Sarma Melngailis (born September 10, 1972)
[ is an American chef, cookbook author, and businesswoman. She was the owner and co-founder of Pure Food and Wine and One Lucky Duck, both ]vegan
Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan. ...
raw food
Raw foodism, also known as rawism or a raw food diet, is the dietary practice of eating only or mostly food that is uncooked and unprocessed. Depending on the philosophy, or type of lifestyle and results desired, raw food diets may include ...
restaurants in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. Melngailis' restaurant appeared in New York Magazine's Top 100 Restaurants round up, and made it into Forbes' list of All Star New York Eateries for five consecutive years. Both businesses closed in 2016 after staff walked out over unpaid wages. After fleeing New York, Melngailis was tracked down in Tennessee and arrested for fraud in 2016. She was convicted in 2017.
Early life and education
Sarma Melngailis was born September 10, 1972 in the United States, and was raised in Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of Ne ...
. Melngailis's father John Melngailis was born in Riga, Latvia and was a physicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT). Her early interest in food came from her mother, a professional chef who later co-founded Alyson's Orchard, a 450-acre apple orchard. Her parents divorced when she was nine years old.
She attended Newton North High School
Newton North High School, formerly Newton High School, is the larger and longer-established of two public high schools in Newton, Massachusetts, the other being Newton South High School. It is located in the village of Newtonville. The school f ...
. Melngailis graduated from the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
in 1994 with a B.A. degree, and a B.S. degree in economics from the Wharton School
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in P ...
.[
Melngailis moved to New York City, working at the investment firm ]Bear Stearns
The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was a New York-based global investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm that failed in 2008 as part of the global financial crisis and recession, and was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chase. The comp ...
until 1996, then moving to Bain Capital
Bain Capital is an American private investment firm based in Boston. It specializes in private equity, venture capital, credit, public equity, impact investing, life sciences, and real estate. Bain Capital invests across a range of industry se ...
in Boston, working in private equity
In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a t ...
investment. She returned to New York City in 1998 and joined a high-yield investment fund at CIBC
The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC; french: Banque canadienne impériale de commerce) is a Canadian multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered at CIBC Square in the Financial District of Toronto, Ontario. ...
, but soon left to enroll at New York's French Culinary Institute from which she graduated in 1999.
Career
Together with chef, author, and speaker Matthew Kenney
Matthew Kenney is an American celebrity chef, entrepreneur, author, and educator specializing in plant-based cuisine. He is the author of 12 cookbooks, founder of dozens of vegan restaurants, and founder of the companies Matthew Kenney Cuisine a ...
, her then-boyfriend, she opened Commissary in 2001, but it closed in March 2003, after which she consulted for Jeffrey Chodorow's China Grill Management.[
In June 2004, Melngailis with Chodorow and Kenney, opened Pure Food and Wine as New York City's first upscale ]raw food
Raw foodism, also known as rawism or a raw food diet, is the dietary practice of eating only or mostly food that is uncooked and unprocessed. Depending on the philosophy, or type of lifestyle and results desired, raw food diets may include ...
restaurant. Located in Manhattan's Gramercy Park neighborhood, the restaurant was listed twice in New York magazine's "Top 100 Restaurants" and in "The Platt 101" and five years in a row in Forbes magazine's list of "All Star New York Eateries." In 2009, Melngailis believed that Kenney gave inadequate attention to the financial side of the Pure Food and Wine operation; Chodorow, taken by the strength of her business school and financial background, expelled Kenney from the operation and lent Melngailis million to buy the business outright. The Pure Food and Wine restaurant closed in spring 2016.
The trio opened One Lucky Duck Juice and Takeaway in 2007, a takeaway retail store attached to Pure Food and Wine. The website OneLuckyDuck.com, launched in 2005, was an online store for snacks prepared and packaged from Pure Food and Wine, as well as ingredients, skincare, supplements, books, apparel, and home products, all related to raw and organic living. A second One Lucky Duck location was open in New York City's Chelsea Market
Chelsea Market is a food hall, shopping mall, office building and television production facility located in the Chelsea neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan, in New York City. The Chelsea Market complex occupies an entire city block with a ...
from December 2009 through January 2015.
From 2014 until July 2016, One Lucky Duck Juice and Takeaway operated in San Antonio, Texas
("Cradle of Freedom")
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, the first location outside of New York City.
Controversy
In January 2015, Pure Food and Wine and One Lucky Duck staff walked out en masse due to Melngailis' failure to pay employees a month's worth of owed wages. This was the second time within a year that a month's worth of wages had been withheld, the first being in July 2014.
Melngailis addressed the walkout and subsequent closure of both restaurants in a blog post posted in February 2015. She apologized for the incident, but later deleted the post. In an interview with Well+Good, Melngailis stated that the delayed wages were due to slim margins caused by debts and expensive ingredients, and that she had also previously missed her own rent payments. During the ordeal, Melngailis provided employees with a different explanation, blaming the situation on changing banks.
In April 2015, Pure Food and Wine, One Lucky Duck, and OneLuckyDuck.com reopened. A majority of staff did not return to the restaurant after its reopening. In July of that year, the staff of both restaurants walked out due to unpaid wages. Both establishments have been permanently shut down.
Arrest and guilty plea
On May 12, 2016, it was reported that Melngailis and her then-husband Anthony Strangis were arrested in Sevierville, Tennessee
Sevierville ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Sevier County, Tennessee, located in eastern Tennessee. The population was 17,889 at the 2020 United States Census.
History
Native Americans of the Woodland period were among the first human ...
, after he ordered a pizza from Domino's Pizza
Domino's Pizza, Inc., trading as Domino's, is an American multinational pizza restaurant chain founded in 1960 and led by CEO Russell Weiner. The corporation is Delaware domiciled and headquartered at the Domino's Farms Office Park in Ann Arbor ...
. The couple were staying in separate hotel rooms.
It has been reported that "In addition to the fugitive from justice warrants, Strangis was wanted for grand larceny
Larceny is a crime involving the unlawful taking or theft of the personal property of another person or business. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of Engl ...
, scheme to defraud and violation of labor law. Melngailis was wanted for grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, scheme to defraud and violation of labor law."
On December 19, 2016, prosecutors offered Melngailis a plea
In legal terms, a plea is simply an answer to a claim made by someone in a criminal case under common law using the adversarial system. Colloquially, a plea has come to mean the assertion by a defendant at arraignment, or otherwise in response ...
deal in which she would agree to serve one to three years in prison. Melngailis' attorneys were reported by '' Vanity Fair'' to be planning a " coercive control" defense.
Melngailis pleaded guilty in May 2017 to stealing more than $2,000,000 from investors, and scheming to defraud, as well as criminal tax fraud charges. She received a jail sentence of nearly four months. She filed for divorce from Strangis in May 2018.
The 2022 Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...
documentary series '' Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.'' details Melngailis' scandals, including her relationship with Strangis and her financial crimes. Melngailis disputes the veracity of the series and its conclusions citing numerous misrepresentations of her story in an attempt to heighten drama, particularly in the show’s final minutes.
Restaurants
Bibliography
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References
External links
SarmaRaw Blog
Archived blog posts by Sarma
Sarma Melngailis Listing from HarperCollins Publishers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Melngailis, Sarma
1972 births
American restaurateurs
Women restaurateurs
American people of Latvian descent
Living people
People from Newton, Massachusetts
Businesspeople from New York City
Raw foodists
American women company founders
American company founders
Newton North High School alumni
American people convicted of fraud
21st-century American women