It's Acadiana: Out to Lunch ItsAcadiana.com

There’s plenty of demand for the good life. Who doesn’t want a taste of luxury or indulgence? And certainly, we indulge a lot in South Louisiana. "You only live once" could be easily the state motto. 

Why not? We’re blessed to have plenty of good life to indulge here. So much so, that we yearn for it when we’re gone. For all those expats out there — and there are plenty — a taste of home means seafood. And it doesn’t get much more indulgent than oysters. 

Oysters

The dirty secret of oysters, Boyer Derise likes to say, is that you’re selling butter. And Boyer is selling butter nationwide. The Bayou Carlin Oyster Company ships flash frozen Louisiana Oysters around the country and sells locally in grocery stores. The kits come in a variety of flavors: Garlic Parmesan, Andouille Cream Cheese, Roasted Jalapeno Cheddar and more. 

It all began as an e-commerce concept for Boyer to add on to his prepped food brand Good Eats Kitchen. But he quickly found the good money was in wholesale, which makes up more than 90% of his business. In 2022, he closed Good Eats to devote more time to Bayou Carlin.  

Cigars

After you’ve put away some grilled oysters and a couple of beers, it’s time to kick back and relax. For a lot of folks, a fine cigar is the perfect after-dinner treat. 

Leona Bruno got a taste for cigars when she joined a motorcycle club. One night, she wanted a cigar to unwind, but didn’t feel like heading to a cigar lounge. A business idea was born: The Bearded Lady Mobile Cigar Wagon. 

The cigar wagon is a mobile cigar experience. Like a mobile bartending service, it offers packages of cigar lines that can be paired with events — weddings, parties, company functions, that sort of thing. 

Leona is self-taught about cigars, and coaches clients about the experience they want. Packages include a pop-up cigar lounge with cut and light services. All of them come with a selection of high quality cigars. The most popular? The Cuban Monte Cristo.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.
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Over the last few decades, we’ve come to understand the role of private enterprise differently. There’s a call to be corporate citizens, and responsible ones at that.

Responsibility can be good business. It’s part of why big energy companies have begun to shift their marketing and their products toward sustainability. Think of it this way: You need a planet to run a business on. 

We’ve even put a number on it because…capitalism. The World Bank estimated in 2011 that the combined value of the Earth’s natural resources — forests, rivers, wetlands, wildlands, farms and more — at $44 trillion. 

So it can’t hurt to pay attention to how your business impacts the environment and those resources. That shift has been underway for years at the major corporate level, but Julie Esta is leading a much smaller operation in that direction as Sustainability Manager at Industrial Safety Solutions, a firm that helps oil and gas companies comply with environmental and safety requirements. 

We talked in 2021 with Founder & President Ray Flores and Julie joined the company in 2023 after working in business development for a digital literacy company and creating her own line of healthy seasonings. Her job is to help ISS develop techniques that can reduce their own carbon footprint and that can be marketed to other companies. 

Julie grew up in Sunset and now lives in Scott. 

Caroline Jurisich has made a career of helping universities be more inclusive, particularly of people with disabilities. From 2017 to 2023, Caroline directed UL’s LIFE program, which offers education for young adults with cognitive disabilities. 

She’s since moved on from that job to launch the Quad, an enrichment center serving the same community. 

The Quad offers counseling, speech therapy, hands-on community service projects, a coffee bar, a cooking lab and a clubhouse. It’s a membership-based program that puts many of the most-needed services under one roof. 

Caroline holds a doctor of education from UL and was recognized by the university as a Champion of Diversity in 2020. Caroline grew up in Bossier City and now lives in Lafayette.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does it mean to invest in a community?  Big economic development projects are usually sold that way.  And if you’re cynical, it can sound a bit like hot air. If a big company puts a new factory in your town, it might bring jobs, but the investment is for the company and its shareholders. 

Okay, but that’s not a bad thing. That’s capitalism. But community investment has long been the purview of philanthropy. The dawn of big philanthropy was tied to robber barons. Names like Carnegie and Rockefeller are synonymous with both greed and generosity. 

Big name donors are still the most visible philanthropists, but more and more communities are investing in themselves, pooling contributions from donors big and small into community foundations. 

Today there are more than 900 community foundations operating in the U.S., pumping billions of dollars each year into their communities. The third largest community foundation in Louisiana is housed in Lafayette — the Community Foundation of Acadiana. 

In 2022, the foundation made over $16 million in gifts to causes in its eight-parish region. The foundation was started in 2000 and Missy Bienvenu Andrade is CFA’s second ever director. She took the helm in 2022. 

Missy grew up in Lafayette and spent 10 years as dance choreographer before starting her professional life as a pharmaceutical rep and later moving into community work with a job at One Acadiana, the regional chamber of commerce. She moved into nonprofits with jobs at the Boys and Girls Club, becoming Chief Impact Officer for the Boys and Girls Club of Louisiana in 2021.  

The Community of Foundation of Southwest Louisiana, which covers metro Lake Charles, was founded in 2008. Today, it’s helmed by Sara Mcleod Judson. 

The Foundation has become an important part of recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricanes Laura and Delta, both as a channel for local dollars and for national philanthropy. David Philo, Yahoo’s co-founder, gifted $2.5 million to the foundation to help rebuild Lake Charles. That money is the cornerstone of a 50-year master plan. 

Sara is a Lake Charles native and spent time working in public relations before moving into the nonprofit space. She’s been the director of the Community Foundation of Southwest Louisiana since 2013.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You ca find photos from this show by Astor Morgan. at itsacadiana.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Americans spend about 300 hours a year in a car. That translates roughly into about 14,263 miles annually, at least according to a few minutes of Google research.

Take the specifics with a grain of salt but nobody would would dispute that we do a lot of driving. 

Yes, traffic is bad in Lafayette, but mostly compared to how we think we ought to be living in a medium-sized town, not necessarily by a universal standard. By comparison, picture Atlanta during rush hour, or Los Angeles any time. But, nonetheless there’s no denying traffic, however long you spend in it, can feel like time wasted. 

And that’s the appeal of the self-driving car. To some extent, it feels like we’ve been on the edge of a breakthrough with that technology for a decade. But here we are, driving our cars with our hands like Neanderthals well into the 21st century. 

Colin Grussing hasn’t given up on the idea. Far from it. In fact, he’s busy "planting flags" as he likes to say, with his latest venture: aftermarket self-driving devices he calls "Palanquins" — named after the mode of royal transportation in the ancient world. 

Colin uses an open-source technology to retrofit self-driving devices for road trip driving. (This stuff isn’t ready for your trip to the grocery store.) Colin used open source tech to equip three RVs and a Toyota minivan. He hopes to break into the trucking market and has concepts for another 50 applications of self-driving technology. 

And no, he doesn't live in Silicon Valley, Colin grew up and lives right here, in Lafayette. But he's no stranger to epic business ventures. He first made a name for himself with 52businesses, a project in which he started a new business a week for a year. 

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The more we learn about the human body, the less we seem to actually know.

Medicine is always playing catch up with its own science. And more and more, the industry is moving toward individualized care, armed with metrics that help us stay on top of our wellness. 

What if we could catch a problem before it happens? If that’s the goal, we’re not talking about preventative medicine; we’re talking about predictive medicine. 

Marc Landry launched Healthy Heart Clinics and Cardio Care after he lost his parents. He wanted to create a company that could help patients manage their own cardio care and make sure that it fit what they needed.

Healthy Heart Clinics is a primary care practice. It offers cardiac care, wellness visits, health coaching and remote health monitoring. And Cardio Care is an online management tool for patients with chronic illnesses. It links technology and remote care to help patients keep track of their wellness between visits. The program comes with software that helps patients track their biometrics and prescription records. 

Marc is originally from Scott and worked for 30 years in Dallas. He moved back to Lafayette in 2018, founding Healthy Heart in 2020. 

Sometimes diseases are written right into our genetic code. Congenital defects can hide out for decades before becoming serious ailments. The early signs might be there, but with more than 7,000 rare genetic disorders known to medicine, it’s tough for even the best doctors to keep track of. Enter, ThinkGenetic.

Dawn Laney is the founder and chief genetic officer for Think Genetic, based in Lafayette. The idea for the company came from a genetic illness identified in Dawn’s own family. Her dad and aunt both suffered from non-fatal aneurysms. Dawn went looking for a genetic link and found an opportunity. 

Dawn and her father founded ThinkGenetic in 2014. The company offers two basic products. They help researchers locate people at risk for rare conditions for clinical trials. And they help physicians narrow down options to refer patients for more testing or diagnosis. The goal is to cut down the amount of time it takes to achieve a diagnosis. The company also connects patients with rare diseases with advocacy groups and with genetic counselors. 

Dawn is a genetic counselor herself. She's Director of the Genetic Clinical Trials Center at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Giada Morgan at itsacadian.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dancing is a big part of our Acadiana culture. People in Acadiana dance like nobody’s watching; specially when everybody’s watching. 

But dance can be more than an expression of tradition or culture. It can be therapeutic. You can look at a couple dancing as a microcosm of their relationship or you can look at yourself dancing as a way of getting in tune with your body. 

“Whatever the issues are in a relationship, they’re gonna come up through dance,” says Caroline Helm. 

Caroline Helm Huval is a social worker and she applies that philosophy in her practice both as a counselor and as a dance instructor at her business, Cajun Dance Therapy. She runs couples therapy sessions that explore relationship dynamics through dance. Couples learn to 2-step, waltz, jitterbug and zydeco. But what couples really learn is how to relate to each other. 

Caroline grew up in Lafayette. So we know she’s a fabulous dancer! 

As we observed earlier, dancing isn’t just therapy for you and your partner, it can be a way of getting in tune with yourself. 

Carol Petijean discovered belly dancing 20 years ago and found it could be a powerful way to escape stress. For the last fifteen years, she’s taught belly dancing at Oasis Belly Dance in Lafayette. The school specializes in Polynesian and Middle Eastern styles, but she also teaches American Cabaret, Egyptian Raqs Sharki and improvisational tribal styles too.

Belly dancing is inclusive, Carol says. Anyone can do it and it offers everyone a chance to just let go. Oasis has about 90 dancers and they perform often at nonprofit events around town. 

Carol was born in Rayne. And she also works as a bank fraud investigator.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com

 

 
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