North Bay Woman

28 NORTH BAY WOMAN | S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 By Judith M. Wilson April 1 has special meaning for Pamela Giusto-Sorrells. "I started my company on April Fools' Day," she said, and 28 years later, operating Pamela's Products, which makes high-quality glu- ten-free goods, still puts a smile on her face. She didn't intend to go into the natural food business, even though her family had been selling health foods since 1940, when her grandparents bought the Golden Crescent, a health food store on Polk Street in San Francisco. In fact, she didn't even like the products. "Two of our big-selling cookies were rice cookies and soya cook- ies. They were horrible, but we sold tons of them," she recalled. So, she took another direction and studied drama at the College of Marin, intending to have a career as an actress. However, "I met so much rejection that I broke into tears and walked out the door and told my dad I needed a job," she said. With that, her path was set. The family business had become a wholesale bak- ery, making products like rice bread, in 1960. When Giusto-Sorrells arrived on the scene in 1980, they were still doing the same things, prompting her to ask, "Who eats this stuff?" The only position open was cookie packer, so she started at the bot- tom and found herself packaging unappealing (to her) cookies and feeling sorry for the kids who had to eat them. Many of the children had celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that prevents them from tolerating gluten, so they didn't have many options. She had to endure unappetizing health foods when she was young, and even though she eats wheat regularly, "I understand how weird it is to have food different to what your friends are eating." She eventually moved into the office, where she became a secretary and learned how to run the business. All the while she kept thinking about the quality of the food. "The idea was percolating in my mind about how unfair it was," she said, describing herself as "the social-worker girl always looking for a cause … the troubleshooter, the problem-solver." She started playing with the idea of a gluten-free cookie, thinking it couldn't be that difficult to make something that tasted good. Her goal was a The Golden Crescent health food store in San Francisco. Pamela and her father Al in Anaheim at Natural Products Expo West. – Photos provided by Pamela's Products RECIPE FOR SUCCESS Pamela Giusto-Sorrells of Pamela's Products I n t e g r i t y and F l av o r >> con't on pg. 30

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