Lynda Najarian comes from a line of entrepreneurs and artists, and both traits are clearly evident in her. And then there’s the influence of food. Her Swedish mother was an exchange student at University of California at Berkeley when she met Lynda’s Armenian father, a football star. “When they would go on dates, he would fill the back seat of his car with fruit, and they would drive around snacking on the fruit. Obviously, he was different from anyone she’d ever met!”

“My mother was an excellent cook, and very international in her tastes, so that’s the food I grew up with. Many in her family had been painters, so food was also an art form to her.”

Lynda’s father’s career as a football and boxing coach took the family to a US military base in Japan, where Lynda was born and raised. “We all loved Japan,” she recalls. “I was immersed in Japanese culture and loved the food. I still am a vegetarian and live my life by natural holistic Eastern principles.”

As a commercial designer, Lynda’s personal artistic impulses took many forms, including optical wear, as well as neon, awnings and color design for retails stores. But she knew that someday she wanted to go into the natural food business. Her brother has a group of natural food restaurants in Los Angeles, but Lynda was looking for something even more basic, a life staple, and something vegan.

When she discovered a loaf of extraordinary bread in a store in Mendocino, she found the baker and created a business around it. “I had wanted to find a product like a grandma would make, and ‘Judy’s Breadsticks’ is a good all-American name,” she laughs. “To express how I feel about the product, I called the loaves, Lovesticks."

She soon saw ways in which the business could expand, and she began making flavored breadsticks that she calls Twigs, as well as crackers. ”My attraction to the business is the opportunity to express originality and to bring elements of my personality into it.”

The business grew methodically throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and Lynda took on new retail accounts as customer demand grew. From the beginning, the company has distributed their own products, but now that there is interest from all over California and the United States, they are seeking a company to distribute outside of the Bay Area.

“I love the product,” Lynda states. “If it’s not a passion for me, it’s boring. When I’m inspired by someone I meet, I think, ‘Wow! There’s something out there for me to learn.’ It’s all about growth.”