Here in Louisiana, we have a lot to offer from music to art to dancing but probably what we’re best known for is our food. When you move away, that authentic Louisiana food can be hard to come by. Or, well, it used to be. Now it’s just a click away.
What started as a small business has grown by leaps and bounds.
For years, Tara Guidry says she’s listened to her "out of town" friends and family complain about how much they missed cooking with Louisiana staples.
Tara got an idea after noticing that she spent a lot of time sending Cajun food products to family and friends who had moved away.
That idea, to start a small business from her home, buying and selling locally famous Louisiana goods and shipping them off to those homesick Louisiana natives and the rest of the country. Two years after starting her company, she’s still going strong.
"A lot of the stuff we sell is ready to eat, a boxed meal where you add water, chicken or sausage, says Guidry. "Everything is authentic and is a quick way to have a quick easy Cajun meal at home." The boxes contain all the fixings that a cook might need from Camellia Red Beans and cane syrup to popcorn rice and boxed dinners.
While each box can be customized to fit a person’s taste, they can also follow a theme. The theme for the month of April is none other than crawfish.
"Our Aprill box was our crawfish box with crawfish etouffee, crawfish pie, crawfish fettuccine, dip, boil, and we even had pasta in there shaped like crawfish."
For Tara, now a small business owner herself, Cajun Crate has not only made getting Louisiana staples outside of the state easier, it has also helped to keep those mom and pop operations going strong.
"it’s hard to get shelf space outside of Louisiana because there’s not that big of a demand for it. Once people discover it, they want to keep getting it." Guidry says that she hopes that the more people out of state experience our products the more they will demand them on their shelves. "The bigger these smaller companies can grow, the more money our economy receives."
Tara’s overall goal is to ensure local businesses grow by introducing a little bit of Louisiana to the rest of the world one crate at a time.