Photograph by Katherine Bish
No one can think it up, talk it up, and then make it happen better than Greg Perez. Think back 20 years: It was Perez who introduced our city to “revitalized American favorites,” Southwest/Mex cuisine, a full page of wines by the glass, the terms “small plates” and “tapas,” then conceived the nation’s first hemp-infused menu…and paired that with a “vapor bar.” The visionary chef, innovator, and salesman extraordinaire is now focused on developing and marketing his hemp oil–based salad dressings—he even snagged placement in this year’s Oscar “goodie bag.” Ladies and gentlemen, meet Greg Perez, the most likable pushy guy you’ll ever meet.
You were a pioneer of many successful restaurant concepts. What would you do next…or would you do anything? If I were to do another place, it’d be an over-the-top, high-end, five-star, three waiters and me, 12-table job, doing the most authentic cuisine that I could personally do. It would have to be a labor of love…making money is hard at that level of play.
Standard menu or a fixed, tasting-type menu? I’d develop the menu from what was at market on Wednesday and be open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Since I’m a vegetarian, it would have that influence. You’d have a choice from five, eight, or 12 courses and that would be it.
Would you do that here? Could—and would—St. Louis support it? Three nights a week and at that small size, yes.
What got you so hot on hemp oil? The health benefits. They say fish oil is the best, then hemp, then flaxseed oil. Now some fish oils are under scrutiny. I was the only guy in America to make an effort promoting it.
Is there a practical application for 100 percent hemp oil? Only as a supplement for your body. Getting on an omega-3-rich hemp-oil regimen just makes sense…whether or not you buy my products. The metabolic absorption rate for hemp oil is triple any other oil—none of it passes through—so it’s 100 percent utilized. That’s the difference and why I say it’s three times better.
I remember at the Grateful Inn you used it extensively. I did hemp–and–black pepper seared tuna, rimmed our Bloody Mary with hemp and herb seeds, put hemp almond brittle on ice cream sundaes, made hemp pesto. I closed the restaurant to move ahead with this full time.
How did you come to that decision? It was the employees from Whole Foods…they got hooked on the salad and insisted I do something with the dressing.
Describe Greg’s Hemp Oil Vinaigrette. It’s herbaceous. It looks and tastes different than other oil and vins, not offensive in any way. I kept it as clean as possible…sugar in the raw, sea salt, no emulsifiers.
What problems did you encounter working with a hemp-based product? It’s illegal to grow and manufacture hemp in this country, but it’s OK to sell here. The hang-up is with its twin brother, the one with THC, so I get all my hemp products from Canada.
Is dealing with that stigma still a problem? It was hard to market at the beginning, but once people researched the health benefits and dispelled the fallacies, things began to happen.
Will it ever become legal again here, like absinthe just did? There’s a Native American group in North Dakota that’s pushing for it—I believe they can grow it but not sell it, and I’m working with them. Obviously, I’d prefer to buy it here versus Canada, especially with the dollar fluctuating. Unfortunately, we’re a country of all or nothing…the government has a hard time meeting in the middle. Look at Prohibition.
$80 million of hemp-edible products are made in Canada...oil, flour, milk, seeds. Of that, 80 percent was sold to the U.S. So we’re a huge consumer…it’d be nice to keep that $64 million here.
Growing hemp is now illegal in this country, but it didn’t used to be, correct? It’s crazy. When the colonists first settled here, the first acre they had to plant—by law—was hemp. It was a full-circle commodity. They could eat it, wear it, make paper from it and lamp fuel out of it. There are now two countries in the world where it’s illegal to grow it, and the U.S. is one of them.
Is hemp oil expensive? Five times more expensive than the most expensive olive oil: $40 to $50 a gallon. So the dressings are a little more expensive.
How do you overcome that? This spring we will start bottling the dressings for Trader Joe’s—under their name. That volume will allow us to reduce the price of all my dressings down to Wish-Bone levels. Now you have to be an idiot—or just not like the taste—not to buy it.
Then you’re off to the races. Once it’s nationally distributed, somebody’s eventually gonna want to buy Greg out.
Is that the plan? Even if that doesn’t happen, it will spin off cookbooks, appearances, classes. When you’re the only game in town, you get a lot of opportunity. You know, I put myself out on a limb like that more than anybody else I know. But I’ve always had something unique to offer. If I was selling another veal piccata, I wouldn’t expect any attention.
Have other retailers shown any interest? Whole Foods’ Midwest region has. Six managers in Chicago are hot on it. I’m ready to deliver it there myself if they want it that bad. This spring I have West Coast meetings with Albertsons, Adronico’s, Dean & DeLuca, and several others.
You just released a ranch version. I say the kids made me do it, but it was a logical progression. It’s creamy and rich and herbal and decadent. I’m told it tastes more like an aioli or a Green Goddess. It’s selling 2-to-1 in the stores that carry both.
How does it differ most from, say, Hidden Valley? We cleaned it up as much as we could—took out all the stuff you can’t pronounce—and all of the MSG. The oil in it was part hemp and part canola, then due to some resistance, we switched to soy oil, and now there are some who won’t eat that. The one thing I have learned is that there is not an oil out there that somebody doesn’t have an issue with.
I know grocery store placement is key in developing a new product. What are your secrets? I don’t have the dollars for shelf placement. I’m not a shotgun marketer, I use a rifle…one customer at a time. Flyers, hand deliveries, appearances, getting managers excited store by store. I’d rather spend $3,000 handing out dressing on the street than on some small marketing campaign. That’s just me…when I know I’ve touched someone. Ninety percent will taste it, the majority will buy it, then most of them become missionaries for the product. It’s not about placement…it’s about reorders.
It’s tough for an individual with limited funds to take a product to market. John Auble said it best. He said, “All you have to do is get yourself arrested for this. Do that and it will take off.” Been trying to get arrested ever since. They know me in customs, carrying my bags of seeds: “Hey, it’s Greg the Hemp Guy.” I bet I’m on every list there is. I tell them, take ’em, eat ’em, test ’em…just don’t hold me up because of your lack of knowledge.
Are there more dressings in development? The natural thing would be to spin off the ranch and do flavored ranches. I’ve already done them in my restaurants: a roasted garlic, a sun-dried tomato…phenomenal. My feedback tells me everyone wants a blue cheese…it’s the No. 3 dressing in the country. But it might cancel out the flavor of the hemp.
What else is in your product line? I’m finally ready to roll with my Herb and Seed Mix. It’s the blend of seven herbs and seven seeds—the one people went so crazy over, the one we sprinkled on the Hemp Garden Salad. In every bite, there is a different mix of flavors…a little sunflower seed here, a taste of hemp there, some lavender.
Will there be a line of salad toppers? This is the original. We’ll see how it does. But it is easier and cheaper than running giant batches of salad dressing.
Tell me about this Cochon 555 event. It’s an 11-city fundraiser that has five chefs cooking five heirloom pigs paired with five different wines—for 200 people. I was asked to do the side dishes for the third stop, in New York City, where they overbooked it—to 300 people. The organizer picked up farmer’s market produce that morning and I went to work.
So what sides did you make? It was winter in New York so it was all root vegetables. I came up with a bunch of salads and he thought I’d struggle to come up with one. (I did a blanched vegetable plate with parsnips and 3 kinds of carrots; a variety of fingerling potatoes; a potato–and–green bean salad; a simple slaw; and a salad with watercress, salsify, and black radishes with the Herb and Seed Mix on top—the most bitter of them all and the first to sell out.
Did the sides incorporate your dressing? They all did, but the real kicker is what I did with the slaw. I knew they had oversold the event so I cooked off three pork butts myself. I pulled the pork, sauced it up, put it into hotdog buns with some of that slaw, wrapped ’em up, and after the gourmet judging was done, began tossing pork hot dogs around the room like red-hots at the ballpark. They all lost their minds.
Sounds like a great event. It was insane. They had pig shots, floated pickled pork fat garnishes on martinis, popcorn with bacon and toffee, chocolate-covered bacon, bacon-maple waffles. Each event gets crazier because each city wants to outdo the last.
The final event will be held…where? Right now it’s a wild card. St. Louis, if I get my way.
Are there salad-dressing contests or shows to compete in? There is a national product show in Anaheim that I bet will have 30 percent hemp products…hemp snacks, pretzels, protein bars, cereal, milk…hemp milk tastes like Irish cream in your coffee. You can get that at Whole Foods…it’s next to the soy and rice milk, but nobody knows it. I predict a drastic increase in hemp products in the next three years. Look how long it took for us to get hip to olive oil.
You look like you’re onto something big. I just think I’m ahead of the curve again. I’m not going to have the only hemp oil dressings made in the U.S. for very long…but I do know that I am the original. My goal is to get people hip to hemp, one person at a time. Call me Johnny Hempseed.
Greg Perez’s Restaurants and Innovations
Big Sky Café: “Revitalized American favorites”
Blue Water Grill: Southwest/Mex cuisine, “flying saucers” a.k.a. “small plates,” descriptive wine icons
Painted Plates: Garnishing (painting) plates with colorful sauces, 20 wines by the glass menu
Piccolo’s: First local place to call “small plates” by their proper name, tapas
Roadhouse 29 (on Hwy. 29 in Napa): Introduced cold-smoked meats to the area
Grateful Inn: The country’s first hemp-infused menu; “vapor bar” featuring natural inhalable herbs
