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 Cocha Restaurant on Sixth Street downtown with her husband, Enrique Pinerua. The couple opened the restaurant in 2016 with a focus on locally sourced, sustainable, non GMO foods with a Southern menu that draws on the region’s Spanish, French African, and Caribbean influences. In the years since, it has grown into one of downtown’s most popular gathering spots. Saskia is a native of Baton Rouge and LSU graduate with over 25 years of experience in the restaurant and wine industries. She has worked at restaurants around the country. Scott Hodgin is owner and Managing Partner of TILT, a local firm, also based downtown, that specializes in branding, marketing and packaging design for a variety of local products that may be sitting on the shelf in your pantry, including Camellia Beans, Blue Plate mayonnaise, Faubourg Brewing beer, and Big Easy Kombucha. Scott co-founded the firm in 2005 after spending several years learning the ropes at other firms. It's probably no exaggeration to say that every person in the US over 5 years old knows what Coca Cola is and what Walmart is. Assumedly, having achieved 100% market penetration these companies can now quit advertising. However, we see Walmart and Coca Cola marketing everywhere, from YouTube to highway billboards. Why? Because, as we learn in this conversation, it's one thing to have a popular business like a downtown restaurant but it's a whole other thing to keep the branding as fresh as the food. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 left out. But does it have to be that way? Will Bradshaw and Daniela Rivero Bryant don’t think so. They’ve found a way to make real estate development not only accessible but beneficial to the communities in which it takes place. Will and Daniela are the co-founders of Reimagine Development Partners, a company that does property development and is reimaginging what that looks like. Like other developers, Reimagine takes advantage of the Federal Historic Tax Program. But, unlike other developers, Reimagine replaces the lender – normally an institution like a bank - with a crowdfunding model. In this way, members of the local community chip in five to ten thousand dollars and become investors in the kind of property development deal normally reserved for financial institutions or wealthy investors. So, regular folks get access to the kind of potential profit, and the immediate real-world tax advantages, normally only available to property developers. Will and Daniela started the firm in 2022. He is a career real estate developer and part time professor at Tulane, where he was a founding member of the university’s sustainable real estate development program. Prior to launching Reimagine, Will founded Green Coast Enterprises, a triple bottom line company, which means it is focused on people, prosperity and the planet. Daniela is an expert in urban disaster resilience and community development. Prior to launching Reimagine, she spent 15 years supporting the post-Katrina housing recovering in New Orleans and assisting local government in Latin America with resilience and recovery poverty creation. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On The Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 specifically focused on environmental and climate related challenges, as well as resilience and sustainability projects. These are terms we hear a lot in Louisiana and, based here in Baton Rouge, Dawn makes sense of what they actually mean for us. Matrix was founded in 1990 and opened its Baton Rouge office in 2015. Dawn is an environmental professional who focuses on project management and development with a particular focus is waste permitting and landfills. A native of Baton Rouge, Dawn was a high school biology teacher before switching careers, and while Dawn now deals with environmental issues, Rebecca Gardner is doing her own part to change the world, helping migrants and disadvantaged women around the globe through Hands Producing Hope, a non profit she founded in 2014. Hands Producing Hope sells ethically sourced products made by migrant women and women from disadvantaged countries through a retail shop on Government Street in Baton Rouge and through its website and satellite locations. The organization partners with communities through artisan training programs, maternal health education, life skills classes, adult literacy education, business mentoring and more. It's an extraordinary operation. Rebecca is a native of Baton Rouge who founded Hands Producing Hope because of her passion for helping disadvantaged families and her desire to see long-term sustainable change in impoverished communities. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Nexus Louisiana, parent company of the Louisiana Tech Park, which is located in the old Bon Marche shopping center on Florida Boulevard. The tech park was created more than 20 years ago to drive economic development and job creation by providing tech startups with resources to bring their products and services to market faster and more effectively. Stephen has been executive director of the tech park since 2011 and has been with the organization since 2004, when he was hired as their Director of Communications. Today he oversees day to day operations, develops strategies to attract early stage companies, and manages one of Nexus' signature programs : Tech Park Academy. While Nexus Louisiana is growing the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Jency Hogan is helping to grow the local cultural economy through the drama school she and her husband, Aaron Hogan, founded and run. It’s called Love Acting and it’s specifically focuses on teaching film acting, as opposed to stage acting. The Hogans are both professional actors, who founded the school on returning to Jency’s native Baton Rouge after eight years in Los Angeles. Jency has produced short films, co-directed a western epic, was on the producer team of a biopic directed by Ethan Hawke, and is currently a recurring character named Vera Minder on the TNT hit Claws. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Analise Gonzalez at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 of retail. Nathan Pearce is CEO of Pearce Bespoke, a Baton Rouge clothier that is making custom tailoring more accessible, affordable, and easy, by using some of the digital tools that have made e-commerce so popular to create old-fashion, handmade garments. Pearce Bespoke offers tailor-made suits and separates through a mobile shop. They come to you, get your measurements, and whip up a designer piece of clothing for you in just a few weeks. Nathan has been in the clothing business for much of his career. He launched a custom T-shirt making business while fresh out of college and founded Pearce Bespoke in 2021, which now has brick and mortar locations in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette. He is also franchising the brand and has more than 50 locations across the south. If you listen to radio shows and podcasts about business, you’ve probably heard entrepreneurs talk about the success of their business, describing almost gleefully how they initially failed before they made it. Well, failure isn’t always as much fun as these success stories make it sound. Not every failure is followed by success. Sometimes it’s followed by a career change. Take, for example, Conrad Freeman. Today Conrad runs the fabrication lab in the LSU College of Art and Design. It’s a lab where faculty and students can design and build stuff using a variety of materials. Before that, in 2020, Conrad founded Freeman Handcrafted designs, which made contemporary furniture by hand for commercial and residential customers. While Conrad’s furniture was beautiful, the market for his high-end products was very small in Baton Rouge and running the business was challenging, which is why he left just two years after founding the company for the position at LSU. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from thois show by Brian Pavlich at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.