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Baton Rouge-based LA-Crave-A-Ball is known for its unique variety of boudin balls and has recently started marketing to customers outside the state.
Members of the Pizzolato family, the founders of Tony’s Seafood, and chef and ball flavor creator Yvette Bonanno run the company.
The manufacturing facility in which the business operates out of on Florida Boulevard near South Donmoor Avenue was purchased in 2015 with original plans for a bakery. The building was converted into a manufacturing facility in 2020. LA-Crave-A-Ball began producing boudin balls under the inspection of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture in 2022.
“Half of the building is inspected under the Department of Health and Hospitals, which is where we do all of the blending, and that’s everything from fish fry, chicken fry, boudin spice barbecue rubs for Tony’s Seafood and our products in-house,” Bonanno says.
In the past year, the company became USDA-certified to distribute its foods outside Louisiana. It now ships to Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Atlanta.
The consumer base includes convenience stores, restaurants, caterers, hotels and country clubs.
“Tad Pizzolato said to me from the beginning that when you put Louisiana on a product like Louisiana Fish Fry, it is much more well received and sold better outside Louisiana,” Bonanno says. “We’ve only been selling to some of these customers for less than a year, so it’s been a huge growth for us.”
Reaching a more extensive audience resulted in adding new menu items like spinach and artichoke balls; red beans, pork, and sausage balls; crawfish etouffee balls; pimento cheese and grits balls; and kibbe and mini–kibbe balls. The staff is also working on new flavors.
The flavor combos result from a machine Bonanno and the staff use that injects one product into another and produces 90 boudin balls per minute.
The company aims to continue surprising customers with new products and flavors.
“We’re fortunate that our partners are buying, tremendous lots and bulk of our product, putting it out there, and helping with the distribution,” Bonanno says. “We’re generating jobs here, and we’re hopefully going to impact Louisiana’s economic footprint the way Louisiana Fish Fry did. We knew that we had that knowledge in our arsenal, that it was going to sell better outside the state of Louisiana, so we’re very excited about that.”
Customers can purchase the boudin balls from the freezer section at Tony’s Seafood on Plank Road.
