By 1983 he had expanded Zen Center's holdings to include a dozen buildings in and around San Francisco, a 115-acre organic farm in Marin called Green Gulch and two popular and profitable enterprises, the Tassajara Bread Bakery and Greens vegetarian restaurant.
Ms. Nazarian is one of the primary shareholders of Nazarian Enterprises, a venture capital group with investments in green energy, and SBE, an entertainment group that owns several luxury hotels, restaurants and nightclubs.
She and other MPs argued that the idea is very much in the spirit of the Big Society to help small business and social enterprises and that there was a danger of the market for Green Deal energy improvements being dominated by a few corporate big boys.