{"id":2454448,"date":"2020-02-12T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=320766"},"modified":"2020-02-12T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T12:00:00","slug":"meet-your-merchant-reed-lewis-and-lys-chocolate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/meet-your-merchant-reed-lewis-and-lys-chocolate\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Your Merchant: Reed Lewis and Lys Chocolate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Several Lys CBD chocolates lay on a counter in the Daly Bottle Shop on Feb. 10, 2020. The chocolates are sold through Reed Lewis’ Lys Chocolates & More company, which he started nearly two years ago. (Maddie Vincent\/Snowmass Sun).<\/strong>
Maddie Vincent\/Snowmass Sun<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

You may know Reed Lewis as the man behind the Daly Bottle Shop, Grain Fine Food and 81615 on the Snowmass Village Mall. But did you also know he founded Lys Chocolate & More<\/a> over a year and a half ago? To learn more about Lewis\u2019 relatively new business, the Snowmass Sun visited the Daly Bottle Shop to talk with him on a recent afternoon:<\/p>\n

Snowmass Sun: When did you come up with the idea to start this chocolate company?<\/p>\n

Reed Lewis: Probably a year and a half ago, maybe a little over a year and a half. This is the second winter we\u2019ve had it.<\/p>\n

SS: And how did you come up with the idea or what made you want to get the company started?<\/p>\n

RL: CBD has helped me personally a ton and I wanted to create an approachable way for people to try it. I think putting drops of suspension under your tongue and even the cream on your hands and the balm we also have in the line, it\u2019s not quite as approachable as a piece of chocolate. Most people enjoy chocolate so it\u2019s kind of a good match.<\/p>\n

The other thing that\u2019s really neat about the chocolate is the \u201cbliss molecule\u201d that people have heard of, it is called anandamide, that\u2019s the compound in chocolate that gives you that little mild euphoria. Anandamide and CBD hit the same receptors in your endocannabinoid system, so it\u2019s actually a happy accident to combine the two because it will help the CBD to get through your body; it\u2019s more bioavailable that way. So that\u2019s kind of a fun little thing.<\/p>\n

SS: What does the name \u201cLys\u201d mean, where does that come from?<\/p>\n

RL: Lys is actually the Norwegian word for light and we named it that because CBD can kind of take the rough edges out of your day, it\u2019s sort of something to add to your toolbox to get through the day, to cope.<\/p>\n

SS: Do you have any other products besides chocolate you\u2019re selling?<\/p>\n

RL: We have two strengths of chocolate, both a 60 mg bar and a 120 mg bar and we just came out with a sample size, which we\u2019re calling \u201cthe calma\u201d because it sort of puts pause into your day, and that\u2019s got 10 mg in that. But aside from the chocolate we also have recovery cream, recovery balm, those are in one- or two-ounce sizes, and we also have the suspension in either half-ounce or full ounce sizes. It\u2019s all on the website if you want to see more.<\/p>\n

SS: So are your products all sold primarily online right now?<\/p>\n

RL: We have some products at the (Daly Bottle Shop) but we are looking for other retail partners and we are online \u2026 but, yeah, we\u2019re looking to build the brand and get people excited about it. It\u2019s high quality chocolate, I partnered with a chocolate maker right here in Colorado, all of the hemp from which the CBD is distilled is all grown right here in Colorado so it\u2019s a totally Colorado company.<\/p>\n

SS: How has starting and running this business compare to your experience running the Daly Bottle Shop?<\/p>\n

RL: It\u2019s kind of a whole different animal. With the Daly Bottle Shop and Grain (Fine Food) and 81615, it\u2019s resort retail so there are peaks and valleys and the weekly ordering and sort of keeping up with the inventory. This has a lot less SKUs (stock keeping units), I think in total we have 10 or 11 SKUs, so it\u2019s way easier to keep track of all that. Having it online allows us to sell to anyone in the country, so that opens up our customer base quite a bit more and then it\u2019s just learning all about e-commerce versus brick-and-mortar retail. There are some similarities, but it\u2019s a different game. Driving traffic online is a totally different skill set than getting people to walk in your physical store.<\/p>\n

SS: How do you hope to see this company grow and evolve moving forward? What\u2019s your ultimate goal?<\/p>\n

RL: I\u2019d like to see it become a national brand. I think we\u2019re positioned pretty well, we\u2019ve got some connections that are lining up to help us do that and I\u2019m really excited about it.<\/p>\n

SS: Anything else you want to add or you feel people should know about the company and what you\u2019re trying to do?<\/p>\n

RL: I think one of the biggest things that I\u2019m looking forward to is I think in this area people are pretty aware and in Colorado in general people are pretty aware of the benefits of CBD, but getting that to mainstream America I think there\u2019s still a huge amount of work to do. The main question we get is: \u201cIs it going to get me high?\u201d No, it\u2019s non-psychoactive. Basically it\u2019s got the therapeutic effects that you\u2019d get from other cannabis without the psychotropic effects, so I think getting that out to the masses is important. It\u2019s happening slowly and it\u2019s picking up speed but it\u2019s still got a ways to go.<\/p>\n

I just think so many people can benefit, just the personal stories I\u2019ve heard of people who have used this to help themselves get off of pharmaceuticals and just to reduce their pain and anxiety, there\u2019s just a ton of information. All you have to do is Google it; it\u2019s a rabbit hole.<\/p>\n

mvincent@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several Lys CBD chocolates lay on a counter in the Daly Bottle Shop on Feb. 10, 2020. The chocolates are sold through Reed Lewis’ Lys Chocolates & More company, which he started nearly two years ago. (Maddie Vincent\/Snowmass Sun).Maddie Vincent\/Snowmass Sun You may know Reed Lewis as the man behind the Daly Bottle Shop, Grain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 16:01:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}