate ziplines, over 2 suspension sky bridges tethered to 100 year old cypress trees.

Ernie Foundas is co-owner – along with his partner Adrienne Bell – of Suis Generis. Suis Generis is a Latin term, meaning “in a class of it’s own” but in this case it’s a restaurant in the Bywater.

What puts Suis Generis in a class of its own is that it stretches beyond the walls of the restaurant, beyond the city of New Orleans, and beyond the state of Louisiana, into Pearlington Mississippi.

In Pearlington, Ernie and Adrienne have a farm where they use a German horticulture technique that layers logs, twigs and leaves on the forest floor to create a rich soil in which they grow crops for restaurant ingredients.

Back in the Bywater, the Suis Generis kitchen is organized around a culinary philosophy called Food Evolution. It’s a technique that uses every single piece of an ingredient – using the byproduct of one dish to create another. For example, using discarded crawfish shells to make bisque, and then using the byproduct of the bisque to make fish sauce.

New Orleans is not a big city. It’s not unusual to run into someone you know at the drug store, or discover your neighbor went to school with your  co-worker. In that way, New Orleans has a kind of small-town feel.

And then you discover there are things going on here you had no idea about. Like a Zip Line out in La Place, or an avant garde restaurant in the Bywater.

Zip NOLA is a departure from the typical tourist trek around the French Quarter and Suis Generis is a departure from the established eateries locals typically gravitate to.

Tyler and Ernie make New Orleans a more colorful and interesting place to visit, and live in.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.
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When people talk about their business, there are a number of sentences that raise the red flag of skepticism.

“Let me explain this as simply as I can” usually means you walk away scratching your head saying “Wait, what?”

“Nobody’s ever done anything like this” is typically the precursor to a business pitch you’ve already heard twice this month.

And then there’s this one – “I’m not in it for the money.” Pretty much every business is revenue-based, so, despite a passion-first perspective, it’s almost impossible to have a business and not find yourself compelled to be in it for the money.

So, it’s a pleasure to introduce you to two people both involved in tech-driven businesses who are both, genuinely, not in it for the money.

Jim O’Connell was a geophysicist working for Shell in the Gulf of Mexico till 2016 when he retired. That’s when he became “Captain Jim.” Today, Captain Jim uses his 52 foot long sailboat, Satori, to take folks out on Lake Pontchartrain for a 3 hour sail from his mooring in Madisonville.

Captain Jim says Satori is the only commercial sailboat in New Orleans. His customers get aboard by means of an app called Get My Boat.

Get My Boat bill themselves as the world’s largest boat rental and water experience marketplace, with over 150,000 listings in 184 countries. It’s kind of a combination of Uber and AirB’n’B, for boats.

Joshua Smith is a Library Associate at Algiers Regional Library on the Westbank; a branch of  New Orleans Public Library. So, right there, you can be pretty confident Joshua isn’t looking to get rich.

But he could. Because Joshua is also the creator of a music streaming platform. It’s called Crescent City Sounds. Basically, it’s like Spotify – it streams music. The difference is, all the music it streams is exclusively by New Orleans artists.

Masterminding and creating a music streaming service sounds like something with a lot of profit potential. But, if this does make a lot of money, Joshua’s not going to see it. Crescent City Sounds might be his brainchild, but he designed and operates it for the benefit of New Orleans musicians and New Orleans Public Library.

In most conversations about business, the unspoken assumption is, the more money your business makes the more successful it is. And the more successful a business, the greater the accolades heaped on the person or people behind it.

It’s unusual and refreshing to meet people like Jim and Joshua who are not just giving lip-service to an alternative perspective, but who genuinely have goals beyond our usual definitions of success.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.
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I’m sure you’re aware of the many lists that New Orleans finds itself at the top or bottom of. For many years we’ve heard we’re near the top of the list for violent crime. At the same time we’re near the top of the list for best places to start a business. We’re near the bottom of the list of per capita income. And near the top of the list of dollars gambled on professional sports.

Some of these lists have dubious veracity - and there are so many of them you probably have list-fatigue - but it’s instructive to talk about one list we don’t hear much about. The teen birth rate list.

We’re not in a good spot on this one. New Orleans has the third highest teen birth rate in the nation.

Why this is relevant for a show about New Orleans business? Because, being a teenage mom creates a challenge for a young woman that substantially limits her pathway to a successful career. If a woman has a baby before she’s 18, her chance of graduating college before she’s 30 is 2%.

An organization called Generation Hope is looking to change this trajectory. It provides financial and life-skill assistance to help teenage moms get through college.

Generation Hope started out in Washington DC in 2010. In 2023 they expanded into New Orleans - for no other reason than the founder and CEO of Generation Hope, Nicole Lewis, recognized the need here.

Making a difference to our economy and our society at an individualized level is also the function of another New Orleans organization, Global New Orleans.

Global New Orleans implements the U.S State Department’s International Visitors Leadership Exchange Program. What does that mean exactly? Well, when the State Department determines a leader, or future leader, from another country is worth cultivating a relationship with, they invite them to the US as their guest. While they’re here, Global New Orleans lets them discover what being a New Orleanian is all about - by arranging experiences to meet locals.

That might be an event at a local business. Or it might be a one-on-one red beans and rice dinner at someone’s home. Global New Orleans describes this as, “citizen diplomacy.”

The Executive Director of Global New Orleans is Laila Bondi. 

In most conversations about the economy, we’re talking about broad-brush-stroke measurements: inflation, interest rates, the stock market, and unemployment. If we break these statistics down, all of them are created one business, one household, one family, and one person at a time.

But, although individuals are the building blocks of the economy, it’s rare that we actually to get find out about the micro-economy from any kind of individual perspective. Nicole and Laila are working with individuals at very different ends of the economic spectrum and their insights are equally unique and illuminating.  

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.
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If you could sell a product every person on earth wants, you’d have a winning business. Right? So - other than a phone upgrade - what does nearly every single person on earth want?

Love. And happiness.

That’s the product platforms like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and other online dating services are selling.

According to the latest numbers out there, 5% of people on Hinge find a partner. It’s about 13% on Bumble. Tinder leads the pack with just under 30%. In other words, somewhere between 70 and 95% of people on dating apps don’t find a partner. So, is there another business model that can more successfully package and sell love and happiness? Apparently, yes, there is. It’s been around a long time and exists in various forms in lots of different cultures and countries. It’s called matchmaking.

New Orleanian Ann Parnes is a matchmaker. We met Ann back in 2020, during Covid when very few of us were going on dates and when she had a company called Match Made in NOLA. As the name implies, it was a local matchmaking business. Today Ann has a nationwide matchmaking business, called After Hello.

Okay, so you’ve met the love of your life. Now what? If you’re like most people, you’re going to put a ring on it. Along with psychological adjustment you’re going to have to make to commitment, you’re also going to have to solve the real-world problem of where exactly you’re going to put on a ring on it. And how you’re going to celebrate the biggest day of your life.

You need a wedding and a reception. Who do you turn to for advice about that? Well, how about somebody name Van Vrancken? The Van Vrancken family have been hosting brides and grooms at The Balcony Ballroom for 45 years. Since 1979 they’ve married 10,000 couples!

The Balcony Ballroom is currently owned and run by a second generation of Van Vranckens. One of them is Vanessa. Before joining the family business in 2011, Vanessa spent 16 years in New York as an actress. She’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild and its live theater equivalent, Actors’ Equity.Whether you manage a single Chuck E Cheese franchise or you’re CEO of Apple, everybody running a business is doing pretty much the same thing – managing people, solving problems, and trying to make a profit.

It’s safe to say that most people with a business would also like to accomplish something else, something less tangible. And that is, in some way, make the world a better place. Business owners define that in all kinds of ways. For some it’s simply being able to employ people and give them an income. For others it’s controlling waste and preserving the environment.

There’s a wide range of contributions a business can make to the world. That certainly includes adding to the sum total of human happiness – which is what you do when you spend your professional life helping people find love, and get married. It’s rare to find businesses where creating and celebrating love and happiness is front and center.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

 
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.