Marijuana Dispensary Leads One of Colorado’s Largest Turkey Drives

The Thanksgiving table at the home of dispensary owners Joshua Corbett and Tifini Scarcella boasts quite the spread. Corbett, who is Black, married the Italian-American Scarcella in 2010, and their feast resembles a tasty mashup of their respective cultures and traditional fare.

“It’s my favorite holiday,” Corbett says. “Our table looks pretty good now. There’s things like collard greens, cranberry sauce, a little pasta and a whole bunch of rare cheeses.”

Corbett and Scarcella own Buku Loud, one of the most popular medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado Springs. But a sizable number of residents have also heard of Buku Loud thanks to the couple’s turkey and teddy bear drive, which is now one of the state’s largest food drives around Thanksgiving.

In 2018, the same year the dispensary opened, they held their first Thanksgiving drive, giving away around 130 turkeys on a couple of fold-out tables. Four years later, the total reached 2,000. This year, the couple led an effort that provided over 3,000 turkeys to those in need, and the meal didn’t end there.

Corbett and Scarcella’s Thanksgiving giveaway on Saturday, November 18, boasted a free farmers’ market complete with sweet potatoes, onions, gravy kits and over 1,000 apple pies, as well as hundreds of teddy bears. They were able to ramp up the giveaway through new partnerships with Solid Rock and Care and Share food banks, as well as donations from Buku Loud’s friends in the Colorado cannabis space, according to Corbett.

The growth reflects local momentum and the couple’s efforts, but also the rising price of food. Corbett says the price per pound of turkeys he buys has nearly tripled since 2018, from around 25 cents to 75 cents. Poultry prices and food-drive demand are getting so high that he’s tossing around the idea of starting his own turkey farm, and it’s not just meat that costs more nowadays.

“I think a lot of the growth has to do with more people being aware of it. And as more companies and people see us doing it, it makes them want to be part of something,” Scarcella says of the drive. “Just a decent box of cereal is almost $9 now. So it’s not a marketing move or anything, or us trying to promote the store. It’s just to help people in our community.”

Over a dozen Colorado cannabis brands such as Blazy Susan, the Clear, Dablogic, Dabble Extracts, Flavors Cannabis, House of Dankness, Kaviar, Leiffa, Single Source and Stone Street Canna, among others, donated money to help buy turkeys, which Corbett made sure came in a range of sizes, from a breast package to large, full-size birds. Adding a teddy bear and a bag of candy for the kids was also important, he says, “to give them something to hug on.”

The cannabis industry has a complicated relationship with Colorado Springs — the city council and local voters have chosen to ban recreational sales multiple times over, including in last year’s election — but Corbett and Scarcella believe the turkey and teddy bear drive is now big enough to curb any reefer madness beefs.

“It’s very personal for us, to do this where we came from. I grew up with half of the people who come out here. I went to high school with some of them. To see them and help them makes me feel good,” Corbett says. “I know people think marijuana can be bad and all that, but here we have cannabis companies responsible for the biggest turkey drive in the area.”

Buku Loud’s staff accounts for just a handful of employees, but around thirty people volunteered to hand out turkeys this year, so finding extra pairs of hands on November 18 wasn’t an issue. Finding space to store an ever-growing amount of frozen turkeys and keeping a dispensary running smoothly tended to pose bigger challenges, the couple says. Corbett has had to store the birds at various freezers around town, including at a friend’s restaurant.

“Oh, it sure is stressful. But this takes precedence. This is something to be proud of. No one wanted to sponsor this for the first two years, but now people are knocking down the door,” Scarcella says. “There’s good stress and bad stress. This is the kind of stress you want to have. People like to be part of something bigger than them.”

Holding the giveaway on the Saturday before Thanksgiving gave recipients enough time to thaw the turkeys and plan any side dishes. It also gave Corbett and Scarcella time to prepare their own dishes for the big day, from lasagna and antipasto to turkey and mashed potatoes.