Santa & The Hungry Kids
Marketing your new business idea can take a few different shapes. You might take a deep dive with market research and try to define the demographic slice of consumer you’re looking for. Before you even bring your product to the shelves, you’ll try to understand the potential for growth: How many …
Meat Movement
If you’re gonna be first, you’re gonna take a risk. All the more so if you’re going to market with a foreign concept. People are creatures of habit. We look to the world we know to understand new concepts. And if something we’re trying is unlike anything we’ve tried before…that can be a recipe fo…
CGI Can
I had a journalism student approach me a while back for a story. I asked him, “what kind of a journalist do you want to be when you grow up?” He said, “A food writer. Because AI won’t take my job.” Won’t it though? I suppose if they create a neural simulation of what it’s like to eat boudin, the…
Knocking Around Downtown
America has had a complicated relationship with Downtowns. When we invented the suburbs in the mid-20th century, Downtowns were left behind, only to make a roaring comeback in the 21st century. That story should sound familiar for folks in Lafayette. Lafayette’s Downtown was left for dead in the …
P.E. Joins The Circus
Fitness is a big industry. Over the last decade, the global market for fitness has nearly doubled to around $100 billion. You’ve probably seen the results of that boom around town. Think of the world of 24/7 gyms and fitness centers, smoothie shops and personal trainers. That world is expanding n…
Sweet Charity & Nina
Who doesn’t want a taste of the sweet life? Most folks are looking for a chance to indulge. Even when times are tough. Maybe especially when times are tough. When the economy goes down, ice cream sales go up: in the two years after the 2008 mortgage crisis, ice cream sales went up 25%. even whe…
Pig Stand Bank
Ask any business owner in a small town: What’s the secret to success? And they’ll tell you: relationships. When everyone knows you, where you go to church and whether your mom can make a roux, you're trading on a reputation bigger than your own. Relationships drive business development and they c…
A Teaching Moment, Or Two
Kids hate math. You’ve probably heard that before. Except, it’s not exactly true. One survey commissioned by Texas Instruments found that kids were twice as likely to say they like math than hate it. Now, Texas Instruments sells calculators. Make of that what you will. That same survey found that …
There's No Place Like Home
East to New York City. West to Los Angeles. Pick your poison as the saying goes. Out of one swamp. Into another. For the Louisiana diaspora, home is hard to quit. Home is where the heart is, after all. Many transplants become boomerangs, a demographic term of art for people who go away and come h…
Coffeeweed cobbler
There are few words in the english language that more poetic when strung together than "coffee" "weed" and "cobbler." Yes, this is another "only in Acadiana" episode of Out to Lunch. So let's dive in. For a lot of entrepreneurs, the dream of owning a business is about independence. The money helps…