The Austin Chronic: Finding Balance at Bullfrog Botanicals

Paul Oveisi in front of the Bullfrog Botanicals trailer (photo by Jana Birchum)

On one end of the beer garden, there’s a nondescript teardrop trailer that’s catching people’s curiosity. The sign reads Bullfrog Botanicals, and it has a green cross. It’s a small, connoisseur-quality cannabis dispensary that seems to delight those who stumble upon it.

I perch at a nearby picnic table and people-watch. A local mom and her daughter, a college student at Texas State, are at the window chatting up the attendant who shows them jars of fresh cannabis flower, grown in Texas and legal in accordance with House Bill 1325, plus a lovingly curated selection of gummies and mints containing THC. The family bonds over the different ways they see cannabis as a useful wellness product.

Soon a guy in his mid-20s, at Cosmic to have drinks with a group of friends, wanders over to confirm – yes, this is a dispensary – and strikes up a conversation with the budtender, Holly McCord, who asks him what he likes to use cannabis for. “Uh... playing video games,” he says before making a purchase.

The shop, which opened in early December and only keeps hours on Fridays and Saturdays, has an inviting, unintimidating essence – perfect for the diverse crowd that Cosmic attracts. That vibe is helped by Holly McCord, who serves as Bullfrog Botanicals’ sales associate. An outgoing cannabis industry veteran, McCord tells me she enjoys assisting people in finding a product that helps them – stressed-out moms who need something to unwind, people who are struggling with pain – and also educating them with “proper knowledge” about strains and dosing and the arcane legality of hemp-derived psychoactive cannabis in Texas.

“But mostly I think of this work as helping people find balance and become their better selves,” she offers.

The Chronic digs the presentation of the weed at Bullfrog Botanicals. To me, it feels like a farmers’ market-style dispensary. The exterior of the camper has two glass display cases, one with edibles and one with bud. The flower, cultivated by Texas growers like the award-winning Doobie Blue Genetics, is all right before your eyes in glass jars, and you can smell any strain upon request – which is different from most recreational state dispensaries where, often, the weed is in the back and you just tell an attendant what you want. I chose to get some potent Biochem because it was unbelievably fresh and beautiful.

I was also impressed by the menu, which is simple, well-designed, and has useful information – not just a THC percentage, which is sort of tacky and obtuse. As an example, I’ll share the menu description of another strain I picked up:

Astrocandy

Hybrid

Notes: Diesel, Pine, Woody, Candy, Citrus

Helps With: Cramps, Pain, Muscle Spasms

Effects: Creative, Euphoria, Uplifting, Tingly

Dominant Terpenes: Caryophyllene, Limonene, Myrcene

Genetic Background: Pink Kush, Unknown

$45 / $75 / $135

Those prices, by the way, are for an eighth, a quarter, or a half ounce. Bullfrog Botanicals, of course, also sells 1 gram prerolls ($11), multi-packs of smaller “dog-walker” joints, and concentrates.

Over the next couple nights of smoking, I’m blown away by the quality of the cannabis. Good weed is good weed, and with this level of craft cannabis in Texas that, for legal reasons, focuses entirely on the precursor THCA – I discern little difference in overall quality from weed that you’d get in a rec state.

Bullfrog’s owner, Paul Oveisi, is extremely passionate and detail-oriented about weed. When I ask him questions about the economics and potential challenges of running a licensed dispensary in Austin, he’s really good at instead staying focused on the business’ overall purpose.

“My real commitment is only having excellent cannabis,” he says. “I like to think if I just commit to that, the economics will take care of themselves.”

Oveisi is well-known in Austin for being the owner of bygone, beloved Westside music venue Momo’s (2000-2011) and he’s also a founding partner of Cosmic, which now has two locations.

“My exposure to cannabis was late in life,” he explains. “It was at Momo’s with bands like the South Austin Jug Band – and the first time I really smoked was on the patio with those guys. So, early on, my attitude was that it was just a recreational thing and I thought the medical angle was a way of being slick to get it legal. But what flipped for me was situations with immediate family members of mine that struggle from different things: one young person that struggled with chronic depression in a really, really bad way – I can’t even explain the darkness of that situation. And the mental health industry sucks – seeing these all blank stares from doctors and they’re just prescribing stuff that, oh by the way, include the side effects of... becoming suicidal!

“The other one is my elderly mother,” Oveisi continues. “She’s suffering from what happens when you get old – having pain – and some of hers are chronic. She’s old-school, she’s an immigrant, she’s stubborn, and she doesn’t want to get medical help unless she absolutely has to. She reluctantly went in and was offered opioids, which she didn’t want to get on. Eventually, we persuaded her to give cannabis a try. I don’t want to be so melodramatic to say it changed her life, but it kind of did. Those two experiences totally flipped my perspective from 'This is a recreational thing with some wellness aspects’ to 'This is a wellness product with some recreational aspects.’”

That’s why Oveisi named his business Bullfrog. Frogs are what biologists call an “indicator species,” meaning they are sensitive to changes in their environment. In short, if frogs are thriving, it means things are all good in the pond. Similarly, he believes that cannabis can serve as a mechanism for people to adjust their lives and find balance, productiveness, and well-being.

The Bullfrog Botanicals trailer was intended to serve as a proof of concept for Oveisi, but in the six weeks it’s been open, he’s already seen enough positive outcomes that he’s committed to expanding it. He’s currently working on a lease for a brick-and-mortar space in South Austin, which he expects to open this spring or summer.