We recently connected with ANGEL ESTRADA and have shared our conversation below.
ANGEL, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?
A couple years back when I was still relatively new into my culinary career. I accompanied my friend to the Bronx to pick up some edibles for him and his partner for a party they were going to. It was quite the ordeal with the trains being out of service and then getting back took about 2 hours. The following day my friend had the Edibles and they were terrible taste wise and feeling wise. He was quite upset over the low quality and sarcastically asked if I could “Chef something up”
with my new culinary experience I was able to make brownies from scratch and found a way to make infused butter for them. I made a batch of 12 and gave some of them to my friend and he was actually blown away by the quality. He told some of his friends about them and I sold the rest. They in turn requested special orders for their events and it just started snowballing from there.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m a Cannabis Chef and Pro Dungeon Master for Dungeons and dragons here in NYC. My older sister who’s also a chef got me my first real kitchen job in Manhattan back in 2017. I was in a rough place in my early 20’s and threw myself into my work as a newfound creative outlet. Mid 2018 a friend of mine asked me to accompany him on his trip to the Bronx to pick up some Edibles for a party he was planning on going to with his girlfriend at the time. Took us quite a while to get there and later on when my friend had them he said they were terrible every sense of the word. From taste and quality. He sarcastically asked me if I could Chef something up, so I decided to test out my new culinary skills and make some brownies from scratch. I gave a few of them to my friend and he was blown away by the quality. He told some of his friends about it and I sold the rest. A few weeks later those same friends messaged me i’ve been asking if I could make other type of desserts and it just started snowballing from there. I started off with brownies and eventually branched out to other types of cakes and baked pastries like tres leches, donuts, chocolate bars, cakes, Vegan cakes and breads. I even took a few bartending classes and found a way to create my own thc infused tinctures for infused cocktails. I eventually started to make connections around new York through my food and got into sponsoring and producing shows around New York. Raging from private dinners, burlesque shows, drag brunches with THC infused dishes and album release parties for upcoming artists here in New York
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I started my business around 2018 and in early 2020 when covid was spreading across the globe. It proved difficult to meet people to continue to grow the business. I decided to make a couple of cooking videos to still reach my followers to show them how to cook with cannabis. I eventually started to cautiously hand deliver my pastries and special orders to clients throughout five boroughs hear in New York.
Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.
In August 2022 I co-owned a cafe in Brooklyn named Release Cafe. Around really 2021 I met my business partner at an art gallery events in the hopes to socialize, network and make more clients. A year later she reached out mentioning he’s seen my work and needed help trying to save the business. I found it a good opportunity to eventually transition the cafe into a cannabis cafe. Owned a portion of the business for 9 months but the location proved difficult. Spent some time trying to find investors to hopefully move to a new location unfortunately didn’t work out and we have to close the business. I do another business in the future when able
Contact Info:
- Instagram: chefbaneg
- Linkedin: https://linktr.ee/chefbane?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=970d50f0-1392-49f7-8a0e-43b35464f330