While Cheryl Jagoda (CJ) grew up in the Midwest, outside Chicago, when her grandparents moved to San Diego, it began an entire family migration to “the promised land” of California. “We never looked back.”
CJ’s husband was born and raised in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, but they were transferred for his job back to the Chicago area in 1997. “I warned him that the snow was not like Tahoe snow!” she laughs. “There are lots of great things about the Midwest and we made many wonderful friends, but the winters were tough for California people like us.”
While working as office manager for her children’s Montessori School, she had the reputation as a fabulous chef and party-giver. A friend told her that she needed to figure out a way to do this as a business, so Cheryl developed a personal chef service. Soon she had a full schedule of personal cheffing and catering. “I love to plan menus, do the shopping, cook the meals – the whole thing. I was loving my work!”
Once she was cooking for a living, her friend Lisa brought up the subject of CJ’s “pretzels.” “I had been giving them to family and friends at the holidays instead of cookies, and my family members were all big fans. So we talked about it as a family, my mother came up with the name CJ Stix (and later CJ’s Bitz), and we decided to launch them as brands under my Marin Chef company. “
Besides the incredible talent pool of her parents and husband, Cheryl, friend Lisa connected her with Bruce Aidells of Aidells Sausage fame. “Wow! Sure enough, he invited me to meet with him at his home. He is very supportive of entrepreneurs and was very generous with his time and knowledge. A super nice guy. He loved the concept!”
Bruce gave Cheryl a lot of ideas and even resources from his “little black book” that she might not have known about or thought of. “I left there totally shell-shocked. Bruce Aidell thinks this is a great idea! We were pumped!”
The family kept getting the “thumbs up” from chefs and retailers, so they moved ahead and sold the first CJ’s Stix in December 2004. Now the products are in over 80 locations and are sold on their website.
“When I was a stay-at-home mom, I read an Oprah Winfrey article about discovering your reason for existence by knowing your passion. That stuck with me, and I thought about what that meant to me. Food kept coming up. My only fear was whether the passion would still be there if I were cooking for people other than my family. I can safely say now that the answer is yes!”
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