We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Garai Caruth a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Garai, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

I don’t often think about legacy. Even before I founded PJJS, my goals could best be described as wanting to build “sandcastles” in my life. Nothing is forever and the pursuit of impact beyond your time oftentimes sacrifices the beauty of being in the present moment. The tide pulls all of our structures in eventually, but finding joy in the process of walking along lifes’ beach, finding a great spot to build a castle, meeting friends and colleagues with common goals that help you build something beautiful… that’s what I am constantly aiming for. And the common goal I want to unite us under with PJJS is changing the perception of cannabis. I want to help fill in the grey areas of how plant medicine can fit into ones everyday life, lower the barrier of entry for measured, precise, and unique culinary creations using cannabis. I want to spend my time searching for new Entourage Effects that bring out the best of each ingredient, changing the concept of being ‘high’ to something more nuanced. And when it’s time to dissolve into the background I want to seamlessly do that having provided a platform for budding chefs and researchers to explore our relationship to plant medicine in a collaborative ecosystem.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Garai Caruth and I’m the Founder of PJJS Apothecary, a Cannabis Manufacturing Company based out of New Jersey that’s goal is to explore the various entourage effects of plant medicine as it pertains to the cannabis plant. Not all of our products contain cannabis, but all of them are aimed at businesses and consumers that want to accurately dose their self medication in an ecosystem that encourages them to collaborate with chefs and creatives alike! Making edibles is a delicate process: budding cannachefs lose a lot of potency in the decarboxylation process and experienced ones need a fast, reliable way to get consistent high fidelity edibles in a legal market. PJJS provides the solution to these issues with prepackaged cannamilk and tinctures! Our products combine cannabis with other plants to form bases for your masterpieces that do things like drastically reduce anxiety, provide consistent yet gentle boosts of energy, and reduce menstrual cramps! These are only our first three products; we plan to continue our dedication to the entourage effect and roll out more creations for our community to use in their food and drink businesses.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

This question is great because a lot of people assume that, because I’m transitioning from a Legacy Market, I “trap” to make ends meet and fund my canna business. Its actually the furthest thing from the truth as I’m actually taking significant losses in my initial startup phase by self funding my products through my research. I’m a user experience researcher my trade, and I’ve worked on a lot of products in AI/AR that you may know about. I won’t name them here because the topic of cannabis touching businesses are still taboo in tech ( despite most of the employees being smokers AND drinkers smh) and may blackball me from effecting the change outside of cannabis that I love, but most of the money that I make goes into my personal research into edibles. I give them away at my events and all I ask are that the partygoers complete Qualitative Interviews that I design around packaging, taste, efficacy etc. Some of them find creative ways to make sure I’m not completely in the red while I seek proper licensing, but for the most part I’ve developed a powerful foundation of chefs, creatives and consumers that are prepared to be activated as soon as I’m properly allowed.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I believe that it’s my commitment to community and quality! I’m currently in Asia researching plant medicine for a fourth white label product and gaining the proper respect and sourcing for each ingredient on my Anthony Bourdain ish! Technically I’m supposed to be on vacation and I’m sure my partner isn’t super thrilled that I always find a way to work, but as Travis Scott said, “Everything I do I do it three ways”. And If I’m on vacation it’s to Learn, Explore, and Relax. I always bring my learnings back with me and cross reference them with my community to see what works and what doesn’t work, and once we exit seed round funding next year I’ll even have a way to take some early investors with me on these excursions to properly respect what they are consuming! This is a process that I learned from a Harlem based tea shop called Serengeti Teas and Spices that I used to frequent when I lived in Harlem.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @_.pjjs._

Image Credits
All Images are property of PJJS. The Humans pictured have no affiliation to the brand and consume legally within their appropriate states