Stoned Pizza Is Fixin’ To Get L.A. Baked

Southern California’s cannabis community will get the opportunity to simultaneously give themselves the munchies and satisfy them later this year when a new infused pizza delivery service sets up shop in Los Angeles. The brainchild of entrepreneur Chris Barrett, Stoned Pizza already has a solid reputation for serving medical marijuana customers in New York and New Jersey.

“About four years ago, I started doing cannabis dinners here in New York, things like steak, lobster, shrimp—high-end dinners,” Barrett, aka the Pizza Pusha, explains with a thick Brooklyn accent in a telephone interview with High Times. “And the pizza was born out of like a snack for my dinners and it just kind of took off. And at some point, I stopped doing the dinners and just focused on the pizza and that’s been three years ago now.”

Stoned Pizza has already made a splash on social media, with celebrities the likes of Ty Dolla $ign, Method Man, and Raw cigarette papers founder Josh Kesselman proudly displaying the brand’s logo takeout boxes on their Instagram feeds. And with standup comedian Young Jack Thriller signed on as the company’s brand ambassador, they’re ready to take the buzz to the next level.

Elevated Menu Aims To Please

The star attraction of Stoned Pizza is, of course, the pies, which contain a total of 320 milligrams of THC for a healthy serving of 40 milligrams per slice. In addition, the rest of the menu is also packed with cannabis-infused goodies including sides like chicken wings as well as beverages and desserts including cheesecake, cookies, and brownies.

“We don’t just have pizza. We have garlic knots, we have sodas. We have four different flavors of sodas, too. Canna Cola, Orange Kush, Stoned Sprite, and Grape Ape,” says Thriller.

“We even have vegan pizza so no one is left out. Everybody is getting high!” he adds emphatically.

Up until now, Barrett has navigated the grey area of cannabis regulation brought about by the decriminalization of cannabis and legalized medical marijuana in New York and New Jersey. But to enter California’s tightly controlled cannabis market, Stoned Pizza is teaming up with Freeway Rick Ross, an infamous drug trafficker reputedly responsible for a billion dollars’ worth of illicit cocaine sales in the 1980s. After stints behind bars in Texas and Ohio, Ross was sentenced to a life sentence after being convicted in a federal sting operation in 1996. After the sentence was later reduced on appeal, he was released from prison in 2009. Ten years later, he was awarded a license to operate a legal cannabis dispensary in Los Angeles.

“He sold a lot of drugs in the 80s, did 20 years and whatnot. And now we’re partnering up with him to take L.A. by storm. We are so excited. We just can’t hide it!” exclaims Thriller.

Legal Cannabis Brings New Opportunities

Stoned Pizza is currently working out the regulatory details of the venture with Ross, but Barrett hopes to be bringing infused pies to Angelenos this fall. After that, they’re looking at expanding into other cannabis-legal markets beyond Los Angeles as they continue to open up nationwide.

“Right now, that’s the first one we’re going to go out with, but we’re going to open these things up like In-N-Out Burgers,” Barrett says. “We’re going to open them up everywhere.”

To help fuel that growth, the company is currently seeking investors who, like Ross, were victimized by our nation’s drug policy in a sort of self-contained social equity program.

“We are opening ourselves up to all the people that have been victims of the War on Drugs and that’s who we’re looking to invest with us to give back,” says Thriller.

With a drug war that has gone on for decades, there’s definitely a large pool of potential investors out there. But legal pot translates into a lot of financial opportunity. After a recent strategy trip to California, Thriller says he realized how expansive Los Angeles is and just how large a task it will be to deliver infused pizzas to the city.

“L.A. is really big, so we got our work cut out for us. But when they say you’re biting off more than you can chew, you just gotta learn how to eat faster.”