Zatarain's is an American food and spice company based in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States that makes a large family of products with seasonings and spices that are part of the cultural cuisine and heritage of Louisiana and New Orleans' Cajun and Creole traditions that includes root beer extract, seasonings, boxed and frozen foods.
The company was started in New Orleans in 1886 and moved to the suburb of Gretna when the family sold the company, in 1963.
It was founded as a grocery by Emile A. Zatarain Sr., in 1886. He created a formulation for root beer that became popular regionally after its introduction at 2:30 p.m. on May 7, 1889, at the Louisiana (Purchase) Exposition under the brand Papoose Root Beer, for which he took out a trademark. He started a new business, Papoose Pure Food Products, built a factory, and began to market it in 1889.
He expanded his product range to include mustard, pickled vegetables, and extracts. Then he moved into the spice business and became known for New Orleans and Cajun-style products.
In 1963 the family sold the business, which has been owned in several different forms in its more than 130-year history. The brand is currently owned by McCormick, the world's largest spice company.
Products
thumb|alt=Cooked Zatarain's jambalaya with tomatoes and sausage in a pot. |Cooked Zatarain's jambalaya with tomatoes and sausage.
The company produces Cajun and Creole cuisine related food items, in five categories:
- Crab and shrimp boils: these are used to prepare boiled seafood and in hosting the social event known as a seafood boil. The boil is a mesh bag (formerly cheesecloth) containing spices, including mustard seed, coriander seeds, allspice, bay leaf, and black pepper. The company also offers a liquid concentrate crab boil that can be used in lieu of the mesh packets to enhance soups.
- Creole mustard, a common item in New Orleans food, is a stone-ground brown mustard, often referred to as "hot mustard" to differentiate it from standard American yellow mustard.
- Fish-Fri, seasoned cornmeal.
- Ready-to-serve dinners, including gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, and black beans and rice contain precooked beans, rice, and seasonings, to which consumers may optionally add meat. The dinners are available in two forms: frozen, for heating in a microwave oven, or in a package to which water is added before cooking on a stovetop or in a microwave oven.
- Seasonings include cayenne pepper, root-beer extract and mixes and blends similar to the kinds of pre-blended seasonings made popular by Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse.
The company still manufactures root beer extract for home preparation and brewing.
History
Zatarain's was founded by Emile A. Zatarain, Sr. a merchant and entrepreneur of Basque descent. Zatarain formed a company called Papoose Pure Food Products to manufacture the root beer and diversify into other foods and he built a factory at 925 Valmont Street, New Orleans. Viavant took over the company, which was using outdated packaging technology, and modernized it.
In 1963, Viavant merged Zatarain's Papoose Products Co., Inc. and another recently-acquired business, Pelican State Lab, owner of a brand of coated fish frying seasoning mix called Fish-Fri, which was brought under the Zatarain's label, and became a best-seller. He dropped bleach, dyes, and pickles and focused on the profit centers at a new plant with modern equipment on a five-acre campus in Gretna, Louisiana, where he turned Zatarain's into a regionally well-known brand by the early 1970s.
With sales now at $10M a year, as Viavant neared retirement, he sold the business to Centra Soya Co. for $24 million in May 1984. Centra increased sales revenues to $14M when it sold Zatarain's to a San Francisco holding company, Wyndham Foods, Inc., 18 months later. Wyndham kept the retail business and expanded the brand into the institutional food business. They rolled out the boxed food products that Zatarains still manufactures, using the term "Cajun" on the boxes to capitalize on the trend in cooking popularized by New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme in the 1980s. When the fad faded, the company shifted to branding Zatarain's products as "Louisiana-style" or "New Orleans-style".
In 2017, the New Orleans Pelicans announced Zatarain's as their jersey patch sponsor.
See also
- List of mustard brands