When it comes to the latest addition to his restaurant’s drink menu, Matt Hansen believes he’s done his due diligence.
“I talked to everyone,” says the owner of the Camel, which bills itself as Richmond’s live music oasis. “I talked to the ABC, the Agriculture department, to my business lawyer, and even the Commonwealth’s Attorney, who told me they couldn’t give me legal advice. I just wanted to know if they’d prosecute me if I went ahead with this.”
What Hansen wanted to do was to start offering Camel patrons something called Buzzin’ Berry, a THC-infused seltzer that came on the market only a few months ago.
With no caffeine, 4 milligrams of CBD and 2 mg percent THC (the psychotropic element of marijuana), the strawberry-blueberry-raspberry fizz drink is meant to elicit a very mild buzz. The low-calorie drink meets the requirements set forth by Virginia’s current laws on marijuana, which read that “a hemp product may not exceed 0.3 percent total tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and may not have more than two milligrams of total THC.”
A visit from the ABC
After submitting the drink’s lab work, and filling out a hemp disclosure form, Hansen thought he was in the clear, but not long after he reached out to authorities about selling the new drink, the Camel was visited by the Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Authority (ABC). “I had talked to them earlier and they told me that, since it wasn’t alcohol, it wasn’t in their wheelhouse.”
During the visit, the agent requested Hansen’s paperwork on Buzzin’ Berry. “They called me back the same day and told me that the drink didn’t pass the Department of Agriculture standards, which I knew was false because the department was the one who told me I was in compliance.”
The problem turned out to be that someone at the ABC confused milligrams with milliliters. Oops.
“It’s very weird,” Hansen says. “The ABC lawyer eventually got back to me and said, essentially, the agent had overstepped his bounds and this belongs to the Virginia Department of Agriculture.”
The ABC’s public affairs office did not respond to Style Weekly’s questions about the authority’s role, or non-role, in regulating hemp drinks in Virginia.
The Office of Hemp Enforcement
Reached for comment, Mike Wallace, the director of communication at the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service, stated in an email that “The VDACS Office of Hemp Enforcement was created in September 2023 to regulate products such as the Pure Shenandoah Buzzin’ Berry hemp drink.” He also revealed that “there are four such beverages that have been submitted to the Office of Hemp Enforcement for review of compliance with Virginia laws and regulations.”
For the Camel, this started in June when Hansen attended the annual National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) convention in New Orleans, where he learned about non alcoholic drink alternatives, specifically CBD and THC-infused drinks.
“In the past year or so, we’ve noticed a huge boost in non-alcoholic sales,” he says (the Camel currently offers alcohol-free options like Heineken NA beer and Liquid Death sparkling water). “I wanted to find a low dose beverage so that people could consume two or three and not get trashed,” he says. “It’s not that people these days don’t want to get a buzz, they just don’t want to deal with a hangover.” Hansen adds that he and the Camel staff are treating the Berry drink as if it were alcohol by not serving it to those under 21 and limiting consumption to three drinks.
Non-alcoholic drinks’ popularity rising nationally
The Camel’s non-alcoholic sales mirror what’s happening across the U.S. According to market analysis by International Wine and Spirits Record (IWSR), a global drink industry data provider, the popularity of non-alcoholic drinks rose 29% in 2023. It also noted: “The still small sub-category of alcohol adjacents – including cannabis (THC) beverages and cognitive enhancers – is rapidly growing in significance in the US.”
For Hansen, finding just the right drink proved to be difficult. “I was researching companies across the country that could meet Virginia’s stringent standards, and it was hard.” Most brands he found boasted higher THC levels, and some low-THC manufacturers couldn’t ensure the accuracy of legal levels in their product.
That’s when Hansen looked a little closer to home and discovered Pure Shenandoah, a prominent hemp manufacturer from Elkton, Virginia. The company, which sells everything from CBD oils and hemp fiber to gummies, had just entered the drink market with Buzzin’ Berry, which they intended to sell mostly to health and wellness stores.
“Matt is doing it the right way,” says Tanner Johnson, president of Pure Shenandoah. “He’s gone above and beyond what’s required. He’s the one smoothing the road so that others can drive down, too.”
Johnson says that Buzzin’ Berry, which Pure Shenandoah produces in partnership with Harrisonburg’s Brothers Crafting Brewing, is only available in a handful of places right now, mostly breweries. “We’ve been working on it awhile and doing testing, different flavors, different strengths. Virginia laws cut everything down to 2 mg THC per package and that means 2 mg per can. We had to water down our formulations when that happened.” Testing for such a low amount of cannabinoids turned out to be difficult, he adds. “We also had to figure out how well a 2 mg beverage would do in the marketplace, and at what price. So it took a lot of internal product testing to make sure it was a good fit.”
“Matt is doing it the right way,” says Tanner Johnson, president of Pure Shenandoah. “He’s gone above and beyond what’s required. He’s the one smoothing the road so that others can drive down, too.”
This is still very new, he adds. “There are probably less than 10 or 15 restaurants or breweries in Virginia carrying it.”
The Camel is the first in Richmond, by all accounts. Even though the restaurant started selling the drink (at $8.50 a pop) last month, it has scheduled a Buzzin’ Berry launch party on the weekend of Oct. 17-19, with free tastings and performances from bands such as Arkansauce, Pitch a Fit String Band, The Garden Variety String Band, Wes Parker, Cellar Dwellers, and Shormey.
“I think this is the future,” Hansen says of hemp drinks like Buzzin’ Berry. “I have a feeling that we’re going to be seeing a lot of this.”
