Hi, it's Fletcher Isacks, host of Out to Lunch. When you listen to a show like this you expect a person in my position to give you verifiable, factual information. But it turns out that statisticians are not collecting information about every subject I'm interested in.

I'm interested in the structure of businesses owned and operated by couples. That is, people who got married because they fell in love with each other, and decided afterward that they were going to run a business together. So, absent any factual information, we're just going to have to go with my anecdotal, impressionistic perception.

Some businesses are founded by couples who are equals – I’m thinking of recent guests who started a retail store together, and another couple who launched a swimsuit company. There’s another type of couples’ business, and that’s one that’s centered on the skills of one half of the couple. For example, one of the partners is a doctor or a plumber, and the other partner handles administration and book-keeping.

Now, this could be a result of my own poor memory and cultural bias, or it could be factual and the result of our patriarchal society, but it seems to me that in most of these types of businesses, the principal partner is the husband.

It seems much less frequent the other way around, where the wife is the practicing professional. Which is why I want to introduce you to Wendy Mignot and Lauren Pingree.

Lauren is Co-Owner of the Hidden Lantern Bookstore in Rosemary Beach.

This is how she’s described her current business arrangement: “This gentleman walked into the bookstore and asked me out. Two years later, we got married. And now we run the bookstore together.”

Wendy Mignot’s business, Mignot & Co, in Grayton Beach, is focused on Wendy’s creations of pearl and leather jewelry, and her business is supported by her husband, Jean-Noel, and their two kids.

Entrepreneur of the Week

My Entreprebeur of the Week this week is another woman in local business, Lauren Newton. Lauren's business is everyone else’s business. Lauren is the founder of the Found Marketing Firm in Panama City. If you live on the Emerald Coast, you might not know it but you’ve probably seen or heard her work.

The national Chamber of Commerce estimates that right around 40% of small businesses in the US are owned by women. In Florida, that number is higher. Here, around 46% of businesses are owned by women. And here on Out to Lunch today, that number is 100%.

Talking with Wendy Mignot, Lauren Pingree, and Lauren Newton, is statistically and personally a rare treat.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Farm & Fire restaurant on Highway 331. Farm & Fire is one of Chef Jim Shirley’s family of fine restaurants. It’s open from 4pm, 6 days a week, and from 11am for brunch on Sundays.

You can find photos from this show by Brandan Babineaux at outtolunchemeraldcoast.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When you ask people about the benefits of living in this part of the world, the first response you often get is about natural beauty. We typically assume “the natural beauty of The Panhandle” refers to the white sands and turquoise water of our beaches. People sometimes also refer to our lakes and piney woods.

These appreciations of nature are primarily visual. We love how the appearance of the natural setting makes us feel. But few of us stop to appreciate the life that these seascapes and landscapes support.

The sea, of course, is teeming with fish. We all know that. But how many of us who live here, or the millions of tourists who sit on our beaches, are aware that a few miles behind the white sands there are families of black bears?

Nobody around here knows that better than film maker Arix Zalace. Arix is the Co-Founder of film production company AZA Productions, and director of the feature film, The Paper Bear. In a unique combination of live action and animation, and documentary and drama, The Paper Bear is a love letter to the black bears who live alongside us, but are unseen by most of us.

One of the reasons we like to go to movies is, they take us away from our everyday lives, make us sit still, and give us an opportunity to think about more than our daily obligations and routine. That’s also the reason people smoke cigars.

People who smoke cigarettes are mostly looking to replenish the level of nicotine in their metabolism. People who smoke cigars are doing something quite different.

You can, of course, smoke a cigar while you’re doing something else, but most cigar smokers don’t. For most cigar smokers, sitting down to smoke a cigar is either a part of socialization and conversation, or it’s a form of solitary meditation.

Nobody around here knows more about cigar smokers and cigars than Paul Copeland. Paul is the Co-Owner of two stores, both called Shore Thing Cigars, one in Gulf Shores Alabama and the company’s flagship store, here in Watersound.

Paul’s partner in the business is music icon Luke Bryan. Luke’s enthusiasm for cigars is the inspiration for some of Shore Thing’s exclusive custom blends, but it’s Paul who has the cigar cred, going all the way back to working at Franklin Cigar in Tennessee, a store he got fired from and later bought. 16-plus years later, Paul has won awards, including like Tobacconist of the Year, and he’s a three-time Davidoff Golden Band Award winner.

Entrepreneur Of The Week

Out to Lunch Entrepreneur this week is Ross Flick. Ross is a Fragrance Consultant with Scentsy. It’s a fragrance company that sells through independent reps instead of stores. Ross works out of her home in Panama City. You can visit her Scentsy store there, buy from her online store, or catch her at markets, pop-ups and other events up and down the coast.

If there are three things that are somewhere between difficult and impossible to convey on the radio or a podcast, it’s the sensation of smoking a good cigar, the experience of seeing a good movie, or the scent of anything. So, congratulations are due to Paul, Arix, and Ross – for having successful businesses and for managing to pull off the impossible and describe them on today’s show.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Farm & Fire restaurant on Highway 331. Farm & Fire is one of Chef Jim Shirley’s family of fine restaurants. It’s open from 4pm, 6 days a week, and from 11am for brunch on Sundays.

You can find photos from this show by Brandan Babineaux at outtolunchemeraldcoast.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you could get your hands on, say, somewhere between 70 and one hundred-some-odd acres of beachside property, and you wanted to start a business, what would you do with it?

Back in 1969, the answer to that question was the Santa Rosa Golf & Beach Club, sometimes known as the Santa Rosa Golf Club, or simply The Santa Rosa Club.

The club started out a lot more modestly than it looks today. It was originally a 9 hole golf club with temporary greens. It opened when Walton County had a population of 16,000 people. Today, Walton County’s population is around 95,000. With an annual tourist population of around 4 million. The Santa Rosa Golf Club is now a re-designed 18 hole championship course, with resident golf pros, and luxurious facilities that include a pool and award-winning dining.

The club’s Membership and Marketing Director is Sarah Brazwell.

That was 1969. What if you could get your hands on 70 acres of real estate today, in Panama City Beach? What would you do with it?

For Dave Fussell that’s no longer a hypothetical question. Dave is the Co-Owner of a family winery based in North Carolina, called Duplin Winery. Dave's father and uncle launched the winery right about the same time the Santa Rosa Golf Club was starting up.

A few years ago, Dave and his brother Jonathan came up with the idea of expanding Duplin Winery, and bought 70 acres in Panama City beach.

If you’ve ever tried to get a building permit or business license around here, you’ll know just how challenging that process can be. Imagine trying to navigate all that when you live between here and North Carolina, and you’re starting up a business that has almost no local precedent.

Luckily, Dave hung in there and today, at 38,000 square feet, Duplin Winery in Panama City Beach is the company’s biggest facility, complete with gourmet foods, merchandise, and live entertainment.

Entrepreneur of the Week

This week's Out to Lunch Entrepreneur is Zachary Mignot, Co-Founder of cocktails-in-a-can, Birdie Cocktails. Made with minimal, all natural ingredients - and no sugar - Birdie Cocktails are a healthy alternative to better known massively popular canned drinks. They're aimed at the 48 million people in America who play golf - that's where the name "Birdie" comes from. Can you think of any other sport where players don't have to wait till it's over and they've taken a shower to enjoy a cocktail?

Unless you’re fortunate enough to be able to wake up in the morning and not have to think about going to work, you’ve gotta do something. If you can make that something, wine, golf, or cocktails, well, that's gotta qualify as winning.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Farm & Fire restaurant on Highway 331. Farm & Fire is one of Chef Jim Shirley’s family of fine restaurants. It’s open from 4pm, 6 days a week, and from 11am for brunch on Sundays.

You can find photos from this show by Brandan Babineaux at outtolunchemeraldcoast.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From kids in preschool, to activity groups in retirement villages, people make art. Look around any room. From your doctor's waiting room to your sister's bedroom, you'll almost invariably find art on the walls. Art is everywhere.

We often talk about art and commerce as if they’re opposites, like salt and pepper, or oil and water. But in fact, art makes up a significant segment of the American economy. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, arts and cultural industries contribute over 4% of US GDP. That’s about 1.17 trillion with a “T” dollars.

Art is not the opposite of business. Art is business.

In Seaside, graphic artist Laura Granberry and her photographer husband, Michael, combine art and commerce in their retail store, The Art of Simple. If you live here, or even if you’ve only visited Seaside once, you’ve no doubt experienced the almost child-like wonder of wandering off of Central Square into the Granberry’s store. It’s largely a world where art meets functionality in colorful and often whimsical versions of everyday items.

The Granberry’s opened the Central Square store in 2013 and over the years it’s grown from a curiosity to an anchor store in the square.

And then there’s the other end of the spectrum: art for art’s sake. Where the perception of an artist creates a representation of an object that is intended to amuse or provoke the observer. It’s often also intended to be a thing of beauty that will enrich the viewer’s life in some way each time they look at it. Forever.

That’s a tall order.

And over the millennia it has motivated artists to find new ways of expressing themselves, and new ways of showing us the world around us. You might think that in the course of human history, artists have discovered every possible method of creating pieces of art. But that’s not true. In the same way Taylor Swift doesn’t sound quite like any of the millions of musicians who came before her, visual artists move the process of visual arts forward in their own unique ways.

Like Allison Wickey.

Allison uses a 13-step, four-day process that involves Venetian plaster, acrylic paint, glazes, and an orbital sander to create works that showcase vibrant landscapes, animals, and marine life.

Entrepreneur of the Week

Our Entrepreneur of the Week this week is Jessica Anderson, screenwriter, film producer and director, and Founder and Owner of film production company, That Girl Media. Jessica is the Producer and Direcfor of the documentarym "The Flight of Jackie Cochran."

It’s no secret that things are changing here in the Panhandle. As the area grows in all kinds of ways, our perception of ourselves changes too. We no longer have to look at the area as a backdrop for movies. We can be a place where movie makers live and make movies, like you Jessica Anderson.

We can be a place where artists not only come to for inspiration, we can be a place where artists come from. Like Allison Wickey.

Michael and Laura Granberry have proven there’s more to beach-inspired design than seagull lamps and framed sand dollars.

And we can be a place where we not only consume programs from NPR, we can contribute programs to the NPR network.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Farm & Fire restaurant on Highway 331. Farm & Fire is one of Chef Jim Shirley’s family of fine restaurants. It’s open from 4pm, 6 days a week, and from 11am for brunch on Sundays.

You can find photos from this show by Brandan Babineaux at outtolunchemeraldcoast.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’re all motivated by different things.

Some of us are striving for the C-Suite and a 7 figure salary. Others of us are thrilled to have a job with no stress that pays enough to cover the bills.

Some of us are very invested in the type of car we drive. Others are happy to walk and take Uber.

And of course, from the same set of circumstances and facts, we arrive at vastly different conclusions about politics.

But we pretty much all agree on two things. We want to look good. And we want to feel good. Although we might have different definitions of what exactly “looking good” means, other than diet and exercise, if we want professional assistance to achieve that goal, there’s only one way to get there. And that’s with the help of a person known as an Aesthetician.

In the 1800’s an Aesthetician was a person who studied beauty. In the 1960’s we started to use the term to describe someone who creates beauty. Specifically, a licensed skincare or health spa professional. Like Lauren Wilkins.

Lauren is a Partner and Aesthetics Nurse at Evolve Aesthetics & Wellness, on Highway 98 in Santa Rosa Beach. At Evolve you can get a wide range of beauty and wellness treatments, including skin care, body sculpting, weight loss, laser hair restoration, tattoo removal… and that’s just a random sampling, the tip of the iceberg of their spa services.

If at this point you’re naturally assuming this is a business aimed solely at women, it’s not. There are spa services for men too, including something called “Brotox.”

And now we turn from looking good to feeling good.

There are, of course, a million different paths to feeling good. For some of us it might be the sense of accomplishment we feel when we reach the summit of a mountain. For others, it’s a half hour of relaxation at lunchtime, doing nothing, sitting in the sun at the beach before going back to work.

Then there’s the one thing we pretty much all agree on that makes us feel good. Beer.

Beer is the most widely consumed alcohol in the US, outstripping wine and spirits, and if you want to know how much beer we drink, well, reliable studies peg that for adults over 21 at roughly the equivalent of a 6-pack a week.

Not all beer is created equal. Over the last 20 years or so – mainly in response to the market domination of conglomerates like Anheuser-Busch, Coors, and Heineken - we’ve seen a resurgence of small craft breweries who make small batch beers tailored to the tastes of locals.

Here on the Emerald Coast, Idyll Hounds Brewing Company started brewing beer in 2013. They’ve got a taproom in Santa Rosa Beach and they make beers with names like “Ghost Crab Pilsna’” and “Divide and Conch’r Pale Ale.”

Frasier Hansen is the Owner of Idyll Hounds and also the brewery's Head Brewer.

Entrepreneur of the Week

Our Out to Lunch Entrepreneur of the Week this week is Luke Pinegar.

Luke is a musician, a multi-instrumentalist and jazz vocalist whose vocal style can be compared without exaggeration to all-time greats like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Luke plays up and down the Emerald Coast as well as heading up the Summer Music Academy at SoWal House in Rosemary Beach.

Luke has an absolutely beautiful singing voice. His piano playing is accomplished and sophisticated. And he plays instruments as vastly different as the flute and soprano saxophone with a skill that any sole practitioner of those instruments would be happy to possess. You might be surprised to hear his attitude to talent, fame and fortune, and why he chooses to live in Panama City and not Las Vegas.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Farm & Fire restaurant on Highway 331. Farm & Fire is one of Chef Jim Shirley’s family of fine restaurants. It’s open from 4pm, 6 days a week, and from 11am for brunch on Sundays.

You can find photos from this show by Brandan Babineaux at outtolunchemeraldcoast.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’ve been in a pre-k-to-12th grade school lately, or you currently have kids in school, you’re familiar with what education is like today. For the most part, it’s not about experiencing the joy of numbers in math, or discovering the lyrical beauty of words in literature – it’s about achievement. Reading to your grade level. Passing standardized tests. Graduating to the next grade. And ultimately getting a good enough SAT or ACT score to get into a good college. It’s, to say the least, stressful - for kids and parents alike.

Things are different at The Ohana Institute, at Inlet Beach.

Founded by Lettye Burgtorf, now its Executive Director, The Ohana Institute is a fully accredited, independent, private, exploratory and innovative school serving students in grades Pre K – 12 with a system of education based on the acronym, SHELL: Safety, Holistic education, Experiential learning, Love yourself, Love others.

The school started up in 2011 and since then – even without a single-minded focus on achievement - Ohana Institute graduates have been accepted into 164 colleges, with an average ACT score of 29 or 30.

There’s another American institution that most of its occupants will graduate from: prison.

Unlike school, administrators of correctional institutions are mostly focused on the day-to-day existence of prisoners, rather than their graduation. In prison parlance, graduation from the institution is called “re-entry.”

In February 2020, the Governor’s office and the Florida Department of Corrections created the Florida Foundation for Correctional Excellence. It’s a non-profit organization that brings private business partners into the prison system to create and implement transition programs and workforce training that increases the opportunity for successful re-entry.

This statewide program is based in large part on the pioneering work of the Emerald Coast’s Erica Spivey. Erica is Executive Director of the Florida Foundation for Correctional Excellence.

Entrepreneur Of The Week

Our Out to Lunch Entrepreneur of the Week, Jared Cartee. Jared is the Community Outreach Director for an organization called Safe In The Panhandle, a non-profit that fights human trafficking, mostly young women who are being exploited as sex workers.

The reason we're tlaking about this on a show about local business is the unique business model that supports this non-profit. SAFE is funded by a working farm that includes 1,500 blueberry bushes, 160 Satsuma orange trees, 20 beehives, and 500 Christmas trees.

One of the great things about NPR, and podcasts in general, is the opportunity to spend a generous amount of time getting to know people who might typically be regarded as outside of the mainstream. Erica, Lettye and Jared are all innovators doing phenomenal things with their respective organizations. But beyond your individual achievements, what’s fascinating is what brings each of them to our table here at Out to Lunch. And that is, they’ve each managed to harness the power and strength of local business to fuel significant social change.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Farm & Fire restaurant on Highway 331, overlooking Choctawhatchee Bay. Farm & Fire is one of Chef Jim Shirley’s family of fine restaurants. It’s open from 4pm, 6 days a week, and from 11am for brunch on Sundays.

You can find photos from this show by Brandan Babineaux at outtolunchemeraldcoast.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.