CLEVELAND — For 12 years, Lilly Chocolate Confections offered sweet treats to customers. Owners Amanda and Josh Montague decided to switch gears in the new year, releasing a statement on Facebook saying their closing the chocolate shop. A new company called Buoyant Brands scooped them up.
3News spoke with Brian Samuels, Buoyant Brands Senior Vice President of Research and Development about the collaboration.
"They’re entirely creative people," he said. "They make delicious products and we’re going to be innovating in flavor profiles beyond that of which are simple chocolate dark and milk."
Instead of sweet chocolate treats like peppermint mocha bark, the new company will offer a variety of products, including chocolates infused with hemp-derived cannabinoids.
"The reality of that is that is hemp is cannabis, but not marijuana," Samuels said. "So it has no THC, the psychoactive component."
The first product to launch soon is a premium hemp dog chew.
"We’re seeing a lot of benefits right now in older dogs with arthritis, dogs that have seizures, it changes their feeling and their sense of well-being," Samuels told us.
So even though the shelves are empty and the chocolate molds are bare, the former location of Lilly’s is now the research and development headquarters. It will reopen online with one dog treat and a wellness line of CBD chocolates.
"We have a sleep support formula, we have a recovery aid formula, and we have something called a flash relief formula which is for women that have menopause symptoms," Samuels explained. "It helps relieve the symptoms of hot flashes."
So if you don’t mind CBD in your Lilly's chocolate, you’ll be in luck soon.
"I couldn’t be more exited," Samuels said. "That said, the response so far has been big, so time to get to work."
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