Zatarain's
American Grocery Company
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.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Zatarain's” as american Grocery Company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8067113. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1886, 1963 and 1889.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zatarain's” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.