He Ran A FiDi Pizza Spot For 30 Yrs. Now He Sells Weed On The UES.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Is New York City swapping pizza for pot?

The owners of the Upper East Side's newest legal cannabis store, Lenox Hill Cannabis Co. on East 73rd Street between First and Second avenues, which opened their doors last week, sure are.

"We're just excited to get to know our customers," said one of the three co-owners, attorney Wei Hu, "and help figure out how cannabis could help them."

Hu says the intention behind their business — aside from making money from selling legal cannabis — is to help educate people about the plant.

"It's not a one-size-fits-all situation," Hu said. "We have customers coming in from very different backgrounds — a lot of them are from the block and are new to cannabis."

The shop, with a tin ceiling and ample wood accents, doesn't look like a typical modern cannabis shop — aside from the fact that it's filled with a huge array of cannabis options: from traditional flower to newer products like gummies and drinks. And customers from the neighborhood.

"So many of our customers live across the street from us," Hu said. "It's a real neighborhood-vibe."

Big Al's Pizza

Like so many of the best stories in New York City, this one starts with a slice of pizza.

While Hu is new to the cannabis game, and to running a small retail operation.

But he's teamed up with a pair of brothers who for years helped run a beloved Financial District pizza spot for over 29 years: Big Al's Pizza on Thames Street.

As a legal intern in 2005, Hu said he got to know the brothers, Dominick Cuffaro and Michael Graubard, when he would stop by for a slice during lunch.

"I needed pizza — he had good pizza," Hu said.

When Hu got his next job with the city's Human Rights Administration, also nearby Big Al's Pizza, he kept on going.

Big Al's was known for having a devoted downtown customer base. According to one pizza review page, a customer named Edward, who used to work in the World Trade Center down the street, wrote a letter to the pizza shop when they reopened after the September 11 attacks.

"I cried," the letter read, which was framed and hung on the pizzeria's wall. "I've often thought of you guys, rooting for you & hoping you'd make it through."

One closed pizza shop and 114 pounds of weed later

But despite surviving September 11 and Superstorm Sandy over a decade later, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns were just too brutal for Big Al's.

"I've known them for 20 years," Hu said, "and when I heard they were closing it really broke my heart."

"When I was closing up, Wei was like: 'let me get your number, maybe we'll do something together,'" Cuffaro said.

Hu was at that point running a small firm devoted to helping entrepreneurs navigate the adult-use cannabis licensing process.

And Cuffaro's brother, Michael Graubard, who worked at the pizza shop for years, had a prior arrest for marijuana possession in 2015 when cops found him with 114 pounds of the green stuff in the trunk of his car.

"It was personal use," joked Graubard, who used to work as a driver in what's now called the legacy market.

"I was actually in school at Hunter College for social work when I got arrested," Graubard said.

He ended up spending about a year and a half behind bars and as a result, qualified as a justice-involved candidate for a conditional-use cannabis license.

"We needed a new path to go after COVID," Cuffaro said.

A longshot

So when Hu pitched the idea of going for a cannabis license, the pizza brothers were game.

"It was new and exciting," said Cuffaro, "and so we talked and everything seemed to make sense. And we took a leap."

It was a longshot, Hu said. But it was worth that shot.

Last April, they found out they received their license.

"He believed in me enough to sort of partner up," Hu said, "and we decided we're going to make this work."

"It's not very often you get in on the ground floor of a new industry," Cuffaro said.

So now he commutes from his Staten Island home to the Upper East Side. Graubard moved back to the city from the Berkshires and was able to find a place with his two rescue dogs, Maddy and Grody, a few blocks away.

"The dogs aren't happy about it," Graubard said.

Education comes first

Hu says that while the rollout has been a rollercoaster, with legal injunctions and other hiccups threatening the entire industry, it's all been "worth it."

Their store, which some customers have described as "spa-like," has an emphasis on education for new customers and Hu said the goal isn't just to unload product on people but to properly pair customers with the right product for their needs.

"A lot of people haven't used cannabis before," Graubard said, and at their shop, they want their customers to be well-educated.

"We have our budtenders out here on the floor," Hu said, as opposed to behind a counter.

Many of the shop's employees, Hu said, have been hired through a New York State hospitality training programs.

"They're some of the best workers here," Hu said.

Even their security guards came through a job referral program run by the state, which charged them no fee for the service.

"The state has come through in a lot of ways that doesn't get heralded," Hu said.

And with over 400 products, including 99 strains of flower, 85 kinds of edibles, 14 tinctures and many more, cannabis consumers — or those cannabis-curious — should be able to find exactly the feeling they've been searching for.

To check out their offerings, click here.