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Out To Lunch
Thursdays at 1pm; Sundays at 5pm

Out to Lunch finds Baton Rouge Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel combining her hard news journalist skills and food background: conducting business over lunch. Baton Rouge has long had a storied history of politics being conducted over meals, now the Capital Region has an equivalent culinary home for business: Mansur’s. Each week Stephanie holds court over lunch at Mansur’s and invites members of the Baton Rouge business community to join her.

Find episodes of Out to Lunch here.

  • Despite the ease and convenience of online shopping, which enables us to procure almost anything we want from anywhere in the world in short order, there’s still something wonderful about buying clothes, apparel, decorations for the home or, really anything for that matter, from a store that we know and love and a brand we have come to trust. Baton Rouge - which likes to call itself "a big small town" - has several homegrown brands that have been in business for generations. In the years since Katrina we've also welcomed a number of well known retailers from downriver in New Orleans. One of them is Perlis, a family-owned apparel retailer has been a fixture in New Orleans since 1939 that has dressed generations of Uptown gentlemen and, in more recent decades, women, in what the company calls Southern Style. In 2009 the Perlis family opened its first Baton Rouge location on Jefferson Highway. Bobby Berthelot has been the store's manager since 2013. A native of New Orleans, Bobby majored in business and after graduating learned about the ropes of merchandising, retail and made-to-order menswear at the venerable Rubenstein’s on Canal Street in New Orleans then Brook’s Brothers before becoming GM at Perlis in Baton Rouge. Lauren LeBlanc Haydel is the founder and owner of Fleurty Girl, another well known south Louisiana brand that hasn’t been around as long as Perlis but is taking the region by storm. Lauren founded the company in 2009 when she was a single mother of three and decided to risk it all creating t-shirts for women that celebrated New Orleans. Today, there are nine FLeurty Girls, including a location in Baton Rouge that opened in the summer of 2023, and Fleurty Girl ships its south Louisiana-inspired merchandise – including t-shirts, gifts, door hangers, gifts for the home and an amazing array of sparkly Mardi Gras stuff – all over the world. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. Photos by Brian Newton.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
  • I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying, “Beauty is only skin deep.” It’s meant to be a reminder – and a reassurance – that there’s more to a human being than appearance. While that’s true, our appearance is vitally important to us. You only have to spend 5 minutes on social media to reaffirm that’s as true today as it ever has been. Our appearance used to be a kind of genetic lottery. Not so much any more. Today you can get your hair, eyes, nose, lips, breasts, tummy, and butt lifted, sculpted, enhanced, reduced or reshaped to more closely resemble how you’d prefer to look. Signs of aging we euphemistically call “laugh lines” and “crow’s feet” can be smoothed away so your selfie looks as youthful as everybody else’s on Instagram. Without a filter! This kind of physical enhancement used to be the province of Hollywood stars and the wealthy citizens of Manhattan and Beverly Hills. Today we have access to these treatments in Baton Rouge. One of the places you can take this journey here is Ford Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Dr Ann Ford Reilley has been practicing medicine for 30 years and was the first woman in Louisiana to be certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Dr Reilley’s daughter, Dr Kate Chiasson, has gone one better than her mom: Dr Chiasson is double board certified, by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Mother and daughter plastic surgeons are partners at Ford Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. There are others forms of body modification we use to enhance our appearance. One of the most ancient - and currently most popular - is tattooing. We have archaeological evidence of humans with tattoos as far back as 5,000 BC. In the early 20th Century, tattoos came to be associated with outlaws and sailors. Somewhere along the line that changed. Today, tattoos are regarded as pieces of art, acceptable in all walks of life and they show up everywhere - from the bedroom to the boardroom. Daniel Esen has been a tattoo artist since 2008, and he’s been inking skin in Baton Rouge for over a decade at his own shop, Black Torch Tattoo. Back in the 1970’s, a hairdresser turned entrepreneur by the name of Vidal Sassoon marketed his salons and beauty products with the slogan, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.” Sassoon was talking about something as impermanent as a haircut. For Ann, Kate, and Daniel, his slogan applies in a far more consequential form. After they leave their shop or your clinic, their patients and clients are changed forever. Tattoos and cosmetic surgery are permanent. What Ann, Kate and Daniel are doing every day requires skill, talent, confidence and courage. They’re working in professions in which there is literally no room for error. This conversation is a fascinating insight into what it’s like having that kind of responsibility. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
  • 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.