Frankfort Pizza Joint Expands CBD Menu With Local Business Connection

FRANKFORT, IL — Rich’s Pizza Joint in Frankfort has always been known for its creative offerings, but co-owner Colleen Loftus admits that at first, she wasn’t sure what to think the first time she thought about adding cannabidiol to the restaurant’s ingredient list.

Cannabidiol, more commonly known as CBD, tends to have the same effect on many people who only know it as an active ingredient in cannabis. But the more Loftus delved into the idea of adding CBD-infused items onto Rich’s menu, the more she became convinced that maybe she was onto something.

Since then, Loftus began collaborating with Sunkissed Greenz in Mokena, where owner Misty Nelson works to educate local residents and customers about the health benefits of CBD. Before long, the two added Trevor Rueth from Frankfort’s Track Farms into the mix to create a partnership that now works together to combine locally produced goods and produce with the natural benefits of CBD.

Rich’s Pizza Joint introduced a CBD pizza line last year but recently has added a new line of menu items such as pizza sauce, dipping sauces like barbeque and buffalo wing sauce, hot and mild giardiniera, salad dressing, and garlic butter — all of which are infused with CBD, but that does not reach the legal levels of THC, the main psychoactive component in marijuana, making all of the products non-intoxicating.

“The reaction has been mostly open-minded,” Loftus told Patch on Friday.

She added: “We want people to tap into their senses by enjoying (the menu offerings) and feeling good about their Rich’s Pizza Joint and Sunkissed Greenz collaboration experience.”

For Nelson, getting past their initial misgivings about CBD is a critical first step. Too often, she says, people confuse CBD with the mind-altering elements that come from THC. The key, she told Patch, is educating customers about the differences between the natural benefits of CBD and marijuana, which, she said, can give many people pause at first. The natural first question that arises, she said, is typically the same: Will this make me high?

Sunkissed Greenz offers a full line of edibles, including chocolate, cookies, and gummies, but the collaboration with Rich’s Pizza is the first foray into food the shop has done. Combining the two, Nelson said, has helped to put customers more at ease.

“You’re just enjoying a meal, but you’re still getting some benefits of having the CBD in there to kind of take you down a notch and relax you,” Nelson told Patch. “Food already makes people happy, and (CBD) is basically just the cherry on top.”

Nelson worked with Loftus and her husband, who were intrigued by the idea of adding CBD-infused products to their menu. But the idea would sometimes get pushed to the back burner, Loftus said, before the notion of introducing CBD pizza to their already creative lineup of pizzas kept returning to the forefront of her mind.

Loftus said she didn’t want to jump into the CBD world blindly and began working with Nelson to learn more. Together, the two locally owned businesses worked together to introduce the idea of the CBD pizza before recently adding the full line of sauces and other condiments to the restaurant’s menu.

The key, Nelson said, remains education. Nelson shared enough information with Loftus to allow her to properly educate her staff about the proper ways to explain what goes into the CBD menu without too much shock value or the element of surprise.

“You don’t want to be sitting there eating a pizza and all of a sudden, you’re high as a kite and you didn’t expect it,” Nelson told Patch.

That’s not the case with the CBD ingredients – all of which include some levels of THC but below the legal limit of 0.3 percent, Nelson said. Although Sunkissed Greenz does sell products that include ingredients that can produce mind-altering effects, all the CBD-infused products are natural and only have calming effects on those who ingest the CBD.

Track Farms entered the equation by providing fresh produce to Rich’s Pizza Joint, which uses locally grown products like lettuce, spinach, cilantro and other produce like a variety of peppers for salads and pizza toppings. Track Farms, which also grows hemp, already had a business relationship with Sunkissed Greenz for some of its smokable products.

Nelson said that the collaboration with Rich’s Pizza Joint has helped to introduce residents to CBD who make be leery about walking into the Mokena business. Sunkissed Greenz is not a dispensary or smoke shop, but instead, a business that provides CBD products along with education to properly inform residents about the benefits of using a natural product like CBD to improve their health and sleep patterns.

Nelson said much of using CBD products comes down to comfort. Because a person’s health is involved, they need to feel at ease about adding a CBD product to their lifestyle without the guesswork of not understanding what they are putting into their body.

“With the pizza and (the collaboration with Rich’s Pizza), I feel like it takes the stress out of over-thinking things,” Nelson told Patch. “A lot of the public just overthinks this, and rightfully so. We’ve had all these decades of just knowing weed. You didn’t have CBD. And so, it’s just re-educating people.”

She added: “A lot of these people are thinking, cannabis is cannabis, but there’s a difference. ...Education is key. It's your body. You get one body, and you don't want to mess around with it. You want to know what you're putting into it."