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.