Born and bred Memphians, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman opened Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen in 2008 to feature innovative Italian cooking rooted in Southern tradition. The chefs trained at Johnson and Wales University in Charleston, South Carolina and the Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria, Italy.
Their second restaurant, Hog & Hominy, is a wood burning neighborhood eatery and was named one of the top new restaurants by GQ Magazine, Southern Living, and Bon Appetit as well as a semi-finalist for Best New Restaurant from the James Beard Foundation, which also named the chefs semi-finalists for the Best Chef: Southeast award for three consecutive years during 2012-2014, and a finalist for the award in 2015, 2016, 2017 2018, and 2019. In 2013, they were awarded Food & Wine Magazine’s Best New Chefs Award and named in Starchefs.com’s 2014 Kentucky-Tennessee Rising Star Chefs.
In early 2015, The chefs opened Josephine Estelle in the Ace Hotel New Orleans in March 2016. The restaurant made Bon Appettit’s top 50 Best New Restaurants and Southern Living’s Best New Restaurants in the South. Catherine & Mary’s, opened in September of 2016 in Downtown Memphis,
brought together their blend of grandmother cooking, Italian philosophy of dining, and southern ingredients to the heart of the city. In January of 2018, the chefs opened their second downtown restaurant, The Gray Canary, located in the Old Dominick Distillery. This restaurant embraces a
new and exciting restaurant concept, featuring an open kitchen, wood fire cooking and a raw bar, all overlooking the Mississippi River in the South Main Arts District of Downtown Memphis.
Never chefs to settle, Ticer and Hudman opened their fifth Memphis restaurant late 2019. Bishop is a French inspired brasserie, taking its cue from traditional techniques, seasonality, and southern ingredients.
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Please join The Society of Entrepreneurs and Epicenter at The Next Big Thing, a $10,000 Pitch Competition featuring emerging start-ups and scale-ups. At the event pre-selected entrepreneurs will “pitch” their business and investment opportunity in brief, dynamic, three- to five-minute segments, and then answer questions from the attendees. SOE members will score the pitches on aspects such as: business model, market validation, product or service and team. Then, while attendees break to enjoy a reception outside of the theatre, representatives from The Marston Group will tally the scores. The $10,000 cash prize will be awarded to the winner at the end of the event.
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Art Gilliam, a young, progressive-minded, Yale-educated black businessman bought WLOK in 1977, making it the first black-owned (and the first locally owned) radio station in the city of Memphis.
Under Art Gilliam’s leadership, the WLOK Stone Soul Picnic was organized and professionally managed, drawing tens of thousands of people to the Martin Luther King Park each year. By the mid-eighties, the station had changed its R&B format to a full-gospel format, and by the late nineties, WLOK had won honors and acclaim from every major gospel association in the country, earning for several consecutive years the title of #1 Gospel Station in the nation by Religion & Media Quarterly.
In February 1997, twenty years after WLOK became the first African-American owned electronic media outlet in Memphis, the station was recognized by the Tennessee Historical Commission as a Tennessee Historical Landmark.
Most recently, WLOK has worked with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office to reduce drug use among young people. The station presents numerous on-air programs that help youngsters.
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