Jenna Schnuer

Entrepreneur: Keeping Pace with Food WasteJune, 2015

Larry LeSueur is used to former peers from the software world asking him, "What the heck are you doing?" It's a reasonable question, considering the decidedly different turn he and his former Microsoft colleague Jose Lugo took in 2010 when they founded Redmond, Wash.-based WISErg, anxious to solve the growing problem of food waste in America. 

That's right—the duo went from high-tech to food scraps, hoping to address the fact that 40 percent of food in the U.S.—about $165 billion worth per year—goes uneaten, with most ending up in landfills, according to a 2012 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

Read the rest of the piece about the wizards of food waste.

American Way: Into the WildSeptember 2014

An essay about my turning into an outdoorsy type. Sadly, the piece isn't online anymore. But here's how it starts...

The tent looked like a rejected prop from an episode of M*A*S*H. No. Worse. If Charlie Brown went tent shopping, he would have walked out with this one. It was the Charlie Brown Christmas tree of tents.

Last year, my mom found a photo of the tent. It’s the only evidence proving that my family’s collective memory of the relic isn’t just some sad legend that’s grown since the mid-1970s. We borrowed the tent from the family friends who had convinced my parents that we should all go camping together. Like most snapshots from the era, the photo has faded into a uniform brown-green. In it, a few trees leaning behind the tent look embarrassed, like they’re trying to duck out of the photo. The army-green tent is the classic inverted V-shape. When kids draw pictures of tents, they draw our tent.

 

American Way: Light It UpDecember 2013

Let’s get beyond “storytelling” as a buzzword. Marketers toss it around with abandon these days. Fine. Yawn. Whatever. This story isn’t about that. It’s about the essence of storytelling. The person-to-person connections that well-told stories build. The things that happen in your brain when you’re on either side of a storytelling.

“Stories are our ultimate democracy, in the sense that everyone has them. Everyone has a deep need to tell them and to listen to them. They define us. They go across borders, boundaries, gender and their age — no matter what it happens to be,” says Colum McCann, author of novels including TransAtlantic and Let the Great World Spin. 

Read the full story on the American Way site. 

Entrepreneur: Walking on AirOct., 2013

Rick Stafford, inventor, outdoorsman and former oil-field worker on Alaska’s North Slope—the kind of guy “who will take three hours to build a tool to turn a two-hour job into 30 minutes”—wanted to create a potentially lifesaving (and easy-to-pack) way for snowmobilers to walk away after a backwoods breakdown. His solution? Airlite inflatable snowshoes.

Read the piece on Entrepreneur.com.

Entrepreneur: Tasteful TreasuresMay, 2013

A flea market as restaurant incubator, hipster destination and a great place to find a lamp? Indeed. Find out how partners Eric Demby and Jonathan Butler got the Brooklyn Flea off the ground--and turned it into one of the borough's anchor events. 

Read the piece on Entrepreneur.com.

One+: Tell It Like It IsApril 2013

There are many traits common to real New Yorkers: A love of discussing how much they pay for their apartments; the absolute confidence with which they hand out subway advice; and the inability to keep the first appointment of the day—it’s part of the narrative of New York life.

So it wasn’t a big surprise when Joan Firestone, executive director of New York-based storytelling organization, The Moth, emailed to change the next day’s interview time. But Firestone had the most NYC-of-all reasons for the change: She was going to former Mayor Ed Koch’s funeral. 

Read my profile of Firestone from the April One+.

Round-Trip America: April 15 - November 8, 2012

The drive is over but the stories continue. Find out what happened as I road tripped and ferried from the New York City area to Alaska and back again. From April to November 2012, I drove across the northern United States, took a ferry across the Gulf of Alaska, spent three months in Alaska, and then took a rambling drive back east. 

Visit the Round-Trip America site.

Entrepreneur: Open and Shut (and Open Again)Dec. 2011

The parties often went late into the night, with up to 150 friends milling about their pool, gathered around the piano, singing, talking and laughing. Scott Jones and his partner, Kell Hicklin, loved entertaining. So when they decided to tank their respective careers in marketing and human resources, the couple determined it was time for a complete change. They bought a then-failing seasonal inn and restaurant on Martha's Vineyard.

"She was just an old girl that was all rough and worn out and needed somebody to love her," Jones says.

With a new name on the inn's sign--Lambert's Cove Inn & Restaurant--Jones and Hicklin spent two years and $1.5 million of their own money to renovate the property.

"We thought, How much harder can this be than throwing a big party? It still sounds stupid as I say it again even now," Jones says. "It's like a never-ending party, especially the restaurant part. It's like you have continual houseguests."

Find out what it's really like to run a seasonal business.

National Geographic Traveler: A Fair to RememberJuly/Aug 2011

The Ferris wheel awaits. This charticle serves up the Blue Ribbon goods on five State Fairs. Pick up the July/Aug issue of Traveler to find out the best place to eat candy buckeyes, which fair serves reindeer sausage, and where you can meet Bardo the Clown.

American Way: The Chef Recommends...June 1, 2011

Even chefs need a night out on the town (or just a quick postservice meal). “As a chef, depending on what kind of food you do, all you want at the end of the day is something simple and warm and comforting,” says Albert Aviles, executive chef at Corkbar in Los Angeles. “You don’t want to go out after service and go for 45 courses.

So, when their toques come off, here’s where top chefs in five great eating cities head for their next meal.