There are various intersections of cannabis and the restaurant industry.
There are various intersections of cannabis and the restaurant industry.
Among cannabis-themed restaurants is the fast food chain Cheba Hut, which is named after the 1980s song about marijuana "Cheeba Cheeba". [1] [2] The Joint opened in Sanford, Florida, in 2023. [3]
Some restaurant chains have "nodded" to cannabis consumers on social media, including Chipotle Mexican Grill and Denny's. [4] Notable chains that have offered specials on April 20, a date with significance in cannabis culture ("420"), include:
In New Mexico, a McDonald's franchise placed a billboard with the text, "Usually, when you roll something this good, it's illegal!" The parent company removed the ad and said in a statement, "this local franchise's billboard does not meet our standards". [4]
Coffeeshops are establishments in the Netherlands where the sale of cannabis for personal consumption by the public is tolerated by the local authorities.
In Portland, Oregon, the World Famous Cannabis Cafe operated between 2009 and 2016.
In 2023, CBD CBN began serving infused food and drinks in Edmonton, Alberta. [12]
In 2018, USA Today said more restaurants in the U.S. were offering menus with cannabidiol (CBD)-infused options. [13] The trade publication Nation's Restaurant News said, "A few chefs in the 10 states, and the District of Columbia ... have thrown pot-laced dinners. Those meals are generally held offsite, and the edible marijuana products are provided by staff from licensed dispensaries, and guests have to add it themselves". [14] The same publication said in 2019, "Restaurants are taking their relationship with hemp to the next level by adding CBD or cannabinoids to dishes." [15]
The Original Cannabis Café, established as Lowell Cafe in West Hollywood, California in late 2019, was the "first restaurant to legally sell pot for on-site consumption" in the United States. [16] [17] Fried, a fast casual restaurant in St. Louis with CBD-infused sauces, opened in 2019. [18] [19] In 2022, Nashville's first cannabis restaurant began offering "legal, hemp-derived THC-infused condiments, desserts and mocktails", [20] and the opening of Wild Montrose marked Houston's "first entirely legal cannabis-infused dining experience". [21]
In 2023, the American cannabis magazine High Times said, "there's a niche in the edibles industry that's continuing to grow: cannabis dining events. While there are still many limitations to cannabis infused dining, such as restrictive laws about public consumption or a lack of approved consumption lounges, many successful chef-led dining experiences are putting spotlight both on cannabis as an ingredient, as well as the consumer enjoying unique dishes infused with the herb." [22] In 2023, Hi Flora! opened as Minnesota's first THC restaurant, [23] and the San Antonio soul food restaurant MxiCanna Cafe gives patrons the option of adding drops of delta-8. [24] In Houston, Ninfa's debuted a cannabis-infused margarita on April 20, 2024. [25]
In 2014, Nation's Restaurant News said, "pot tourism is inevitable, and the marketing possibilities are substantial for restaurants targeting visitors with the munchies". [26]
In 2018, The Denver Post said higher wages in the cannabis industry were "eating into restaurant hiring pool". [27] In Maine, restaurants were reportedly losing workers to the cannabis industry in 2019. [28]
In 2023, Montgomery County health officials warned restaurants in Maryland not to sell cannabis-infused drinks or food, [29] and Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill to legalize Amsterdam-style cannabis cafes in California. [30]
A cannabis edible, also known as a cannabis-infused food or simply an edible, is a food item that contains decarboxylated cannabinoids from cannabis extract as an active ingredient. Although edible may refer to either a food or a drink, a cannabis-infused drink may be referred to more specifically as a liquid edible or drinkable. Edibles are a way to consume cannabis. Unlike smoking, in which cannabinoids are inhaled into the lungs and pass rapidly into the bloodstream, peaking in about ten minutes and wearing off in a couple of hours, cannabis edibles may take hours to digest, and their effects may peak two to three hours after consumption and persist for around six hours. The food or drink used may affect both the timing and potency of the dose ingested.
Medical cannabis, or medical marijuana (MMJ), is cannabis and cannabinoids that are prescribed by physicians for their patients. The use of cannabis as medicine has not been rigorously tested due to production and governmental restrictions, resulting in limited clinical research to define the safety and efficacy of using cannabis to treat diseases.
Cannabidiol (CBD) is a phytocannabinoid discovered in 1940. It is one of 113 identified cannabinoids in cannabis plants, along with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and accounts for up to 40% of the plant's extract. As of 2022, clinical research on CBD included studies related to the treatment of anxiety, addiction, psychosis, movement disorders, and pain, but there is insufficient high-quality evidence that cannabidiol is effective for these conditions. CBD is also sold as a herbal dietary supplement promoted with unproven claims of particular therapeutic effects.
Cannabis tea is a cannabis-infused drink prepared by steeping various parts of the cannabis plant in hot or cold water. Cannabis tea is commonly recognized as an alternative form of preparation and consumption of the cannabis plant, more popularly known as marijuana, pot, or weed. This plant has long been recognized as an herbal medicine employed by health professionals worldwide to ease symptoms of disease, as well as a psychoactive drug used recreationally and in spiritual traditions. Though less commonly practiced than popular methods like smoking or consuming edibles, drinking cannabis tea can produce comparable physical and mental therapeutic effects. Such effects are largely attributed to the THC and CBD content of the tea, levels of which are drastically dependent on individual preparation techniques involving volume, amount of cannabis, and boiling time. Also in common with these administration forms of cannabis is the heating component performed before usage. Due to the rather uncommon nature of this particular practice of cannabis consumption in modern times as well as the legality of cannabis throughout the World, the research available on the composition of cannabis tea is limited and based broadly around what is known of cannabis as it exists botanically.
Cannabis consumption refers to the variety of ways cannabis is consumed, among which inhalation and ingestion are most common. All consumption methods involve heating the plant's THCA to decarboxylate it into THC, either at the time of consumption or during preparation. Salves and absorption through the skin (transdermal) are increasingly common in medical uses, both of CBD, THC, and other cannabinoids. Each method leads to subtly different psychoactive effects due to the THC and other chemicals being activated, and then consumed through different administration routes. It is generally considered that smoking, which includes combustion toxins, comes on quickly but lasts for a short period of time, while eating delays the onset of effect but the duration of effect is typically longer. In a 2007 ScienceDaily report of research conducted at the University of California–San Francisco, researchers reported that vaporizer users experience the same biological effect, but without the toxins associated with smoking. Δ9-THC is the primary component when inhaled, but when eaten the liver converts this to the more psychoactive 11-hydroxy-THC form.
Cannabis strains are either pure or hybrid varieties of the plant genus Cannabis, which encompasses the species C. sativa, C. indica, and C. ruderalis.
In the United States, cannabis is legal in 38 of 50 states for medical use and 24 states for recreational use. At the federal level, cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, determined to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use, prohibiting its use for any purpose. Despite this prohibition, federal law is generally not enforced against the possession, cultivation, or intrastate distribution of cannabis in states where such activity has been legalized.
The legal history of cannabis in the United States began with state-level prohibition in the early 20th century, with the first major federal limitations occurring in 1937. Starting with Oregon in 1973, individual states began to liberalize cannabis laws through decriminalization. In 1996, California became the first state to legalize medical cannabis, sparking a trend that spread to a majority of states by 2016. In 2012, Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize cannabis for recreational use.
Cheba Hut Toasted Subs is a cannabis-themed restaurant franchise-chain in the United States.
Autoflowering cannabis or day neutral cannabis varieties automatically switch from vegetative growth to the flowering stage based on age, as opposed to the ratio of light to dark hours required with photoperiod dependent/short-day strains. Many autoflowering varieties are ready to harvest in less than 10 weeks from seed. Dwarf varieties can have short stature while still giving decent harvests.
Charlotte's Web is a brand of high-cannabidiol (CBD), low-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) products derived from industrial hemp and marketed as dietary supplements and cosmetics under federal law of the United States. It is produced by Charlotte's Web, Inc. in Colorado. Hemp-derived products do not induce the psychoactive "high" typically associated with recreational marijuana strains that are high in THC. Charlotte's Web hemp-derived products contain less than 0.3% THC.
Cannabis in Iowa is illegal for recreational use if classified as marijuana but consumable hemp products including CBD products are legal for consumers to possess and registered retailers to sell. Possession of even small amounts of marijuana is a misdemeanor crime. The state has a medical program for patients with qualifying debilitating medical conditions that allows for the legal sale and possession of no more than 4.5g of THC per patient every 90-day period. Allowed modes of consumption are oral & topical forms including, but not limited to; tablets and tinctures, nebulizable inhalable forms, suppositories, and vaporization.
Mirth Provisions is a company that sells cannabis-infused beverages. Mirth was founded in 2014 by Adam Stites and is based in Longview, Washington. Mirth's beverage brand is Legal, which is available in several flavors, the first of which was cold-brewed coffee. Legal beverages contain cannabinoid profiles dominant in THC, CBD, or both. They are sold for both recreational and medical purposes. As of March 2016, they were available in Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona.
In Thailand, cannabis, known by the name Ganja has recently had new laws passed through. Cannabis that has less than 0.2% THC, referred to as industrial hemp in USA, was legalised on 9 June 2022. Medicinal cannabis, with no THC restrictions, was made legal in 2018 but required patients to obtain a prescription from a medical practitioner. Recreational cannabis is still illegal according to Thai law.
The Cannabis Act is a law which legalized recreational cannabis use in Canada in combination with its companion legislation Bill C-46, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code. The law is a milestone in the legal history of cannabis in Canada, alongside the 1923 prohibition.
The Original Cannabis Cafe, known previously as Lowell Farms: A Cannabis Cafe until December 2019, is an indoor-outdoor restaurant located in West Hollywood, California. It is the first cannabis restaurant in the United States and opened on October 1, 2019, founded by 11 partners and investors including Houston Hospitality. The cafe has a flower menu and farm-to-table cuisine that is "designed to enhance the cannabis experience." Budtenders, also known as "flower hosts", are available to give suggestions on which strains of cannabis pair best with each meal and will roll a joint for the patrons at the table.
Δ-8-tetrahydrocannabinol is a psychoactive cannabinoid found in the Cannabis plant. It is an isomer of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the compound commonly known as THC, with which it co-occurs in hemp; natural quantities of ∆8-THC found in hemp are low.
The use of cannabis by athletes has been banned by many sports commissions. However, some have relaxed their policies as societal attitudes towards its use have shifted. The prohibition "is one of the most controversial issues in anti-doping".
Andrea Drummer is a cannabis chef and co-owner of the Original Cannabis Cafe, the first legal cannabis restaurant in the US.
Cannabinoids are compounds found in the cannabis plant or synthetic compounds that can interact with the endocannabinoid system. The most notable cannabinoid is the phytocannabinoid tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) (Delta-9-THC), the primary intoxicating compound in cannabis. Cannabidiol (CBD) is another major constituent of some cannabis plants. At least 113 distinct cannabinoids have been isolated from cannabis.
The goodie bag will include a stacked sandwich, a brownie and a weed-rolling tray, all to celebrate the nation's highest holiday. They're available through April 21.
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