Both these figures are for a single state (Washington), but it’s easy to extrapolate the enormous potential market as the legalization of cannabis spreads. The company sold around 2,000 units last month, and owner James Hull estimates that sales are increasing by 15 percent month-over-month. Intended as a home-brew alternative, Catapult is handily packaged in pellets that fit any Keurig-like machine. Elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver, Wash.-based Fairwinds Manufacturing produces Catapult, its own Mary Jane joe by applying oil to whole coffee beans before grinding and stabilizing the mixture. Given these numbers, Stites isn’t alone in creating canna-coffee, drinkable riffs on a spliff. Legal coffee has racked up sales of $439,815 since it launched in September 2014, all but $6,737 of which came in during the current calendar year. 1 it’s harder to gauge the size of the pot industry nationwide, but most estimates put it around $3 billion annually. According to IRI data from Bloomberg Intelligence, coffee sales in America totaled $9.4 billion in the 52 weeks ending Nov. The potential profits from a mashup of coffee and caffeine are, well, high. Caffeine is absorbed almost instantly by the body, but it takes from 45 minutes to 90 minutes for the human body to process the weed so it can prolong the caffeine high, Stites says. Weed adds a rich, earthy base to the flavor, he explains, while Legal’s mixture of THC and CBD confers a calm sense of focus on caffeine’s jittery high. Legal’s range includes plain coffee, coffee with sugar and milk, and even fruit drinks, each juiced with its own herb recipe. Stites spent months trying to find the ideal ratio of each, testing 50 different strains before narrowing his final choices. The two major species of marijuana, sativa and indica, contain varying proportions of THC and CBD. Moreover, Stites had to find the ideal cannabis strain to complement coffee in both flavor and effect.Ĭannabis contains two crucial components: THC, the psychoactive element most closely associated with feeling high, and CBD, which has no hallucinogenic impact and usually leads to alertness. Coffee and cannabis molecules separate when brewed because cannabis oil is not water-soluble much of Mirth Provisions’ intellectual property rests in the unique way it uses plant-based emulsifiers to keep the oil evenly suspended in water. Binding the weed and beans into a functional joint venture was a major hurdle. It required a complex process for Stites to develop his signature product. “It’s great for a Sunday morning, where I’m at a teahouse reading the newspaper and want to focus and get some work done,” he said from a conference in Las Vegas earlier this month. “Our customers are not looking to get blown out of their mind, just ever so slightly tilt their relativity,” Stites says, employing the lyricism of a man who clearly started his day with a cup of Legal. Waggishly named “Legal,” it’s the ultimate wake and bake. Soon he set up Mirth Provisions to sell a commercial version of his creation: marijuana-infused cold-brew coffee, dosed up with 20 milligrams of THC per serving. Nonetheless, his professional interest was piqued. So strong was the first dose, Stites woke up 13 hours after chugging a single cup. He road-tested the idea as soon as he got home. (“My VW van doesn’t go very fast, so I have a lot of time to think,” Stites explains.) “What would happen if I infused heavy cream with cannabis, then mixed it with my coffee?” he mused. It was during an endless drive home from a camping trip in eastern Washington that entrepreneur Adam Stites came up with his latest product. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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