Pot coffee: A new infusion

If ever a product should have been launched on 4/20, it’s this one.

In a Seattle shop customers can wander in a purchase “premium infused coffee” for $10 a pop. These coffee pods and capsules work with most popular single-serve coffee machines on the market and are infused with a 10mg dosage of THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana.

Stores even are beginning to sell ground coffee laced with THC, but you’re likely only to be able to get these in Seattle, for now, where marijuana is legal for both medicinal and recreational use.

“I liken it to a Red Bull and vodka,” says Jennifer Lanzador, sales manager at Uncle Ike’s.

Ike’s is one of a number of pot shops that are cropping up in Seattle, but they’re only one of two stores selling marijuana infused pods and capsules. Unsurprisingly, along with the cookies, chocolate and brownies, they’re selling well.

The K-Cups come from Fairwinds Manufacturing, a licenced grower and processor of cannabis products based in Vancouver, Washington. According to James Hull, who spoke to Yahoo News, these pods now account for sixty-percent of his company’s coffee sales, such is their popularity with retailers and consumers.

Other companies away from the Pacific Northwest are also trying to enter into this sphere.

California’s House of Jane also sells cannabis infused coffee, but can only do so legally to residents of the Golden State who have a valid Proposition 215 compliant notice from their doctor. Jane’s wares include K-Cups with THC levels ranging from 20 to 120 mg!

Like California, a host of other US states such as Arizona, Vermont and Illinois, cannabis can be used legally, but only under prescription. So far only in Colorado, Oregon, Alaska and Washington is marijuana legal.

Naturally there are other examples too, but these cases here demonstrate the growth of infused K-Cups, something which pleases Emily Paxhia, a Californian asset manager who focuses on marijuana-related investments.

“The more that cannabis can be consumed in forms that are familiar to broader populations, the more interesting it’s going to become to a mass market,” she said.

And what’s more well-known that a cup of coffee?

Photo: Massimo Ricci (Creative Commons)