It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch

In March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic reached alarming levels of spread - more than our health care system was able to handle - so public health officials ordered state and local governments to shut things down. Aand our lives were forever changed.

It's strange now to think back on those weeks; how we adapted and coped, and what we learned about ourselves, our businesses and institutions and our communities. It was difficult and...

Much as we love to tout our fun loving lifestyle in south Louisiana, we have some of the worst health outcomes in the country – including the highest rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and infant mortality.

On this edition of Out to Lunch, Jim Engster sits in for Stephanie and is joined by two lunch guests who both head up institutions in Baton Rouge’s growing Health District. Beyond providing reactive medical care to these a...

Sometime around 100,000 years ago, what we think of as modern humans started wearing clothes. In the centuries since, the outfits and accessories we people have come up with have evolved from utilitarian garments to elaborate expressions of our culture and creativity.

Clothes and accessories are fun, fanciful and define who we are. Baton Rouge entrepreneurs are building successful businesses that capitalize on our desire to define...

Technology has opened doors in so many industries and enabled us to do so many things we couldn’t even imagine in the past. At the same time, we’ve made things more complicated for ourselves, creating systems that don’t always talk to each other and languages we don’t understand.

On this edition of Out to Lunch, two lunch guests who are helping break through the clutter, with products and services that are enabling our tech system...

Healthcare is big business, and it’s only getting bigger. In 2021, healthcare expenditures topped $4B in the U.S. By 2028, that figure is expected to reach $6.2B.

Within this growing and rapidly changing sector, nurses play an outsized role. They comprise the largest component of the healthcare workforce, they're the primary providers of hospital patient care and they deliver most of the nation’s longterm care. They’re also helpin...

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 bran...

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...

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 hear...

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 alo...

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 Ma...

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. ...

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...

This is a show about business. Not a place you’d typically turn to for dating advice. But on this edition of Out to Lunch we’re talking about the business of dating, love, and marriage.

For past generations – your parents or grandparents - charting a life course seemed to be a lot simpler. Especially for a woman. You graduated from high school, you got married to your high school sweetheart or a guy you met in college, and everybo...

Paris. London. Rome. Baton Rouge. Yes, your next piece of stylish designer clothing might come from right here.

South Louisiana is known for food and music and other artistic and creative cultural expressions so perhaps it’s surprising that we’re not known for our clothing designers. With so much inspiration to draw from, meet the crestive forces behind two local clothing lines. 

Dave Duncan is co-owner of Jack Duncan Design, a s...

The bulk of Louiaisna's population, living in cities like Baton Rouge and New Orleans, probably don’t think much about it, but farming is a significant sector of the state’s economy. Nearly one-third of the state’s land is farmland!

There are 27,400 farms in Louisiana, though it’s a rapidly changing and challenging way to make a living. Even given the obstacles though, there is opportunity for a new generation of creative cultivat...

We live at an interesting nexus today, where so much of our economy is focused on building processes and systems that enable us to exist in the virtual world while at the same time we continue to build and develop the physical world in which we also exist. Maybe one day, one of those worlds will overtake the other. For now though, we seem to have one foot in each world and pass between them multiple times every day. Navigating our ...

As our economy and society have become more complex, we’ve started to rely on big data, data driven solutions and AI analytics to describe what we do, what we buy, and where we choose to invest. Where does all this data and information come from? And how can these analytics really help us and our businesses do better?

Rachel Verron is founder and CEO of Ruby Research, a Baton Rouge based company that offers data, research and anal...

As we’ve all heard, America is aging and the numbers are pretty startling.

People 65 and older represented just 16% of the population in 2019. By 2040, they’ll make up nearly one fourth of all Americans, and those numbers are expected to continue to climb.

Part of the reason people are living longer is because of new technologies and innovations in the healthcare sector that are enabling providers to deliver more effective care i...

It’s no secret that Baton Rouge and the surrounding parishes are home to some of the largest petrochemical plants in the world. We’re also a hub of activity when it comes to climate and resilience because of our sinking coastline and rising seas in an era of climate change. The intersection of these vast and important fields create some interesting opportunities for companies that also are based here and training young people to wo...