It's Baton Rouge: Out To Lunch

If you drive around Baton Rouge, chances are you ve had your car washed at Benny s Car Wash. The locally owned company has 14 locations around the area and is as well known for its quick oil changes and B Kwik convenience stores as it is for its automated car washes, which can be had for as little as 4. Justin Alford is a member of the third generation of the Alford family, which owns the car wash chain. Starting out way back in the 1940 s, Benny s was a world leader in the automated car wash biz. Today they re still ahead of the curve, selling car wash machinery to other car wash businesses across the country. Jeff Cobb knows a thing or two about cars. More than 30 years ago Jeff walked away from his job with an engineering firm to turned a hobby into a livelihood, opening a full service Exxon Gas Station and Auto Repair Shop on South Acadian thruway. Today, the gas station is gone but Jeff Cobb Auto Works is well known as one of Baton Rouge s true experts in repairing high end vehicles. Whether you get arou

South Louisiana is one of the true food capitals of the world, known for both its Creole and Cajun fare, and, more recently, it s contemporary twist on classic southern dishes. And though New Orleans often gets top billing for its famous restaurants and innovative chefs, Baton Rouge has a growing food scene that is vibrant and exciting in its own right. In fact, Baton Rouge is home to the school that trains many of the chefs that go on to top restaurants around the state and, around the country. The Louisiana Culinary Institute was founded in 2003 and in the 13 years since has graduated more than 1 thousand students, awarding degrees in culinary arts and culinary management, with concentrations in advanced baking and pastry and advanced culinary arts. Charlie Ruffolo is the public affairs manager for LCI a native of Chicago who grew up working in the family s produce business and married into a family who launched a cooking school. While a culinary degree and a career in the restaurant or hospitality industry

When the State created the tax incentive program in the early 2000s to attract movie and TV producers to Louisiana, the hope was to turn Louisiana into Hollywood South. 15 years later, more movie and TV shows are shot in Louisiana than in almost any other state in the country. A big chunk of those productions have been filmed in Baton Rouge, at the Celtic Media Centre. Celtic is the largest studio in the state, with seven sound stages totaling more than 150 thousand square feet over forty acres. Blockbuster hits like Twilight Breaking Dawn were shot there. Patrick Mulhearn is Director of Celtic Studios. Celtic leases office space to movie productions businesses, among them Red Entertainment Group, the company behind 2014 s sleeper hit God s Not Dead, which has grossed over 60m. Jarred Coates is the founding partner of Red Entertainment and co producer of God s Not Dead. Amy Mitchel Smith left behind a career at industry leader Miramax in New York to head up the Baton Rouge Film Commission, a gig she walked aw

We live in a world today where content is king, everyone can be an expert on the Internet, and building your own personal brand is the secret to success in our post modern digital age. While all of that may be second nature to those who were born during the Clinton presidency, some of us need a little help. That s where Kenny Nguen and Big Fish Presentations comes in. Kenny is President and CEO of Big Fish Presentations, a Baton Rouge firm run by four entrepreneurs of the Millennial generation who specialize in helping their clients tell better stories, make better videos, and give better speeches. Big Fish Presentations teaches the art of more effective self promotion. The guys at the company literally wrote the book on the subject, While there are all sorts of innovative new ways to present ideas, the art of good public speaking has been around a long time. Toastmasters International specializes in training people to be better public speakers. Toastermasters is a nonprofit organization run mostly by volunte

If you re driving down the highway almost anywhere in this country you re likely going to see a Lamar Billboard. And while you may know that Lamar is one of Baton Rouge s biggest companies, you might not realize it s also one of the largest outdoor advertising companies in the U.S. Lamar has more than 144 thousand billboards in the US, Canada and Peurto Rico and more than 1.8 billion last year in revenue, and it all started out as a little family business in the deep south. The 4th generation of the Lamar family business, Sean Reilly, is the company s CEO. Stephen St. Cyr, also knows a thing or two about the sign business. Any time you walk into a Circle K and see a big lifesize cutout propped up on a cardboard frame, it s an image that likely rolled off a large format printer at St. Cyr s print shop Vivid Ink Graphics. The company has been growing exponentially in the past three years and recently move into the old Circuit City building on airline highway because it needed more space. Stephanie s special gue

South Louisiana is famous for its seafood but can you harness our passion for poisson and turn it into a fast food fish biz, like Popeye s and Cane s have done with chicken That s what Tyler Pizzolatto is banking on. Around a year ago Tyler, whose family is steeped in the Baton Rouge fish biz, opened Crispy Catch the area s first fast causal restaurant featuring farm raised catfish in every menu item. Crispy Catch is in the Perkins Road overpass area of Baton Rouge. You might be suprprised to find out where the Crispy catfish farm is located. In the fish biz, as in every other business, knowledge is power. Aggregating knowledge from fishing boats and seafood processing plants is not a simple process. That s the specialized business of fish fact company, Blue Fin Data. A Baton Rouge company, Blue Fin has created software specifically for the seafood industry that improves communication and increases transparency between seafood dealers and government agencies. Andrew Petersen is the lead developer at Blue Fin

You may know about Baton Rouge s growing tech industry. What you may not know is that one of the pioneers of internet retailing is right here in the Capital Region. Shopperschoice.com was founded in 1998 and has grown from a mom and pop store selling barbeque equipment to one of the 300 biggest online retailers in the country, behind Google, Amamzon, Apple, eBay and the other household names. It s one of the 100 fastest growing companies, onn and off line, in the US. Annual revenues are heading for 75m. Shopperschoice.com CEO Corey Tisdale is Stephanie s guest on this edition of Out to Lunch. Back in the early 2000 s, when shopperschoice.com was rolling out its first website, Frank Ardoin was a hard working and successful guy in the mortgage business. Then he took a fateful vacation. Sitting on the beach staring at the ocean Frank had an inspiration. When he came home to Baton Rouge, and spent three years thrashing the kinks out of the idea, it became Homebuyerdiscounts.com. It s a membership based model that

If you re so much as an occasional jogger around Baton Rouge you know Jenni Peters. Even if you ve never donned a pair of running shoes, you know the Varisty brand and the slogan emblazoned on the back of the t shirts that are almost a uniform around Baton Rouge Run Hard Live Easy. Jenni Peters is the creator of the brand and the company, which now has 3 stores in south Louisiana and revenues that this year will top 3 million. Back in the early 2000s, when Varsity Sports was just getting off the ground, Matthew Laborde was still in high school. Today, Matthew is the business manager for arguably the best known brand in Baton Rouge LSU sports. LSU Sports is a 120 million operation that includes 21 varsity sports in the NCAA s Division One Southeastern Conference. Stephanie s Baton Rouge Entrepreneur du Jour on this edition of Out to Lunch is Joseph Tucker, inventor of Hydraguard, a revolutionary hydrating mouthguard. Photos on this page taken at Mansur s on the Boulevard by Ken Stewart. More about Baton Rouge

When it comes to entrepreneurship, you won t find many people who know more than John Elstrott. Recently retired as professor of entrepreneurship and director of the Levy Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship at Tulane, John is chairman of the board of directors of Whole Foods, originator of Celestial Seasonings, and runs Elstrott, Maurer and Hunnewell, a consulting practice that advises start up businesses. John also serves on the boards of several public and private corporations as well as nonprofit community service organizations. In the entrepreneurial world, John Elstrott is a superstar. Charlie D Agostino knows a thing or two about entrepreneurship. He also knows John Elstrott they re old friends dating back to their days at LSU. Maybe it was something in the water back then. Charlie heads LSU s Innovation Park a technology based research park the LSU Business and Technology Center, a business incubator which is within innovation park, and three other incubators one for biomedical based start ups, on

When it comes to the Blues, Baton Rouge is one of the best known cities on the map. Some will even tell you the Blues were born right here in the Red Stick on the banks of the Mississippi, despite what those in the Mississippi Delta or Memphis might say. For more than four decades Stephanie s guest on Out to Lunch, Johnny Pallazotto has been a tireless promoter, producer, manager and advocate of the Baton Rouge blues scene. He has helped to shape the careers of dozens of artist, auditioned and signed new writers, filed copyrights, negotiated contracts for recording artists, produced and distributed albums, and produced concerts from Los Angeles to Louisiana. Johnny is co founder of Baton Rouge Blues Foundation, produces the Slim Harpo Music Awards and works with a program to help public school student learn about Louisiana s music roots. One of the shortcomings Johnny and other industry veterans will tell you about the local music scene is the lack of infrastructure to help develop homegrown talent. We ve got

In today s economy, branding is everything. One way companies get their brand in front of you is by putting their name and logo on everything from golf shirts to water bottles. Baton Rouge entrepreneur Carey Guglielmo is carving a niche for himself in the field of promotional marketing by NOT putting logos on everything. Carey s company AST Marketing Group, only places branding on name brand merchandise, like Nike and Under Armour. Once you ve got your name on a product, how do you get the product into somebody s hand Or, better, millions of somebodies. That s marketing. There s a new, indirect method of of marketing that to some extent is the opposite of branding. It s about getting your message out via carefully constructed online content that can reach a targeted audience often without them even realizing it. Baton Rouge resident Mary Ellen Slayter is a pioneer and expert in the field. Mary Ellen knows a thing or two about words. She was until coming home to Baton Rouge a columnist for the Washington Post.