For nearly 30 years, Bubby’s has been a staple dining destination in New York City, and now chef and owner Ron Silver has set his sights on the booming cannabis industry in New York and Massachusetts with his new venture, Azuca.
Azuca is a line of fast-acting cannabis-infused sweeteners and syrups that are currently available at Bubby’s locations and will launch in Massachusetts sometime this summer.
“Because it’s hemp-based, it’s 100 percent legal,” Silver told Metro of the Azuca products at Bubby’s. “In Massachusetts, we’re launching with a company called iAnthus Capital Holdings and Mayflower Medicinal, and we’re going to do THC and CBD products, and we’ll also do blends of THC and CBD products with different sorts of ratios.”
Azuca, the Spanish word for “sugar,” came about after Silver spoke to cannabis industry experts about the biggest problem they were seeing, “and 100 percent of them said it was a low-dose, controllable edible,” he recalled. “I’m a chef, so that seemed like something that was in my grasp to figure out.”
With his chef’s mind, Silver dove into research and development, eventually coming up with “this sort of technology” that has three patents pending on it. While “it’s a closely held secret,” it involves cannabis molecules, he said. The result is a fast-acting line of date sugar, maple sugar, demerara sugar, stevia and agave products, which can be used as standalone ingredients, say for coffee and tea, or in baking for users to make their own edibles.
“There’s exactly 10 mgs in it,” Silver said. “That’s one of the big problems with edibles, people can consume too much because they take so long to kick in.”
While Bubby’s has been a hotspot for decades, Silver has seen “an amazing response” since the restaurants recently started offering Azuca’s hemp-based CBD products in lemonades, coffees and teas.
“People are coming in for CBD drinks, just to sit at the bar and have them, and I think a lot of people are coming back again,” he said. “It’s a nice, consistent place and way to have it — and it’s really a cool system that’s taking the mystery out of how to use cannabis. There’s really so many interesting benefits that don’t have to do with being couch locked playing video games.”
For more info, visit azuca.co.
