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.

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