Nell Newman

“I want our company to leave a legacy of learning to find the balance between what's good and what's good for you.”

“Education is very important, and the botanical garden is the place to do that. I grew up in a semi-rural area and learned from that being my playground.”

“My niche will be to support the environment through the growth of organic agriculture.”

“I live in a cabin in Santa Cruz.”

“Have you ever read the back of the Newman's Diavolo pasta sauce? Dad on the front is dressed like the devil with a little beard and horns. He says that he sells his soul to the devil for the recipe. It was banned in the South. They thought it was an abomination.”

“I believe in the protection of the environment that supports us all.”

“I spent my whole life avoiding the public eye. At these food shows, I'm open quarry again.”

“I know I could make a difference by supporting the right causes.”

“My background is in biology. Before getting into the family business, I worked at the Predatory Bird Research Group at the University of California at Santa Cruz, fundraising for them.”

“Daddy was like a lot of people who kind of turn their noses up when you say the word 'organic.'”

“After getting recognized in public from my picture on our pretzel bag, I can understand not wanting to be in the public eye. It has given me a public persona I had always avoided as a child. I do it because it's for a good cause.”

“I think all family businesses are difficult and fraught with problems because you have that family relationship to get over. But my dad has been so supportive, we've managed to work around that.”

“I used to tell people my father was a plumber, because that would mean we had a normal life.”

“It's become more readily apparent that we need to be growing our own food and growing more things organically.”

“It didn't occur to me to go into something that didn't have an ethical return for me.”

“What I discovered was that just by eating normally, we all have background levels of contaminants.”

“It's so gratifying to see people face to face who get to meet the people who are giving them a fair price for their work. They can now provide medical support for their kids, give them better education and in general have a better standard of living. God knows they deserve it.”

“By the time I grew up, acting just seemed like something I'd already done. I had absolutely no interest in it, even though some people thought it would be my calling.”

“Basically, what we've done is, every year we take half the money and allow people who've helped us in the industry to give it away. One year, the ladies who put the pretzel bags in the boxes got to give it away.”

“The biggest problem was convincing my father that organic food was worth eating. All he could think of was the nut loaf with yeast gravy that my mother made in the Seventies.”