Founded by New Orleans
“Teach for America” grad Brian Bordainick, Dinner Lab puts together chefs, hosts, and diners for one-night pop-up restaurants around the country. Photo: Debby Wolvos, Food Stylist: Sarah Seddon
Dinner Lab has benefited from the relatively cheaper housing and office space costs in New Orleans. Photo: Brittany Purlee
New Orleans has always had a reputation as a culinary hub. Photo: Katie Bird Photography
“The startup costs were a lot cheaper. We were able to make a pretty small investment last a long way.” – Brian Bordainick Photo: Aaron Lyles, PIXELLAB
Dinner Lab’s unique origin story is told on its official site: “It started out as most arrest records do…on a night in New Orleans. We now call them our Board of Directors, but back then they were just a few hungry guys with no late-night options.” Photo: Mike Dawson
“Many meals and a bit of trial and error led to Dinner Lab as we know it today: a roving night out that is forever changing and always an experience to remember.”
Dinner Lab debuted in 2011. Their very first
Chef de Cuisine was Lalita Kaewsawang.
In 2012, Dinner Lab actually hosted a meal inside an old New Orleans brothel. Photo: Katie Bird Photography
Dinner Lab’s first foray outside of New Orleans took them to Austin, Texas. Photo: Ryan Green
By 2014, Dinner Lab had grown tremendously. According to their official site: “Our first event was for Google, and a few events later we hosted Solange Knowles’ immortal ‘White Wedding’.”
Dinner Lab’s office was originally housed in Brian Bordainick’s French Quarter home. Photo: Ryan Green
Chefs can submit a profile and a suggested menu, and are considered for Dinner Lab presentation. Photo: Aaron Lyles, PIXELLAB
Dinner Lab has since hosted events in Nashville, Chicago, and New York City. Photo: Ryan Green
“I lived here before the storm, and there was just not a lot of energy around entrepreneurship and problem solving.” – Andrea Chen, executive director of Propeller
Today, Propeller operates a 10,000-square-foot space and offers an accelerator program for startups.
Propeller’s focus is on finding solutions to problems having to do with food, health, education, and water management.
Some Propeller-backed companies include Clear Health Analytics, which uses statistical techniques to help people pick health insurance plans and VEGGI Farmers Cooperative, which has helped fishermen from the city’s Vietnamese community shift to growing local vegetables after the 2010 BP oil spill contaminated the Gulf of Mexico.
“After Katrina, New Orleans became the leading Teach for America city in the country, so you have a lot of very smart people moving down to become teachers through the Teach for America fellowship.” – Chris Schultz, cofounder of the startup community Launch Pad Photo: Craig Mulcahy
Launch Pad describes itself as “a collaborative workspace and community of entrepreneurs, creative professionals, and freelancers–building businesses together. Sick of working at home or hanging out at coffee shops? Drop into Launch Pad and see what a joy a great workspace can be.”
Launch Pad offers educational as well as mentorship programs.
The program also sponsors its own awards, “The Launchies.”
Next week will mark the 10th anniversary of a dark chapter in New Orleans’ long and storied history, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city and the surrounding area. Now, a growing startup community is hopeful the city will soon be known as a center for new and innovative businesses.
“I think, by 2018, there’s an opportunity for New Orleans to be viewed around the country, around the world, as a hub of entrepreneurship for the South,” says Tim Williamson, the CEO and cofounder of incubator The Idea Village, referring to the year the city will celebrate its 300th anniversary.
That would have been hard to imagine in 2005, when the storm flooded 80% of the New Orleans and cut its population by more than half, while leading to the deaths of more than 1,800 people across the Gulf region.
But after the floodwaters receded, lifelong residents and newcomers from around the country organized to piece the city back together: rebuilding houses, clearing debris, and even restoring street signs, says Andrea Chen, executive director of New Orleans social entrepreneurship incubator Propeller.
Propeller
“I lived here before the storm, and there was just not a lot of energy around entrepreneurship and problem solving,” she says. “A lot of that changed after the storm, and a lot of that was out of necessity.”
As the city rebuilt, Chen and her cofounders sought to preserve that energy, creating what would become Propeller. Today, the incubator operates a 10,000-square-foot coworking space and offers an accelerator program for startups focusing on problems to do with food, health, education, and water management. It also offers a variety of Crescent City-focused tech programming, like a class on building Arduino-powered Mardi Gras costumes.
One Propeller-backed company, called Clear Health Analytics, uses statistical techniques to help people pick health insurance plans. Another, the VEGGI Farmers Cooperative, has helped fishermen from the city’s Vietnamese community shift to growing local vegetables after the 2010 BP oil spill contaminated the Gulf of Mexico.
