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. Fish-Fri became "the entreè" of litigation in 1983. Zatarain's sued Oak Grove Smokehouse for trademark infringement; Oak Grove sold a competitor "Fish Fry." Although the court determined Fish-Fri qualified for protection, Oak Grove's Fish Fry qualified as a fair use. The case opinion is also notable for its use of puns. With rising sales of $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 Zatarain's 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". The company was acquired again in 1987 by a Brentwood, Tennessee company, Martha White Foods, which itself was a subsidiary of E-II Food Specialties Co. for $35 million. Zatarain's had several more owners over a period of months in the late 1980s, including American Brands of Old Greenwich, Connecticut. By the 1990s, Zatarain's sold more than 200 products locally and regionally. They pushed to gain a national footing by the end of the decade with the first national television advertising in 1999. The company was taken private in a leveraged buyout by Citigroup Venture Capital in 1993 as Zatarain's Partnership LP, a partner group of Citigroup Venture Capital and several Zatarain's employees. The product line was expanded to include frozen foods. It was sold to McCormick on May 9, 1993 for $180M after the company's sales rose 15% annually for the prior five years. In 2017, the New Orleans Pelicans announced Zatarain's as their jersey patch sponsor. See also List of mustard brands References External links Zatarain's official web site Louisiana cuisine Cuisine of New Orleans Manufacturing companies based in New Orleans Condiment companies of the United States Brand name condiments McCormick & Company brands