The growth of pet food and costume company Pet Krewe started with empty shelves.

After seeing a lack of premium pet food options during the COVID pandemic, founder Allison Ward started to develop high quality affordable canned food for cats and dogs. It was a side gig, until a peer nudged her toward taking outside investments to grow the New Orleans-based company to scale.

Pet Krewe ended up being one of the first businesses backed by the Louisiana Growth Fund, a government-run venture capital firm that invests federal dollars in local startups. This helped her size the business up to become the second-largest cat food brand sold at Walmart.

"To this day, we're the only company in the U.S. that's servicing this huge market," she said.

Louisiana Economic Development held a roundtable wi

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