Lemonade University – Out to Lunch – It’s Baton Rouge
It’s pretty well agreed that the early years of development are fundamental in shaping a child’s future. That extends from playground to classroom, to career choices. If you want to Cultivate a culture where kids can see themelves as entrepreneurs you have to start early. That’s what Lemonade Day is all about. It’s a nationwide event with chapters all over the country, including Baton Rouge, that teaches kids the basics of starting their own business. What better way to do that than with a Lemonade Stand?
Jordan Piazza is executive director of Lemonade Day Louisiana, which has grown steadily over the past few years and now reaches thousands of school children around the state. Jordan knows a thing or to about entrepreneurism. He is the business manager for the Baton Rouge office of one of Baton Rouge’s most successful entrepuerial companies—Raising Cane’s Chicken Finger. Along with his brother, Jordan is also getting ready to open a new restaurant – a remake of classic Phil’s Oyster Bar that their father owned and operated for many years.
If Phil and Lemonade Day succeed in giving kids the entrepreneurial bug, will those kids when they’re grown have options to turn enthusiasm into education? Given the current disarray in Baton Rouge and dismal fiscal condition of the continually-threatened State education budget, that is a great unknown. Rachel Kincaid is tasked with turning the unkown into the known.
Rachel is Vice President of External Affairs for the Univeristy of Louisiana system. Rachel is in charge of developing and overseeing the management of a comprehensive legislative and federal relations strategy that will support the academic and research mission of the System’s nine campuses, which include University of New Orleans, the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, Southeastern Univeristy in Hammond, and Louisiana Tech in Ruston.
This conversation is a unique, candid, and cautionary insight into one of Louisiana’s universal questions, “What’s going on in Baton Rouge?”
Photos at Mansurs On The Boulevard by Ken Stewart.