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"