Posted July 31, 2019in Lunch With...
Just love food. Brooks Reynolds is a founder and the major force behind bacon festivals in Des Moines, Japan, Colorado and Iceland. Scott Toland is the CEO and President of ICS (International Chili Society), which owns the World Championship Chili Cookoff and 123 other regional events in 41 states plus
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Posted July 03, 2019in Lunch With...
Cowgirl and marksman is one of several women who dominate upscale catering in Des Moines. Cyd Koehn owns Catering by Cyd. She has catered in Des Moines now for 25 years. We asked her to lunch recently, and she chose Wasabi. Wasabi is one of five restaurants that former New
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Posted June 05, 2019in Lunch With...
Keith Miller is a distinguished professor of law at Drake. He teaches torts, products liability, gaming law, and workers compensation. With big changes in gaming law coming to Iowa in late August and bigger changes probably by winter, we asked him to lunch to talk about gaming and other things.
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Posted May 01, 2019in Lunch With...
CEO of EMC Insurance Company shares his perspective on Des Moines and the insurance industry. Bruce Kelley is the longtime CEO of EMC Insurance Company, a 108-year-old business in downtown Des Moines that employs 2,400 people, 1,400 of them in Des Moines. We asked him to lunch, and he suggested
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Posted April 03, 2019in Lunch With...
We talked about the trend of free music on Ingersoll and bartending in general Bill Landis had as much to do as anyone with the 10-year-old phenomenon of free, quality music in town, particularly on Ingersoll. Uber drivers and couch surfers have told me that the street’s music has become
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Posted March 06, 2019in Lunch With...
Author of books about early days of rock and longtime Des Moines Register editor speaks Larry Lehmer spent 25 years at the Des Moines Register, mostly under the radar on the sports desk. Since retiring he has published two books about the music industry – “The Day the Music Died,”
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Posted February 06, 2019in Lunch With...
Jeff Fleming is the director of the Des Moines Art Center. He’s been in Des Moines now for 20 years, a period that coincides with a golden age for the arts and for food in central Iowa. We asked him to lunch to talk about that, and he chose Jesse’s
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Posted January 02, 2019in Lunch With...
Brokering, fishing, skiing and gambling Dick Grangaard is a retired stockbroker. Active stockbrokers cannot talk to the media without jumping through hoops, so I recently asked Grangaard to lunch to discuss a lifetime of changes in the brokering business as well as in fishing, skiing and casino gambling. At the Manhattan Deli, Grangaard told me
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Posted December 05, 2018in Lunch With...
Enjoying a Vincent van Gogh at the Greenwood Lounge The word enthusiasm deserves more respect than it usually gets. Literally it means “god within thee.” Sydney Klise is a precocious enthusiast. Recently turned 30, she has owned her own business, Klise Dog, for eight years. She does no advertising, not
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Posted October 31, 2018in Lunch With...
Turning lemons into lemonade. Steve White is probably Iowa’s greatest impresario, though he prefers the less descriptive word promoter. He brought world-famous shows to Iowa and the rest of the nation from the 1970s until recently. He calls himself “mostly retired” now but still works with Widespread Panic and invests
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