How an annual chat turned big for Jay Ducote

Jay Ducote just meant to have a quick meeting. He did not mean to sell his company.

The Baton Rouge-based occasional Food Network personality with an eponymous line of condiments, coffee and wine had for years hosted his Bite and Booze radio show on Talk 107.3. Leasing the weekend air time meant a yearly chat with Flynn Foster, the president of Guaranty Media, and, in 2018, it was business as usual—until it wasn’t.

It was a “how’s everything going kind of meeting,” Ducote recalls. They talked about duck hunting. But Foster, Ducote says, also asked what Guaranty Corp. could do to make things go a little easier for Ducote.

“If y’all could go sell me instead of me selling myself, that would really help. Y’all have a marketing team. Y’all have a digital content team,” Ducote remembers saying. “… That got his wheels turning about the synergies we could do, and how much there could be that does overlap.”

They didn’t wait another year to talk again. At first, the deal centered around Ducote coming on board with Talk 107.3 as a live and local radio show host five days a week, but soon Foster was asking about the rest of Ducote’s business.

“Jay is a big brand,” Foster says. “You just look at his social media following and it’s as big as like, Matt Moscona or T-Bob Hebert on our sports stations. Jay has built himself, as I like to refer to it, out of thin air. There’s no logical reason for Jay Ducote to be who he is, except for the fact that he did it himself.” 

It took several months for the deal to finally come together, but now that it has, Ducote and Foster hope the arrangement gives back to Ducote the time to grow his brand. They are, in effect, looking to duplicate the success of another recent Guaranty acquisition: Gatorworks.

Read the full story about how Ducote’s deal with Guaranty worked out, and the success of Gatorworks. Also, be sure to check out Business Report’s latest cover package about Guaranty. 

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