Righteously Raw - Righteous.
OUR JOURNEY
In October 2002 Audrey Darrow launched her first business called Ledeli. Her kids were now teenagers and she found time to do something she was very passionate about. With no previous business experience or education (BA in Physical Education 1980 Cal State Northridge) Audrey wanted to bring a gourmet sandwich to San Diego after having enjoyed many years of Italian Sub Sandwiches living in Los Angele, CA for 26 years. Ledeli was launched and quickly grew into a local favorite! Serving doctors offices making gourmet deli platters for their events and serving daily walk-in customers at the deli she opened inside a local friends coffee shop.. In 100 square feet Audrey built a thriving favorite lunch spot winning 2nd Best Sandwich in San Diego Living Magazine months after opening. The business was booming and growing until June of 2003 when Audrey was diagnosed with Lobular Carcinoma Stage 3 Breast Cancer and everything stopped. Audrey eventually had to close the deli and take care of herself after having double Mastectomies and then getting ready to start treatment for 39 days of Radiation and months of Chemotherapy. While healing from Breast Cancer Audrey had another vision of creating her own line of Organic teas in the name of her favorite Gynecologist Dr. Malka Benoni and she created called Dr. B's Teas. Audrey got herself to the World Tea Expo, on television and in newspapers while doing events for doctors and nurses around San diego. Her inspiration for this project was to inspire others to get up after a terminal diagnosis and make your life worth living as Dr. Benoni had done after her diagnosis of Terminal Lymphoma back in 2004. She is still alive and thriving today. Audrey created her own line of teas and ran the company all by herself and she learned so much about her business acumen as well as about how she viewed her ability to build a business. Audrey was so passionate about doing something special for Dr. Benoni but what she quickly learned was that she did not believe she was good enough or smart enough to build a business that created a product that would sit on the shelves competing with other products. She felt her product was not good enough and she was not good enough.
In 2004-2005 Audrey learned a lot about her passions, vision and her dream to create foods that would help others avoid the horror that she was living through in healing from Cancer. She sold out of all 10,000 canisters of tea and felt that she had created a success because she began to learn about herself, how she was living up to what others thought of her and who they told her she was. As she continued on her spiritual journey of finding out who she really was Righteously Raw chocolate became part of her vision. Audrey wanted to create the first. fully certified, raw chocolate bar in the U.S. (no one had a certified one in 2006 and they were selling for $14.00 a bar). With an investment from her parents who began to see her business abilities to create and bring products to market (or they felt so sorry for her having gone through radical surgeries and treatment, one will never know) Righteously Raw Chocolate and Earth Source Organics began to come to light. Audrey began the journey of creating and building her own manufacturing facility, her own Organic raw chocolate line and a Co-packing business to help other small businesses get their dreams off the ground. Three months after launching Righteously Raw Chocolate the most horrific event in Audrey's life happened when her beautiful daughter Jaymie Rose Darrow passed suddenly from a drowning accident.Audrey knew that Jaymie was still very much a part of her vision and so together in spirit Jamie helped her Mom follow her dream. Today with the introduction of Righteous. Chocolate, our newest line and the growth of our Co-Packing business Audrey is finally seeing a light at the end of a very difficult and traumatic journey.