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.