Law Center News
Lawyer turns hobby into healthy snacks business
Michelle Vallot was looking for a healthy snack to eat while commuting daily from Lafayette to the Southern University Law Center in the 1990s.
When the then-law student couldn’t find one, she developed her own and in the process discovered a new career. Now Vallot, ’92, is president of her own company, Zydeco Foods, which makes nutrition bars and salsas that are uniquely “Louisiana Style.”
Vallot discussed how her career path as attorney turned entrepreneur to law students during her presentation on Monday, March 14, during the 2016 Law Week. Chancellor John Pierre, one of her law professors, introduced Vallot explaining that her story was a perfect example of non-traditional law students and non-traditional career paths for law graduates.
Zydeco Foods, which is based in Lafayette, produces two all-natural nutrition bars made with sweet potatoes – a pecan brownie bar and a fruit and pecan bar. In addition, the company makes three Louisiana-style salsas – Red Bean, Creole Trinity, and Sweet Potato. Zydeco’s products can be found at several retail grocery and specialty stores, some of which include Rouses Supermarkets; numerous Associated Grocer-affiliated stores in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Lafayette, such as Matherne’s, LeBlanc’s, Alexander’s, Calvin’s Bocage, and Champagne’s; and H-E-B stores in Texas. Orders can also be purchased online at www.zydecofoods.com.
A graduate of the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now University of Louisiana at Lafayette or ULL), Vallot confessed that she held a number of jobs before getting her undergraduate degree. She worked as a local news reporter, a salesperson in the oil industry, and then spent more than a year in France where she studied French. In France, she enjoyed an incredible culinary food experience and did some modeling before returning to Louisiana. After graduating from college, she considered pursuing a master’s degree before a counselor advised her to go to law school instead.
“He said ‘Michelle get a law degree. This will serve you well,’” she said.
She applied to several law schools, but decided on SULC because her father Peter Vallot was a Southern University alumnus.
After law school, Vallot worked for the Louisiana House of Representatives as an attorney for the Committee on Natural Resources in Baton Rouge. Two years later, she was hired by the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Middle and Western Districts of Louisiana in Lafayette, where she worked for more than 16 years as a criminal defense attorney.
In her spare time, she could be found baking in the kitchen. Food has always been a constant in her life. One of seven siblings, she grew up in rural Abbeville, Louisiana, in a family of sugar cane farmers. As a kid, she tended the family garden and remembers eating lots of fresh vegetables.
“I’m a foodie and come from a line of cooks and bakers. We love good food,” Vallot says.
She would also help her first husband, Jim (who died shortly after she graduated from law school), make an Italian fig cookie for family and friends every Christmas. It was a tradition. Vallot continued the tradition after he passed away, putting her own spin on the recipe. She says it helped her cope with the loss.
The idea of making a nutrition bar was prompted by the popularity of her fig cookie. “I am told that my Italian fig cookie is one of the best,” she says. “It’s all natural and is in large part what makes it so delicious. Everybody loved getting that cookie for Christmas.”
The health-conscious Vallot says she didn’t like the unhealthy snacks she was forced to choose from in order to keep her energy level up while attending law school waking up at 5 a.m. and not getting home until after dark so she told her friends “I’m going to make a nutrition bar.”
“The bars that were on the market were dry, cardboard-like, and syrupy,” she said. “I wanted something that tasted good and had natural ingredients like oats and roasted pecans and molasses.”
She started experimenting after work. She was a lawyer by day and baker by night. She opened a state-approved bakery and started selling her products on a very small scale in late 1999. She worked with the ULL Food Science Department to test various ingredients and their nutritional content.
“The devil is in the detail and is where my law degree came in,” said Vallot. “If you’re going to put a product on the market, you’ve got to know exactly what the ingredients are, the shelf life, and the nutritional breakdown of those ingredients. You can’t put something on the shelf without testing and retesting. It’s a long arduous process.”
In 2010, she contracted with a manufacturing company to mass-produce the bars and a national distributor to get the product into regional specialty markets. The bars were distributed in health food, specialty, and grocery retail stores in Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and Mississippi.
After juggling a law career and being a “part-time” entrepreneur for a number of years, she left the criminal practice in 2011 to pursue her business full time. However, she is still an active member of the Louisiana State Bar.
“This is a hard job. It’s the biggest challenge I’ve ever embarked on,” she said of running the small company, which is made up of two employees. “I wear a lot of different hats. Being a lawyer has given me the ability to do that, but at the end of the day I’m pretty exhausted.”
Zydeco expanded its products to include a line of salsas in 2013. Vallot says that it’s part of her effort to stay competitive and diverse in a very-crowded snack foods industry. “So far so good” she says. “The unique Louisiana Style Salsas are differentiated from the rest because our product is gluten free, vinegar free, and free of chemical preservatives. We are all about Louisiana tradition and food culture.”
She hopes to continue to grow her food line and consult with other small business owners to help guide and encourage them through the peaks and valleys of owning a business.
From left, Troy Parria and Michelle Vallot
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