Chef Carl Hazel Takes His Culinary Skills to the Cannabis Industry

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Monica Obradovic

Chef Carl Hazel Hazel crafts recipes for cannabis-infused gummies and chocolates at Revolt Labs, a new startup based in St. Louis.

Carl Hazel has a kush-y new job. 

The former executive chef at restaurants such as The Scottish Arms, Gamlin Whiskey House, Cobalt Smoke & Sea and more has recently gone down a different career path. As the cannabis industry grows in Missouri and demand rises with the roll-out of legal recreational marijuana, Hazel is part of a growing wave of chefs taking their skills into the cannabis field. 

Hazel now works full-time for Revolt Labs, a new startup based in St. Louis, where he develops recipes for cannabis-infused chocolates, gummies and more. 

Before, Hazel says he was happy with his most recent restaurant gig at Cobalt Smoke & Sea in Creve Coeur. He and his partner had just had a daughter, but Hazel wasn’t really looking to make a move.

“It’s been interesting over the last probably couple of years seeing restaurant industry people leave and come into the cannabis field,” Hazel says. “I was happy with my career; it was something I loved, and this wasn’t something I would have thought about. If I decided to leave the restaurant industry, I wouldn’t have even thought to look into cannabis production.” 

But then he met Chad Phillips, CEO of Revolt Labs, through a mutual friend and a chance to be part of something new presented itself. 

“To be part of something on a very young level and bring it into a market was an opportunity I thought would be pretty cool,” Hazel says. 

Before Revolt, Hazel was a bit of a novice when it came to cooking with cannabis. Not that he hadn’t made cannabis products before — he’d experimented with making at-home edibles like cookies — but his preferred method of cannabis consumption always smoking. 

Crafting cannabis products at the corporate level takes much calculation and a bit of finesse. Everything has to be precise down to the milligram, and it’s tracked from seed to sale so there’s not much room for error, according to Hazel. 

“It’s not like making cannabutter in your dorm room,” Hazel says. “It’s more detailed, a lot more controlled … not to discount making brownies.” 

Besides cannabis, Hazel’s new realm of work presented an entirely different task — working with candy.

“To be honest, as a chef, I’ve always hated chocolate and working with chocolate tempering, which is funny because now one of the biggest things we’re doing, chocolate bars,” Hazel says. 

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Monica Obradovic

Revolt plans to send its products to dispensaries by April 20.

In addition to edibles, Revolt has an experienced extractor on staff, Jon Orton, who’s been in the business for 10 years legally in Colorado. Orton’s creating wax and a line of concentrates for the company, in addition to the oil Hazel infuses into his edibles. 

Revolt does hydrocarbon extraction, a cannabinoid extraction process using super-chilled butane or propane to strip desired chemical compounds out of cannabis plants.

The whole process takes place in an unassuming lab near the Mississippi riverfront. There, Hazel’s kitchen equipment stands in a sprawling space amongst beakers and an explosion-proof room used for extraction.

Revolt aims to send a line of concentrates, chocolate bars and gummies to the market by April 20, with chocolate bars sold under a brand called Plain Jane Edibles and the concentrates under Heliocentric Concentrates. Eventually the company will roll-out a line of infused beverages.

The name Revolt was chosen as a metaphorical middle finger to Missouri’s established cannabis industry, according to Phillips, the company’s CEO.

“We felt like revolting against the industry,” Phillips says. “[We’re] the new younger guys where there’s all these bigger, multi-state operators and big vertical groups. We’re kind of the little guys, the standouts.”

As for Hazel, he’s found joy in his new gig in more ways than one. While he’s using his cooking skills in a whole different way, he’s felt the weight of the restaurant industry’s demands lift. Now he doesn’t have to work long hours or hammer through busy dinner rushes. Instead, he’s working day hours, four days a week.

“I have a lot of time to spend with my family, which is awesome; I didn't get a lot of that for 20 years while I was running restaurants,” Hazel says. “You sacrifice a lot to do that. So this is a nice change of pace.”