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New personal marijuana use laws in Washington state and Colorado have pushed a Pasco County business from super-busy to unhinged, send-in-the-reinforcements, crazy hectic.
The company, New Port Richey-based Magical Butter, sells a kitchen appliance, what it calls a botanical extractor, that can turn cannabinoids from marijuana plants into butter and oils for cooking. Founder and CEO Garyn Angel invented the device in November 2011 to help a friend with Crohn's disease.
The device blossomed into a business in 2012, and late last year, with new laws on the books out West, the company went into hyper-drive. Angel says sales jumped 488% in the fourth quarter of 2013 over the 2012 fourth quarter. He declines to discuss specific revenues, though he says the business, for purposes of a pending capital offering, has been given a $20 million valuation. There are 21 employees, with most of the hires coming last year.
“It's a madhouse here,” Angel tells Coffee Talk. “Our gross projections are insane. We can't hire the right people fast enough to keep up with it.”
The surge in business has, not surprisingly, left Magical Butter in an inventory crunch. It ran out of machines once last year, and this year Angel says he already ran out in early January. He expects a new shipment to be ready for delivery to customers in the next few weeks.
Angel has partially addressed the demand with more space. He recently opened an office in Seattle, and one in Denver is expected to open later this year. He also bought a building in Tampa, to expand the operations base. Next up, says Angel, a former financial planner, is global expansion. That goes everywhere from Europe to South America.
“I thought when I made this we had something big,” says Angel. “But I never dreamed it would be this big.”
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