AT SOQUEL POT DISPENSARY, GIVING AND GANJA GO HAND IN HAND

SOQUEL -- Nancy Black, called Granny Purps just like the pot
dispensary she owns on 41st Avenue, is known for her palate-pleasing
recipes for brownies, cookies and other treats containing medicinal
marijuana.

This holiday season, however, Black and co-owner Phil Hicks
demonstrated that their recipe book also includes the secret
ingredient to bringing in outsized donations for the Second Harvest
Food Bank holiday food drive: a complimentary joint.

For every four cans of food they donated to Second Harvest, patients
received one pre-rolled marijuana joint, with a maximum of three per
day.

"We had experience with Second Harvest because my husband is a retired
chiropractor, and we use to collect donations from his patients at his
office," Black said. "We used to do some sort of incentive to
encourage people to donate, and so we decided to do the same thing
here to get momentum."

In all, Granny Purps handed out 2,000 joints to dispensary clients and
collected 11,000 pounds of food, a large and exceptional contribution
for a business of its size.

"We look at pounds donated per employee, and Granny Purps, with about
eight employees, received the amount of donations that we'd expect a
business with 30 to 40 employees to get," said Danny Keith, chief
development and technology officer at Second Harvest. "They had a good
recipe for a small business. It takes the focus of the owner to
implore employees and customers to participate. They focused on a goal
of raising food for people who need it, applied resources and came up
with a creative angle."

When the Second Harvest barrels were first put out at the dispensary
in November, donations were trickling in. After word of the promotion
spread to the dispensary's 1,900 patients, the employees at Granny
Purps could barely keep up with the flood of food, and even reduced
the minimum amount for the promotion from four cans of food to three.

"We only had the barrels out for three or four days before the
incentive was announced, and I think our patients would have come out
even without the incentive," Black said. "We have an incredible group
of compassionate patients ... I love that our patients are so
compassionate. When we told them that we were doing this, their
response was amazing."

Some patients donated way over the minimum amount, such as one person
who brought in five pounds of rice. It wasn't just the patients that
chipped in either. According to Black, one of the growers that
supplies the dispensary donated some marijuana to be used for the
promotional joints, which typically sell for $10.

Second Harvest, founded in 1972, helps feed an estimated 17,200
different people per week and 45 percent of the clients are children.
Almost three quarters of the clients earn wages below the federal
poverty level and a quarter are homeless. The organization's goal for
its 2010 Holiday Food Drive, concluding this week, is 2.1 million
pounds of food.

"Businesses like these fill half our coffers," Keith said. "There are
some big contributors, a handful of them, but these food drives from
small businesses and other groups really do a lot. With everything
going on in terms of the economy, it's definitely tighter out there.
It has been a rough year for everyone, and to have new businesses like
Granny Purps pitching in is great."

After the successful drive this year -- the promotion ended Christmas
Eve -- Black plans to do it again next year and has other community
initiatives in the works.

"We are planning to organize a beach clean-up in January and have a
promotion associated with it, but we haven't finalized anything yet,"
Black said.