Frequent comparisons between cannabis and wine often speak to the business sides of both industries, but Mason Jar Event Group founder Kendal Norris borrows culture from both worlds to deliver something a little more tangible for her clients.
“Think of it like a wine tasting, but with weed,” Norris explains. “We do art galas and various other things, but for the cannabis space we do two different series of events. One is a cannabis pairing dinner and the other is a yoga event that has a cannabis pairing brunch with it.”
For the dinners, Norris works with Colorado’s top chefs and edibles producers, such as Sweet Leaf and Blue Kudu. The company’s success is partially due to Hosea Rosenberg, a critically-acclaimed chef and winner of Bravo’s “Top Chef” reality series. Rosenberg owns Blackbelly Market in Boulder, a company in which Norris invested. She says Rosenberg immediately understood the appeal of Mason Jar’s events and agreed to lend his expertise and help launch the venture. Together, Norris and Rosenberg arranged the company’s first dinner in October 2015.
Each dinner is unique, with a menu specifically tailored to combine cannabis products with the right appetizers, entrees and desserts. One event treated guests to lobster tamalitos with pico de gallo and salsa suiza accompanied with a Neos Blue Dream vape pen. Another evening brought voodoo spiced cherry pies paired with Light Shade’s White Dawg strain and CBD coffee from Steep Fuze. While it might be hard to imagine exactly what voodoo tastes like, guests say the courses are spectacular.
The events are stylized to suit the theme of the evening, with all the flatware and furniture hand-picked to complement the dinner, along with beautifully designed menus, embroidered linens and floral centerpieces that are crafted to reflect the season. Norris also arranges live music for the events. Soft string arrangements add an air of comfort as servers present course after course of finely arranged dishes.
“We learn something at every event and then we try to raise the bar and provide a well-rounded experience,” Norris says.
Dinners can be arranged with as little as a week’s notice, and the company also hosts yoga events in picturesque locations to capitalize on Colorado’s Rocky Mountain vistas.
“We do a lot of private, brand-focused events,” Norris says. “A lot of companies come to us as a launchpad. We have a couple of great companies that have really used our events in very strategic ways.”
For Norris, the cannabis-infused events are a dream job — quite literally. She says the concept came to her in the middle of the night several years ago.
“Seriously, I went to sleep and dreamed it,” she says. “If you were to come to one of our events, there would be a lot of elements from that dream.”
This story was originally published in the November 2017 issue of Marijuana Venture, on sale now.
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