Coffee & a Joint

When I’m feeling the way Little Stranger describes, I settle in at a table at LazyDaze, Austin’s Amsterdam-style cannabis cafe. You can often find me at the one on Menchaca (or Manchaca, don’t fight me), flanked by a bakery, a bike shop, and a bookstore. Yellow-painted walls are plastered with flyers for local musicians, dog walkers, and even couples therapists. The vibe at the South Austin shop is distinctly Austin, hearkening back to the days when the word “local” used to really mean something. Interestingly enough, LazyDaze isn’t strictly local anymore, having expanded its locations as far as Maryland and New Mexico, along with locations across Texas in places like Pflugerville, San Marcos, San Antonio, and Houston.

Depending on the day and time you visit LazyDaze South Austin, you might stumble upon a DJ set, a clothing swap, or an art market. The decor – an assortment of furniture, board games, magazines, and photo prints all over the walls of famous stoners, real and fictional – is eclectic, as are the patrons: On a Saturday afternoon, a woman in a blazer is typing furiously on her laptop while sipping on a THC-infused iced tea, a trio of friends laughs over a shared bong, and a guy in the corner, his chair faced toward the wall, puffs on a joint with his headphones on, eyes closed.

I’ve been to LazyDaze to relax after a long week of work, to get creative and use my hands, to go on a date, to celebrate a birthday, and to catch up with buddies. I’ve sat on the front porch in the rain, on the back patio in the sun, and on the big leather couch on scorching hot summer days. Sometimes I walk over to the bookstore, sometimes to the bakery, sometimes down the street and into the neighborhoods. Once I stumbled upon a man standing at the curb in front of his house trying to sell a piano. In my stoned state, I almost took him up on it.

I reached out to Hans Enriquez, founder of LazyDaze coffee shop and the LazyDaze brand, to ask him about the origins of the shop. LazyDaze started a little over 20 years ago in Laredo as a smoke shop, selling weed accessories in the time before selling THC was legal. Enriquez has always been into counterculture, spearheading other businesses like skate shops, tattoo parlors, and glassblowing studios, just to name a few. 

“I was a little skater kid, so that ’80s skater era definitely reflected on me as well. As a teen, I lived through grunge, went to Woodstock in ’99. Music’s always played a big part and having dabbled in drug culture and having a free mind. … I was into comic books and collectibles. I’m an artist at heart.” Whether it’s tattooing art on skin, turning glass into molten lava, all of it is art. “I even think business is an art,” Enriquez says. “And it’s a dance.”

Enriquez explains that cannabis is synonymous with coffee shops in Amsterdam and that LazyDaze is the modern American version of what he’d like to see more broadly with legalization. It’s a curated, relaxing experience. “Originally it was LazyDaze Counterculture and we wanted to embody everything that was counterculture. Our logo is a hammock in between two mushrooms. We didn’t want to have a weed leaf, we didn’t want to call it ‘something smokeshop.’ We knew that the logo would resonate with a lot of people. It’s chill, it’s laid-back, it reflects counterculture and psychedelic lifestyles.”

Enriquez himself embodies the laid-back aesthetic of the brand. The LazyDaze team, which includes longtime partners Raji Bhakta, Zach Hernandez, Monica Enriquez, and, more recently, Claire Rudy and Paige Linney, now mainly focuses on the coffee shop brand and the experience. They’re about three things, Enriquez tells me: Great weed. Great coffee. Great people.

I ask: So why coffee? The answer surprises me: by necessity, by accident. Enriquez himself is not a big coffee head. (I can’t say the same. Coffee might be the only substance I consume more than cannabis, in fact. It’s an AM/PM kind of thing.) He explains that the coffee shop is an ideal setting to reintroduce cannabis into society through something that’s already familiar and normalized. 

“What we’ve always tried to do is be part of the normalization of cannabis. You’re really trying to reintroduce cannabis into society through something that’s very familiar. That’s the secret.” 

Consumption habits from coffee drinkers and weed smokers are actually very similar, he says. It’s all about convenience and consistency. 

“Even if I wanted a boutique cup of coffee, I’m not gonna go to the furthest coffee shop for me to go get my cup of coffee. In cannabis, there’s not necessarily a Starbucks of weed,” he says. 

Even at a chemical level, Enriquez tells me, cannabis and coffee have a lot of similarities. Both cannabis and coffee are activated with heat. Both can be grown like commodities, sought in different flavors, varieties, and climates. There are coffee snobs and there are cannabis snobs. Both coffee and cannabis are indulged in as alcohol alternatives, and both have their own subculture associated with them.

Enriquez did not start out as a coffee snob, but now he’s both coffee and weed snobby by necessity. LazyDaze sources their coffee from Texas Coffee Traders, a local roaster. Their bean is an Ethiopian blend. LazyDaze cannabis is sourced from licensed, legal, permitted hemp growers, complete with certificates of analysis that confirm they are 100% compliant with the law. Enriquez describes Texas as “probably the most underestimated market in the entire country.” The Texas industry depends on your perspective, he says. Enriquez is pro-regulation – THC shouldn’t be available to children, should come with proximity requirements, testing requirements, and enforcement that does not let bad actors take advantage of the system.

So what does he think about the future of the cannabis industry as a whole? “I in my heart of hearts believe that common sense will always prevail. I’m an optimist.” He sees Texas as pro-hemp and pro-farmer. Iask Enriquez if he has a vision for LazyDaze moving forward.

“Oh yeah, world domination,” he laughs. “My goal is to grow the brand and grow a portfolio of brands. … I’d like to see hundreds of stores across the country so people can get great coffee and great weed and it can be as normal as your local fucking Starbucks.”

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This article appears in March 6 • 2026.