Kris Haas, CEO & Founder of Botanica Boutique

Ellen Lee Scanlon (00:00):

This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over. Welcome to ‘How To Do The Pot’, a podcast demystifying cannabis for women. I’m Ellen Scanlon. This has been such a popular series, and I am very grateful to the more than 30 women who have shared their stories with us just since April of this year. I know, buying weed can still sometimes be an intimidating thing. And I hope that these stories give you that boost of confidence that comes when you have a friend to help you out with all you need to know before you go. And we would love to hear your story, too. Please send us a voice memo with your three to five minute story to Hi, that’s H-I, @dothepot.com.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (00:53):

Today we meet Kris Haas, the New Jersey based founder of Botanica Boutique, which offers high quality CBD and cannabis products and cannabis education with a personalized touch. And soon she’s going to have a luxury cannabis delivery service in Northern New Jersey. So definitely check that out.

Kris Haas (01:15):

So the first time I bought legal weed, although I’m from New Jersey, which is the Garden State, we only recently legalized recreational weed. The first time I bought legal weed was on a trip to California for my 40th birthday, which was just a couple years ago. We were going for wine tasting, but I had also researched a lot of dispensaries. And I had found this one in Sonoma County called Soulful, which I highly recommend. And I was so excited to get there. And when we got there, my husband and I went in and everybody else listening in California and other places know the whole drill. It was new to us. We showed our IDs, we spoke with a very nice woman, very friendly. And then we were finally allowed to go in and they opened these doors and it was like a Wonderland.

Kris Haas (02:12):

It was beautiful and the products looked beautiful. It smelled amazing. And there were all these bud tenders that were just so nice and ready to help us. It was just this really happy experience. We went a little bit overboard. I discovered some of my really favorite cannabis brands on that trip. So in the process of being introduced to these amazing brands, I went a little nuts. I think we may have spent four or $500 and we were only going to be there for another four or five days, in California. So we bought everything, we talked to the bud tenders and everybody who worked there and we were just so grateful to be able to purchase legal weed. And we got out to the car and we were like, “Oh my God, what are we going to do first?”

Kris Haas (03:04):

I remember that night, we were at our rental house in Sonoma. We were like, “All right, let’s do this.” We took some edibles, we smoked some weed. We got into the hot tub and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many stars in my life. It was an absolutely beautiful night. And we were so high, but so happy. The whole experience was just amazing.

Kris Haas (03:28):

Then a couple days later, it came time to pack up and go back to New Jersey, which presented a problem because I didn’t want to leave all my new glorious weed behind. So then it came time to get creative. I devised all these different plans. I put vape cartridges in with my makeup. That was something that was getting checked on the plane. And we bought a bag of organic gummy bears and mixed all of our weed gummies in with those. We bought some… I think it was at this fancy Sonoma chocolate shop, we had bought all these truffles that sort of looked like the little Kiva Confections chocolates that we had bought. And we mixed them in. We were super crazy about it. But I’d forgot to put our little Petra mints in anything so they were just sort of free floating in a bag that we were carrying on.

Kris Haas (04:21):

I have to tell you is at the time I was a teacher, a public school teacher in New Jersey. And my husband and I, we’re not like 15 years old. I mean, it was my 40th birthday and he’s a little older than me. And we have never been more terrified at that airport as we were that day.

Kris Haas (04:36):

We were flying out of San Francisco and flying into Newark, New Jersey. And I think it just suddenly hit us as we were standing on the security line that like, “Oh no, we have weed. What could happen?” And we were sort of blase about it before that, and it just really hit us and we were sweating. I’m sure we looked hella guilty.

Kris Haas (05:00):

We got up to the security line my husband got flagged for his carryon, which was actually I think my carryon, but he had brought it up. And the very nice woman with the TSA was kind of like, “There’s something weird in your bag and I have to check it.” We were both literally just stress sweating and we were like, “Okay, okay, okay.” She pulled out the bag of gummies that was open because we had added these THC gummies to them. And she kind of just looked at us and questioned like, “Well, this is an open bag of candy.” And so we said, “Yeah, we’re bringing it back for our son. He loves gummy bears.” All the time, probably looking super guilty. And then I remembered that those Petra mints were in there and she just sort of shuffled everything around, looked through everything, and just kind of gave us a look and closed the suitcase and was like, “You’re good to go.”

Ellen Lee Scanlon (06:06):

For lots more information and past episodes, visit dothepot.com. And that’s also where you can sign up for our newsletter, which comes out every other Friday. And if you like ‘How To Do The Pot’, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts. It helps more people find the show. Thanks to Madi Fair, our brand manager and our producer, Nick Patri. I’m Ellen Scanlon and we’ll be back soon with more of ‘How To Do The Pot’.