Wishbone, which opened recently in the main foyer of Dunedin Hospital, serves a wide range of fresh and healthy food.
Now living in Wellington with her husband, Shayne Scarlett, and their four sons, aged between 3 and 12, Ms Gibson-Scarlett still considers Otago home.
"I'm very loyal; I still call it home. I think if you're from there, you never lose that," she said.
She grew up on a farm at Herbert in North Otago and attended Otepopo School and Waitaki Girls' High School, before completing an honours degree in commerce at the University of Otago.
After graduating from university, she worked in corporate tax at Ernst and Young in Wellington.
But she had a yearning to be self-employed and, having met her future husband, she discovered they jointly had a passion for property and "doing things ourselves".
Instead of heading away on their OE, having already paid a deposit for the trip, they ended up buying a building, did it up and turned it into apartments.
Ms Gibson-Scarlett opened a homeware store and then added a 100-seat cafe, before the "cafe explosion", which turned out to be very successful.
The next move was to open a fine-dining restaurant, from premises that included a "massive" commercial kitchen, and that was where the Wishbone story began.
They could operate around the clock, preparing the food for Wishbone when the kitchen was not busy.
The first Wishbone store opened in Woodward St, Wellington, in March 2000.
The couple sold the cafe, homeware store and restaurant to focus on Wishbone.
There were now six stores in Auckland, 15 in Wellington and two in the South Island: at Dunedin Hospital and Christchurch International Airport.
The inspiration for the name came from childhood memories of "Sunday roasts at Nana's house".
That included the anticipation of not knowing who would find the wishbone in their dinner, fighting over who should claim it and waiting impatiently for it to dry on the window-sill before choosing someone to "snap" it with.
They saw an opportunity in Dunedin Hospital to provide staff, visitors, patients and even customers off the street the option to buy nutritious, convenient food at an affordable price. They won a tender to open last month.
Wishbone products were also available in low GI, dairy-free, meat-free, low-fat, gluten-free and vegetarian, and products were labelled with a nutritional guide.
Included in their collection of stores was a Cargo outlet and also Soho Brown's in Wellington.
Soho Brown's was more indulgence-focused than Wishbone - "It does have the cheesecake" - and there were plans to open more outlets.
Asked how she managed to juggle work and family commitments, Ms Gibson-Scarlett said she was "committed to getting up in the morning and giving it a good shot".
With about 150 staff members, she praised the "great team" of people involved in the business.
