For a good chunk of the year in New Orleans, it’s hot. And, we’re a city that takes our food and drinks seriously. So, if you’re in the business of cooling people off, and you can do it with something that tastes great, you’re in the right place for a home run.
Jacob Landry was, at one point, Chief Strategy Officer for Jefferson Parish Public Schools, and later an Executive Director at the Louisiana Department of Education. Then he spent time in Seattle, where he got an education – in craft beer.
Moving back to New Orleans he got a more traditional education: an MBA from Tulane.
Combining all of this with a long-held appreciation of European and British beers, Jacob co-founded Urban South Brewery.
Jacob Landry from Urban South Brewery wears his Perfect Plain shirt at Out to Lunch. Perfect Plain is the Pensacola beer Urban South bought to expand into Florida.
That was 2016. Today, Urban South Brewery makes a range of award winning beers, its expanded across state lines into Florida, and here in New Orleans the brewery fosters a family-friendly and community-centric vibe at its taproom on Tchoupitoulas Street.
Besides a cold beer, there’s an even more elemental way to keep cool on a hot day: eat ice.
Ok, on the face of it, eating ice would probably make you cool. But who’s going to eat ice? Well, you. Me. And hundreds of thousands of other people. When it’s flavored, packaged and served up on a stick. It’s a popsicle.
Here in New Orleans there’s a company called Big O’s Original Pops.They make artisanal popsicles with all-natural, locally sourced fruits and flavors.
You can find a Big O popsicle at various stores, mainly in Bywater, you can have Big O cater your crawfish boil or office party, or you can buy a popsicle from people around town who pedal Big O Popsicle carts.
The founder and Owner of Big O’s Original Pops is Jesse Reilly.
Jesse Reilly from Big O’s Original Pops. Pick a flavor. You can have this selection and many more personalized for your special occasion or business with yours or your company’s name printed on the stick. They’re a hit at conventions.
We can tell ourselves we drink beer to cool off in the heat here in New Orleans, but historically quality beer comes from places like Belgium, Germany, and Ireland, where you’d hardly describe the climate as anywhere near tropical.
And, oddly, the popsicle was born not in a hot climate but the exact opposite – when a kid in Oakland California left a soda with a stirring stick in it outside on a cold night and it froze.
As with a lot of other things, though, we make beer and popsicles our own here in New Orleans. You simply can’t get a Big O Vietnamese Coffee flavor popsicle at a Poboy Festival, or an Urban South beer called Poboy Amber Lager, anywhere but here. If we needed to prove it to anyone, I think we have: there’s not much in the business world that’s more fun to talk about than beer and popsicles.
Peter Ricchiuti, Jesse Reilly, Rochelle from Columns, Jacob Landry, Out to Lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans.
Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. Photos by Jill Lafleur.
