Think about the last time you visited a city you’d never been to before. Not for business — just to go. What made you decide to stay somewhere? What made you feel like the place wanted you there? Most of the time, we don’t give a lot of credit to the people who set that stage. The campground owner who keeps a shuttle running at midnight so you can get back safely from the French Quarter. The art curator who figured out that if he put a show up in a doctor’s office, more people would see it than in any gallery. These are the people who decide, quietly and without much fanfare, what kind of place a city is going to be. Camping Mike Dunn did not grow up dreaming of owning a campground. He grew up on a dairy farm in Maryland, spent his career running cranes and heavy equipment, and took a wrong turn somewhere around 2011 that led him to a night attendant job at the New Orleans KOA — which, as wrong turns go, turned out pretty well. Within six months, KOA had promoted him to run the park. A few years after that, he and his wife Deborah bought it. They are now in their third year as owners of the New Orleans KOA Holiday in River Ridge — 100 RV sites, three deluxe lodges, 12 full-time employees, shuttle service to the French Quarter and the Superdome, a souvenir shop, a dog park, and a recreation hall. For most of its history the park’s guests were 60% international. Canadians, Europeans, Australians. In the last year or so that has flipped to 90% domestic. Mike and Deborah are figuring out what that means for a business built around introducing the world to New Orleans. If you're wondering what a person with a business in New Orleans is doing on a show about Baton Rouge business - well, people who stay in an RV park are generally not people who live in the same city as the RV park. So I thought it might be useful for those of us here in Baton Rouge who visit New Orleans to know about it. Art Keidrick Alford grew up in Zachary, Louisiana. His parents let him draw on the walls. That tells you most of what you need to know. He went to college, spent time in real estate, then nearly a decade in hospitality — long hours, demanding work, not a lot left over at the end of the day. The whole time, he was watching something on the side: Baton Rouge was turning out artists from LSU who had no idea what to do with themselves once they left. The business side of being an artist — contracts, galleries, marketing, pricing — nobody was helping them with any of that. In 2018, Keidrick started Ellemnop to fill that gap. Since then, he’s curated nearly 90 exhibitions — in galleries, in medical offices, in whatever space made sense. Today he’s a managing partner in The Pearl, a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Old South Baton Rouge that will house gallery space, artist residencies, and apprenticeship programs in bodyshop work, barbering, and welding. Yes, all in the same building. There’s a word that comes up a lot when you talk to Mike and Keidrick, and that word is “guests.” Mike uses it for the people who pull into his campground, and Keidrick uses it for the people who walk into his exhibitions. They both mean the same thing by it: these are people who trusted you with their time, and you don’t waste it. Mike went to New Orleans planning to stay a little while. Keidrick has been in Baton Rouge his whole life, looking for ways to make it worth staying. Different journeys, same destination. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today’s edition of Out to Lunch sits at the intersection of two big ideas: immersion and reach. One guest is building virtual worlds for the world’s largest energy companies and the U.S. Air Force — right here in Baton Rouge. The other is shaping how millions of people around the globe experience the NFL — from a home office in Baton Rouge. Both guests grew up in Louisiana, both left, both came back or stayed — and both are doing work that most people wouldn’t expect to find anchored in the Capital Region. The through-line is this: the future doesn’t always happen in Silicon Valley or New York. Sometimes it’s being built from a studio off Perkins Road and a home office in Baton Rouge. Today we’re talking about what it looks like when Louisiana shows up on the cutting edge. Cody Louviere grew up in Lake Charles dreaming about video games and ended up building simulations for the U.S. Air Force and ExxonMobil. He’s the founder of King Crow Studios, a Baton Rouge company that uses virtual reality, augmented reality and AI to train people on equipment worth tens of millions of dollars — without anyone ever touching the real thing. Cody came to Baton Rouge when his ex-wife enrolled at LSU, and the city kept him. More than 50 simulations later, King Crow is quietly doing some of the most sophisticated technical work happening anywhere in the South. Danielle Brown is a Baton Rouge High graduate who interned at Google as a college student and never really left — except that she did come back, during the pandemic, and helped rewrite Google’s remote work policies so she could stay. Today Danielle leads global marketing for NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV, overseeing a 15-person team, co-marketing partnerships with the NFL itself, and subscriber strategy for one of the most-watched sports products in the world. Eighteen million people watched a recent international NFL game on the platform she helps run. She is doing that work from Baton Rouge, Louisiana — and she seems to think that’s exactly right. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A little wartime history: In 1940, at the start of World War II, approximately 12 million women were working outside the household in the United States, comprising about 25% of the female population. That number rose significantly during the war to over 18 million by 1945, as the U.S. government encouraged women in posters and commercial advertising to volunteer for wartime service in factories. Inspired by a song by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, Rosie the Riveter, the brawny brunette with a red, polka dotted headscarf, became an icon of the war and women’s movement. Today, women make up nearly half of the total U.S. labor force. And if, like me, you grew up with a mother who owned a small business, then you won’t be surprised at all that women make up nearly 45% of all businesses in the U.S., employing over 10.5 million workers and generating over $3.3 trillion in revenue. As an ad from the Sixties used to say, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Sidney Coffee became a small business owner after decades of public service. Originally from Texas, Sidney came to Baton Rouge to attend college at LSU. She began her career in journalism at The Advocate, working on special sections, then moved to WBRZ Channel 2 as a news producer, creating morning and evening broadcasts. Sidney then pivoted to positions in public communications—first as Gov. Buddy Roemer’s press secretary, which then led to a position with the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission, chaired at the time by then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Recognizing her work in coastal policy, Govs. Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco each tapped Sidney for positions during their administrations. For the last decade, Sidney has been the owner and operator of The Guru, an art gallery, spiritual retreat, and event venue, set inside a restored 1920s mechanic’s garage on Government Street. When we think about the factors that drive consumer purchases, convenience often tops the list, with 77% to 83% of consumers citing it as a key factor that influences, or sometimes dictates, their buying decisions. From fast food to five-minute oil changes, our modern lifestyles demand ease and immediacy. Anna Beth Guillory, has developed an app for busy professional women to book appointments directly with beauty professionals. It's called BeautyFindr. After nearly a decade of co-owning a blowout bar in Lake Charles, Anna Beth identified a persistent problem: connecting clients to available beauty professionals in real time. Working with a developer, Anna Beth spent 11 months building the BeautyFindr app, which launched in 2024. Today, BeautyFindr operates in 19 states and is quickly evolving into a business-development hub for beauty professionals, and, as well as scheduling, offers peer networking, social sharing and business-growth tools. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you listen to this show you’ve heard at the end of every episode the credits “today’s show was engineered by J T O’Neal” and “photos were taken by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez.” But do you know what that actually means? What is an audio engineer? What do photographers actually do that’s different from what you do with your phone? On today's Out to Lunch we turn the mics on our production crew. J T O’Neal got into audio engineering by recording his own music as a teenager. He started by making beats and recording instruments, which naturally led him to learn how to record live drums and bands. J T got his big break when, while working as a barback at Spanish Moon, he took over for the house sound engineer who was going on tour. He was such a success that J T became the full-time sound engineer there in 2013. J T is now a full-time freelance audio engineer, working at such diverse locations as Chelsea’s Live, Varsity Theatre, Bethany Church, and touring with Small Pools and Marc Broussard. Miranda Albarez and Ian Ledo met while studying at LSU and working in marketing at LSU UREC. Both had creative backgrounds—Miranda in digital art, communications, and music, and Ian in photography, videography, and screen arts. It was while they were dating that they realized how well they work together. So, they decided to launch Albaledo Media while still full-time students. Now, after just a few years in business, Albaledo Media has completed more than 40 projects, ranging from small-business branding and websites to large-scale creative work for Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Tulane University and LSU Opera. JT, Ian and Miranda are vital contributors to the production Out to Lunch. In the future when you hear their credits at the end of the show you'll have an appreciation of what their professional lives entail. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The disco era of the Seventies is characterized by a danceable "four-on-the-floor" beat, lush orchestration, synthesizers, and glamorous fashion, ultimately exploding into mainstream pop culture with hits, iconic clubs like Studio 54, and films like Saturday Night Fever, before fading by 1980. Filmed in 1977, Saturday Night Fever was a critical and commercial success, helping to popularize disco around the world. The soundtrack, featuring songs from the Bee Gees, has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums and the second-biggest-selling soundtrack of all time. I don’t know about you but I still like dancing to Stayin’ Alive, Jive Talkin, and More than a Woman. By all accounts, so does my lunch guest Alyssa Lundy, Founder & CEO of 5 to 9 Dance Club, a sober, early-evening dance club for women only. Turning coffee shops into Miami-themed dance floors, 5 to 9 Dance Club transforms each venue into a full, nightclub experience with lighting, screens, DJ production, and beach décor. Every event also includes access to mental health professionals, business resources, and women-focused non-profits, as well as a welcome committee to ensure no one feels excluded. The most famous dinosaur, Barney, an anthropomorphic purple Tyrannosaurus rex, didn’t come onto the scene until 1992 but was as ubiquitous on television and in toy stores for three decades as the disco ball was on dance floors in the Seventies and Eighties. Beloved by school children, Barney, of Barney & Friends, conveyed educational messages through songs and small dance routines with a friendly, huggable and optimistic attitude. Dinosaurs dominated Earth for over 165 million years, and still dominate the imagination of scientists and children alike today. Martin Wilmott, owner of The Dinosaur Experience, has seen for himself both the wonder and delight children have for dinosaurs. A Londoner, Martin first came to Louisiana in 2009 for a Saints game. In 2013, he moved to Baton Rouge after marrying his wife, a Louisiana native. Martin began noticing children’s love for dinosaur themes while hosting water-slide and bounce house parties. Armed with his first dinosaur costume purchased from a specialty store in England, Martin began performing. The business exploded during COVID when he and his wife created a drive-around dinosaur show to cheer up children, growing his Facebook page from 400 followers to 10,000 in one month. Today, Martin is one of only a handful of dinosaur entertainers in the U.S., and the only one in Louisiana. He performs at birthday parties, school events, corporate events, and museums. He’s especially popular at libraries across multiple states. What’s striking about both of Alyssa and Martin is neither of them set out to “disrupt an industry.” They weren’t trying to invent trends. They were trying to solve human problems—loneliness, disconnection, stress, isolation—with experiences that feel safe, playful, and immersive. Alyssa has built a space where women don’t have to be impressive—they just have to show up. Martin has built a world where adults remember what it feels like to be amazed. And what I think they both remind us is that joy isn’t decorative. It’s functional. It heals. It rebuilds. It gives people permission to breathe. So whether it’s through dancing or dinosaurs, what Martin and Alyssa are really offering is the same thing: a moment where people feel seen, lighter, and less alone. And in today’s world, that’s not entertainment—that’s infrastructure. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.