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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Posted October 03, 2018in Lunch With...
Chris Diebel is a Des Moines restaurateur and marketer who owns Bubba Southern Kitchen and Whiskey Bar and represents the Orchestrate Group that includes Centro, Django, Malo, Zombie Burger and Drink Lab, South Union Bread and Deli, and Gateway Market and Café. He’s also a bona fide trendsetter in style
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Posted September 05, 2018in Lunch With...
Brad Burt is CEO of Maid-Rite. We asked him to meet us for lunch, and he suggested the company’s store in the food court of Merle Hay Mall. That is one of the best food courts around with Vietnam Café, Twisted Pizzeria, Tamales Industry and Lazize Mediterranean offering considerably more
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