The legalization of weed in Oregon provided business opportunities for a variety of people. Some have been in the state and cultivating for decades, others making the move and growing at or near their home more recently over the last ten years. Dan Atkins, the owner of Portland Oven, the state’s first and only legal weed hot sauce company, shared that when cannabis legalized for medical and recreational over the last decade, he saw it as a perfect opportunity to merge the many communities he existed in together, infusing foods and sauces with cannabis.
The summer of 2015 was when Oregon legalized recreational cannabis and that completely changed Dan’s life. As a daily driver for Uber with no knowledge of Portland, or Oregon, he found ways to connect with the community through cannabis. A friend named Ryan eventually moved out and they launched Portland Oven and became business partners in 2018.
The company consists of three staff members with very different backgrounds. They all are trying to balance other business projects, tennis careers, and training Jiu-Jitsu. A background in art provides the foundation for incorporating new ideas and experiences plus really helps establish the overall brand and company culture.
Portland Oven was established in 2015 and launched in five different Oregon locations in 2018. Now in 2021, they are in over 200 stores across the state of Oregon plus they have plans to expand to New Jersey now that they’ve recently decided to legalize recreational cannabis.
Source Material
There are two sources for Portland Oven flower. For outdoor cannabis, they source their material from a living soil farm called Mentari Farms. They grow organic, sun-grown, craft cannabis using hugelkultur beds that breakdown to enrich the soil with nutrients over time.
Portland Oven also uses indoor flower from Garden of the Gods, just a few doors down from them in the Walnut Industrial Complex. The owners of the Garden of the Gods have developed some cutting edge genetics and won multiple awards throughout the state.
Portland Oven follows a few additional requirements on top of Oregon’s mandated guidelines. They take these extra steps to ensure a consistent product. Strains are infused into ghee, butterfat, or organic oil and sent off to a lab for additional testing. Testing happens after sourcing the flower then again after it is infused. Their strain-specific concentrates are paired with flavors and ingredients chosen to enhance the flavor and experience. A third lab tests the final product with results available on their website and product packaging.
The Future Of Portland Oven
Portland Oven currently produces a cannabis-infused hot sauce similar to Tapatio. This item is called Pot sauce. They also offer a cannabis-infused ghee butter called Cannaghee.
On top of expanding to New Jersey, they plan to release a line of sugar cookies, a green sauce, a steak sauce and freeze-dried ice cream. You can find them in over two dozen stores in the Portland area as well as various stores across the state.
You can read our reviews of Portland Oven’s other products by following these links.
