User:Forbesfisher86/Sarma Melngailis

Sarma Melngailis (born September 10, 1972) is the co-founder and owner of Pure Food and Wine restaurant in New York City and the founder and CEO of One Lucky Duck Holdings LLC, which also operates oneluckyduck.com.

Sarma was born and raised in Newton, Massachusetts and attended Newton North High School. According to her biography, her early interest in food came from her mother, a professional chef. Her father was a physicist at M.I.T.

Sarma graduated from The University of Pennsylvania in 1994 with a B.A. in Economics from the School of Arts and Sciences and a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School. In 1994, Sarma moved to New York City to pursue a career in finance. Until 1996 she worked at Bear, Stearns Inc. where she focused on mergers and acquisitions. She then moved to Bain Capital Inc. in Boston evaluating businesses for private equity investment. She returned to New York City in 1998 and joined a high-yield investment fund at CIBC. Within a year, Sarma left finance altogether and enrolled at New York’s French Culinary Institute and graduated in 1999.

In 2004, Sarma co-founded New York City’s first upscale raw food restaurant Pure Food and Wine. In 2005 Sarma launched the e-commerce boutique oneluckyduck.com.

Sarma is the co-author of Raw Food Real World (William Morrow Cookbooks, 2005) and the author of Living Raw Food (William Morrow Cookbooks, 2009). She lives in New York City with her two cats.

Pure Food and Wine, opened in June of 2004, is New York City’s first upscale raw food restaurant. Located in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan, the restaurant was listed twice in New York magazine’s “Top 100 Restaurants” and five years in a row in Forbes magazine’s list of “All Star New York Eateries.”

OneLuckyDuck.com, launched in 2005, is an online store for snacks prepared and packaged from her restaurant as well as ingredients, skincare, supplements, books, apparel, and home products, all related to raw and organic living.

One Lucky Duck Holdings, LLC in 2008 this company was formed to consolidate the ownership of One Lucky Duck and Pure Food and Wine and other new entities.