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As nutty as it might sound, there’s a psychology to nuts.

Women crave chocolate-covered pecans and almonds, and men seek out salty roasted peanuts. “Thinkers” thrive on cracking the hard shells themselves, relishing the crunchy freshness like sweet victory, and more laid-back people want the no-hassle ease of shelled ones.

For Krishna A. Muhammad, owner of the Baton Rouge Peanut Factory, he gratefully discovered he’s the type of person who cracks the hard, challenging situations in life.

He mustered up the kind of courage and determination that helped him restore his life from ex-felon to entrepreneur. He did it all on nuts—literally —and his strong belief in a hard-earned lesson that hangs on a poster on his wall in his store. “The Company You Keep” is the heading, and below it is the lesson: “It is better to be alone than in the company of the wrong.”

Now he wants to turn his own hard experiences into positive ones to help fellow nonviolent ex-felons keep the kind of company that will return them to society as contributing citizens. Muhammad is setting up a center and nonprofit, Opportunity Outreach, which offers the kind of help he wished he had when he was released from prison.

“Opportunity Outreach will not only dream with its eyes open,” he says, “but will succeed at giving back a sense of realism to those ex-felons, men and women, who are struggling and have lost their way in society.”

Muhammad says his mission is to offer both state and federal ex-felons a second chance by providing job opportunities as well as the knowledge to become successful entrepreneurs. The program will focus on counseling, education, food and shelter, work and business ownership training.

“I went in as a man and came out an innocent man, but better,” he says of his own prison experience. “I’m not bitter or resentful because I always try to find the lesson in the experience.”

Photo by Marie Constantin

VARIETY: The Baton Rouge Peanut Factory sells 57 varieties of nuts, from roasted pistachios to boiled peanuts and chocolate-covered nuts, with vendors all over Louisiana.

Muhammad’s hard lesson could have easily embittered him, but it didn’t.

Nearly six years ago, Muhammad was convicted of Medicare fraud in connection with his wife’s health care business. To this day, he maintains his innocence. His now ex-wife implicated him in the case; she received a five-month prison sentence, while he was sentenced to two years.

“It was a marginal case to say the least,” says Bruce Kerwan, Muhammad’s Atlanta-based attorney who has 37 years of experience in criminal trial work. “He maintained his innocence all the way through, but unfortunately the jury didn’t believe him. There was no trail of money that led to him. It all led to the wife.”

Kerwan says as he got to know Muhammad, he found him to be an interesting character.

“I think he could sell a peanut to Jimmy Carter if he had to,” he says. “I was just sorry that we came in second. You get to know the good side of people, and he certainly did try to help the kids, but he got with a woman who was pretty bad.”

When Muhammad left prison three years ago, he quickly encountered what life was going to be like as an ex-felon.

“It’s almost like double jeopardy because society thinks all ex-felons are bad, hurting their ability to earn money,” he says of struggling to find work and a place to live. “They pull your criminal background, so now if you’re an ex-felon the owner of an apartment may not lease to you. Federal prison was nothing compared to what I went through when I got out.”

Muhammad’s 80-year-old aunt, Daisy Clark, opened her doors to him, but his everyday struggles were almost overwhelming.

“I had nothing,” he says, choking back tears of gratitude for his aunt’s help. “You have to give praise where praise is due. We helped each other, and now I know why I was denied.”

With $500 a month his aunt paid Muhammad to care for her and his uncle, Fred Campbell, Muhammad started investing in his business.

The idea of becoming a peanut vendor was born while in prison, recalling a successful fundraiser with inner-city children in Atlanta that raised money for their trip to the Smithsonian Institute. With every penny he could spare, he started setting up the business, drawing on his experience as an Atlanta businessman, classes he took in prison and the strength of his determined father, the late Forrest Martin, who started several successful businesses in the area despite not being able to read or write.

Muhammad leased a building on the corner of East Washington Street and Thomas Delpit Drive, investing as much of his pay as possible into opening the Baton Rouge Peanut Factory. When that location didn’t work out, he soon relocated to Government Street, where the business remains today.

Three years later, Muhammad and his partner, Mary E. Belle, sell 57 varieties of nuts, from roasted salty pistachios in or out of the shell to boiled peanuts with salt or spicy Cajun seasoning to chocolate- or butterscotch-covered nuts.

He has vendors in Covington, Gretna, Hammond, Kenner, Lafayette, Mandeville, Metairie, New Orleans and Slidell, and he wants to open new locations to meet growing market demand. He also hopes to attract additional vendors so that he can dedicate more time to growing the school.

Muhammad’s business grossed $98,000 last year and has grossed more than $125,000 this year.

“That’s the beauty of this country—you can start over,” he says. “You may get these titles put on you, but it doesn’t stop you from starting over. Never give up.”