On 4/20, MOVE Magazine traveled with Hot Box Cookies delivery driver Madelynn Westhoff to see the holiday’s cannabis culture in action.
As MU students prepared for 4/20, Columbia’s Hot Box prepared its shop by organizing boxes of six chocolate chip cookies, which it sells each year on 4/20 for $4.20.
####MOVE: How long have you been working at Hot Box?
Westhoff: I have been working at Hot Box for, I guess, since October.
####MOVE: Have you seen a spike in sales today compared to other days?
Westhoff: Oh, yeah, yeah definitely. I really just got in about 20 minutes ago, but I can already tell that it’s going to be way more busy than it’s been before. We track the deliveries that we get. We’ve taken about 263 deliveries already, and usually, if I came in around this time, it would still be in the hundreds.
####MOVE: Could you tell me about how the delivery process works?
Westhoff: So, when we first get our deliveries, they print out in the back and we go out and we prep all of the orders that we can. A lot of the time they don’t come in, like, a bunch at one time, but if they do, then we just prep all of them first. We go to the back and we map all of the orders. After we map them, we find out the best routes for our drivers to take, and then we just send people out on the road. For the most part, deliveries aren’t that hard. You just go in order of the ones that are down your little path and then you come back.
####MOVE: And did you guys do this six chocolate chip cookies for $4.20 because you’ve seen an increase in sales on 4/20?
Westhoff: I think we’ve done the promotional deal for a few years now. This is the first year we’ve done it where we include online orders. Usually before, it would’ve just been in store, but I guess in the past, in-store gets so flooded with people coming in on 4/20 that we just decided to make it easier and make in-store less hectic by doing deliveries so people will have more of an option. I think it’s honestly just going to make deliveries really hectic in comparison because I don’t think people are really going to want to leave their houses today. I think that the 4/20 deal has gotten really popular because of the fact that for the past week or two, we’ve been adding in promotional cards with our deliveries so then we’re not only promoting it with a giant poster on our window, but we’re making it really available for people to know.
####MOVE: Do you think that this sale is kind of promoting people to smoke on 4/20, or do you see it more as just taking advantage of the holiday?
Westhoff: I don’t know if the deal has convinced anyone to smoke more weed than they normally would’ve. I think it’s more along the lines of the fact that we know people are already going to be smoking weed, and we’re just kind of capitalizing on that. There’s no real beating around the bush for it; it’s kind of obvious what we’re doing. With a name like Hot Box, it’s just kind of obvious. I think if people want to smoke today, it’s just going to happen, and we’re just here to fill in that gap.
_Edited by Brooke Collier | bcollier@themaneater.com_