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.

This is a show about local business and entrepreneurship in The Panhandle.

We started making the show in 2025. If we’d started out twenty, or even ten years ago, a show about local business would have been principally about rental property management and allied businesses, like cleaners and HVAC companies.

Or, we could have made a show about all the talented people who grew up in this area and who moved to big cities for a career or to start a business. Back then, the idea of someone moving here to the beach to start a business would have been almost laughable. Boy, how times have changed.

All Fletcher's guests on Out to Lunch today moved here and opened businesses in 2023.

Meaghan Easterhaus moved here from Colorado and opened Palm Folly Brewery in Santa Rosa Beach. Palm Folly is the first craft seltzer brewery in Florida, and only the 5th in the country. The brewery makes Palm Folly Hard Seltzer.

Hard Seltzer is fruit-based alcohol. It’s not made with any other kind of liquor – like vodka or tequila. It’s brewed principally from fresh fruit and sugar, which makes the drink low calorie and gluten free. You can get Palm Folly Hard Seltzer at the brewery’s taproom on Highway 98 in Santa Rosa Beach. You can also find it on the shelf at the supermarket, or on tap at any one of more than 50 restaurants from Apalachicola to Pensacola.

Noah Custer and his wife Mary Margaret moved here from Mandeville, Louisiana. After they got here they met another couple: Lukas and Brynley Joiner. In 2023 the Custers and the Joiners joined forces and launched a business. It’s called Honey Swim. They design and manufacture swimsuits.

Honey Swim started out as an online business, and in the first 10 months, with just the 4 partners doing pretty much everything, they were racking up a 7 figure revenue. Today they’re working with social media influencers and Brand Ambassadors. And they’ve expanded into retail outlets.

Entrepreneur Of The Week

Our Entrepreneur of the week is Jacy Elmore, Owner and Founder of The Beach Wagon.

The Beach Wagon is pretty much exactly what it sounds like – it’s a wagon a person takes to the beach. But it’s not quite that simple. The Beach Wagon is a product, and a service.

The wagon itself is a wagon you can pull down the beach. And it’s stocked with the hardware you need for a day at the beach – chairs and umbrellas, a cooler, and an optional canopy. The service aspect of The Beach Wagon is delivery. Tourists have their beach wagon delivered to their condo or hotel, and it’s picked up when they leave.

This idea does two things. It lets tourists go to the beach like locals, with their own beach gear - rather than getting a setup on the beach. And it cuts down on waste, in as much as it prevents tourists from buying beach equipment for their stay here and dumping it when they leave.

Bright New Day For Beach Startups

There are two halves to any new startup business. Inspiration. And execution. And, like two halves of anything, they’re equal. You need a great idea. And you need to do the enormous amount of work necessary to bring your idea to life.

Jacy, Noah, and Meaghan have all been inspired by our surroundings here at the beach to create products. Swimsuits, hard seltzer, and a beach wagon. Though we’re living in a part of the world not known for its startup business culture, they’re all going about pioneering businesses in ways we’d typically expect to see in bigger beach-economy communities, like Miami or Los Angeles. It's exciting to see entrepreneurs executing on these inspirations, and it’s inspiring that they’ve moved here for more than just the benefits of a beach lifestyle.

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.

Back in the days of the California gold rush, you could make a lot of money. If you struck gold. If you didn’t - and most people didn’t - you would typically spend every waking minute till you ran out of money and strength, doing back-breaking labor, swinging a pick and digging with a shovel.

Along with the prospectors, there were business people who figured they wouldn’t strike it rich like the lucky few, but they could make a decent living, selling the prospectors picks and shovels. Today, in business, the phrase “picks and shovels” lives on. It’s used to describe people involved in regular occupations who support people in more glamorous pursuits.

Jon Shirley is in the picks and shovels department of the hospitality industry. Jon is Chief Operating Officer at Jim Shirley Enterprises.

Jim Shirley is the chef behind the restaurant we’re at right now, Farm & Fire, as well as North Beach Social, The Great Southern Café, The Meltdown on 30A in Seaside, The Bay, 45 Central Wine & Sushi, and Baytowne Provisions.

Jon Shirley is Jim’s brother. But this isn’t a case of nepotism. Jon spent 25 years in the corporate offices of the food services company, Sysco. Before that he worked his way up the ladder in the restaurant business, from busser to management. Today, Jon is responsible for the smooth running of the Jim Shirley restaurants and the management and well-being of a staff that can reach 400 employees at the height of the season.

Who, at some point, hasn’t dreamed of becoming a rock star? Admit it. You know you have, even if only for a few fleeting moments when you’re singing in the car, in the shower, or playing air guitar.

Michael Austin is in the picks and shovels department of the rockstar and wanna-be rockstar business. Michael is the owner of Austin Music Company, Panama City Beach’s only full service music store and music school.

Now, admittedly, unlike the gold-diggers of yesteryear, most people who pick up a guitar or take music lessons are not aiming at the riches they can attain from Taylor Swift type world domination. In fact, these days, there is a greater chance of making money in the picks and shovels end of the business than getting rich off of Spotify or getting discovered on Tik Tok.

Entrepreneur of the Week

Our Entrepreneur of the Week is Michelle Royce. Michelle and her husband Kevin are co-owners of Seafoam Roasting Company.

Michelle and Kevin also own and run a successful HVAC company in Fort Walton. They've been in business since 2019. They have 17 employees. You might think if they wanted a little extra challenge they could hire another couple of people, get an another van, maybe even open another location. But, no. That’s not what Michelle and Kevin did. Instead they bought a coffee roaster.

They put it in a room in their HVAC business, and started roasting coffee. Then they started buying specialty beans and creating specialty blends. Then they started working with community organizations, like Panhandle Animal Welfare Society, packaging bags of coffee specifically branded for the charity, so that every bag sold raises money for them.

Today Kevin and Michelle have all kinds of collaborations going on, and Michelle is dreaming about leaving the HVAC business behind and making Seafoam Roasting Company her full time career.

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.

Are you the type of person who finds yourself texting people, “sorry, running late, on the way”? Are you typically the last one to arrive to pick up your kids? Are you “that guy” or “that girl”? The one running through the airport who only just makes it to the departure gate before they close the airplane doors?

If any of these are you, you have what behavioral scientists call “poor Executive Functioning skills.”

I asked AI, “What is Executive Functioning?” And this is the verbatim response it gave me: “If your brain is a wedding planner, Executive Functioning is the part that keeps the timeline, coordinates vendors, manages last-minute changes, prevents emotional meltdowns, and ensures the bride, groom, guests and staff all stay on track.”

For Tania Deer, it’s more than just her brain that’s a wedding planner – it’s her entire professional Iife. Tania has been planning weddings at the beach since 2005. She’s the Coordinator at Sugar Beach Weddings and she plans and executes 50-60 weddings a year. If you’ve ever been in a wedding or planned one, can you imagine doing that gargantuan once-in-a-lifetime task once a week?

While I had AI open, I asked it, “What are some other orchestrated events on the Emerald Coast?” It gave me a list of them, including the Destin Fishing Rodeo, the Emerald Coast Cruizin Car Show, the 30A Wine Festival, and a bunch of others. Strangely, the one orchestrated event it didn’t mention is an actual orchestra.

When I pointed that out, Chat GPT replied, “Great catch! You’re absolutely right. Sinfonia Gulf Coast is one of the most prominent and truly orchestrated events in the Florida Panhandle.” And so it is. Sinfonia Gulf Coast is a professional orchestra that produces a full concert season, educational performances, guest-artist events, holiday shows and special gala-style evenings.

The orchestra was founded in 2005 by a dedicated board of directors and its founder and Music and Artistic Director, Demetrius Fuller.

Entrepreneur of the Week

Our Entrepreneur of the Week is Dion Jones. Dion is a country music singer and songwriter, and leader of the band The Neon Tears. Dion is a country musician with his roots in the sand. He says “Santa Rosa Beach is one of the best music towns. It’s like a mini Nashville. But they actually pay you.”

Dion plays up and down The Panhandle, often 7 days a week. He has his sights set on Nashville and the big league of country music, but he's doing it on his own terms. So far his plan seeems to be working.

To Sum Up...

When we talk about someone’s wedding, we often refer to it as “The Big Day.” Getting married is one of the most momentous and life changing days in anybody’s life. Being the lynch-pin in the wedding of a couple is more than just a job, it’s a serious responsibility. Tania's day at the office is all about balancing the tension between the happiest and frequently the most stressful day in a person’s life. Wedding Planner is not a career for the faint of heart.

It’s interesting to note that when a bride walks down the aisle – even if it’s on the sand – to accompany the most important moment of her life, most brides choose classical music. Classical music is woven into our lives in more ways than many of us realize, and none more important than the gift a living orchestra brings to a community, including our children’s education.

And then there's the total other, super-popular end of the musical spectrum – Country music.

Dion, Demetrius, and Tania represent the wide range of events and experiences available to those of us who live on or visit The Panhandle. They're each making a vlauable contribution to the Emerald Coast cultural economy.

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 live around here, you may have heard this piece of business advice: Do you know how make a small fortune in the Florida Panhandle? Start with a large one.

Over the last decade or so, as real estate prices and the cost of living have climbed, it’s become commonplace for people who have already done well financially to move here. Or buy a second home here. But there are still people who move here for the same reason most people migrate around the world and across the country: to make a better life for themselves, raise a family, or build a business.

Michael Carey had a 25 year career in law enforcement before opening a consignment furniture store, in Birmingham Alabama. He called his store Stock & Trade, and in 2012 he established the business’s corporate headquarters in Destin.

Today, Stock & Trade has an outlet in Atlanta, showrooms in Birmingham and Nashville, and at their Santa Rosa location on Highway 98 they have 60 full time employees working on administration, logistics, an allied café business, and furniture design services - from new construction to turn-key for rentals or second homes.

It’s not all that unusual to meet someone who moved here, like Michael, from somewhere in the South. It’s a lot more unusual to meet someone who moved here from Russia. Like Eve Emilianova.

Now, everybody has to come from somewhere, so it’s not always relevant – or polite - to ask where someone is from. But in Eve’s case, her background has a direct bearing on her business. Eve is the founder of Honey Med. As the name suggests, Honey Med is honey as medicine. It’s a unique formula drawn from Eve’s Russian heritage and her grandmother’s honey-based cure-all known as “folk penicillin,” combined with Eve’s affinity for Native American, Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine.

Honey Med has anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties. And it has a growing number of consumers who buy the product online, locally at stores from Panama City to Destin, and in retail stores in other states including Alabama and Tennessee.

Entrepreneur of the Week

Our Entrepreneur of the Week is Rachel Simmons, Founder and CEO of Yoga Balm, an all-natural anti-inflammatory cream that you apply to your skin for treating the muscle aches and pains that come with exercise, or pain that comes with age, like arthritis pain.

Rachel started making Yoga Balm at her home in Navarre in 2004. Today, Yoga Balm has a devoted following across the country. Rachel has 6,000 direct to consumer clients. And 3,000 retail outlets across the country sell Yoga Balm – mostly health spas and yoga studios.

There’s a well-known saying in the world of working out: no pain no gain. And while it’s true that sometimes you have to push yourself a little beyond your limit, the goal for most of us is to live a life that’s primarily about the first half of the saying: no pain.

Eve and Rachel are focused on simple, direct, natural cures for decreasing pain and discomfort, and for Michael's contribution, there’s no doubt that the peace that comes from comfortable surroundings is itself a form of beneficial meditation.

These three local business peple are working every day to make life here on the Emerald Coast peaceful, happy, and pain free.

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.

In 1988 Nike was one of many sports shoe manufacturers when they launched a marketing campaign with the slogan, “Just do it.”

It wasn't so much the words themselves as the spirit behind them - an enthusiasm for life itself -that captured the attention of the American public and catapulted Nike into a position of market dominance and extraordinary financial success.

Nearly 20 years later, in 2007, a similar thing happened here on the Emerald Coast when Jeff Archer and his partner founded a company called YOLO Board.

YOLO stands for “You Only Live Once” and the word “board” referred to a stand-up paddle board.

The image of standing up on a board on the Gulf, or paddleboarding to explore the waters of inland lakes, captured the spirit of the moment here. And it seemed for a time like everybody was paddle-boarding every minute of the day they possibly could.

Like Nike’s sneakers, YOLO used the success of its paddle-board manufacture and sales to diversify and create a lifestyle brand that today includes bikes, accessories, and even a branded coffee and a coffee shop.

It wasn't long after the Nike revolution that running shoes became fashion footwear. And then the flood gates opened.

Pioneered by apparel company Lulu Lemon, and popularized by young women who wanted to go straight from yoga class to the organic supermarket to Starbucks to picking up kids and who would rather sit in their SUV in traffic than waste an entire 5 minutes changing clothes, a new style of clothing was born, called “Athleisure.”

In 2019, Kurt Tobias gave athleisure a Florida Panhandle flavor when he launched his clothing line, Choona. Choona – which is a contraction of Choose Your Nature – blends our outdoor lifestyle and coastal colors with everyday wear.

Choona is branded as “Outleisure” – intended to go from the beach, hiking, or fishing, to everyday activities. Choona is ethically sourced, designed and manufactured in the US, has an estimated multi-million dollar revenue, and is headquartered right here in Santa Rosa.

Our Out to Lunch Entrepreneur of the Week this week is actually two entrepreneurs, Jennifer and Brandon Favano, known collectively as That Kiteboard Couple. Actually they’re a trio. The third member of the team is Tiki, the Marmoset monkey. Tiki is the mascot and for most people he's the social media introduction to Brandon and Jennifer's kiteboard lifestyle which they promote from their homebase in Navarre.

And talking of home, unless you have a job that takes you outdoors, a great deal of your life is spent inside. When you live here, there’s an element of torture to that, because the outdoors is, after all, mostly why we live here. So we make the most of any time we can get outdoors.

Beyond the beauty, tranquility and rejuvenation of the spirit and soul that comes from just being a part of the natural environment, there’s also something to be said for being comfortable and having fun. Jeff, Kurt, Jennifer and Brandon are all responsible in one way or another for maximizing the experiences of living here in the Panhandle.

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.

If you’re looking to get into retail and open a store, the first piece of advice you’ll get from any business consultant is, “Sell something everybody needs.” Well, nobody needs a cigar and nobody needs a guitar. So in theory our guests on this edition of Out to Lunch should be out of business. But far from it. One of them has a thriving music store, and the other has two super-successful cigar stores.

The reason they’ve defied common business logic is, both their stores transcend mere transactions. More than just a place to buy stuff, they’re both hubs of social interaction that create community.

Michael Austin is the owner of Austin Music Company, the only music store in Panama City. It’s right on the Parkway, just west of Pier Park, and pretty much any time of day or night you’ll find people of all ages taking music lessons.

And by “all ages,” there are kids as young as 7 and folks well into their golden years from nearby Latitudes Margaritaville retirement community, learning everything you could imagine, including guitar, saxophone, trumpet banjo, bass, and more.

And, of course, you can buy instruments there too.

Almost nothing says, “I’m relaxed, I’m happy, and I’m just gonna sit here and watch the world go by” like a guy lighting a cigar.

That’s a generalization. But when it comes to actually smoking a cigar, that’s anything but one-size fits all. What a cigar tastes like, what it smells like, and what it feels like to smoke is highly personal.

Paul Copeland is the Co-Owner of two stores, both called Shore Thing Cigars, one in Gulf Shores Alabama and the flagship store here in Watersound.

Paul’s partner in the business is his good buddy, music icon Luke Bryan. Luke loves cigars and 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.

15-plus years later, Paul has won awards like Tobacconist of the Year and he’s a three-time Davidoff Golden Band Award winner.

We’re used to judging greatness by achievement – whether it’s wealth, strength, or winning. But there’s more to life than striving. The writer Clive James famously put it this way, “A society is not judged by the height of its ambitions but by the depths of its pleasures.”

One of the reasons people choose to live or spend time in this part of the world is because we have an appreciation of pleasure. Whether that pleasure is enjoying the natural beauty of our surroundings, enjoying listening to or playing music, or smoking a fine cigar.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.