"Bachaz" is Spanish slang for a marijuana roach, but it also speaks to a social equity aspect that is helping Carranza fulfill her dream, she says.
"The last piece of a marijuana joint, which is also the most intense and savory part, is just like the social equity part of us," Carranza explains. "We might be small, but we have lots of flavor to offer."
Born and raised by her grandparents in the borderlands of Yuma, Arizona, Carranza used to go back and forth between the United States and Mexico, where her parents lived.
"My mom and grandparents were always entrepreneurs selling fish in their car, selling chorizo, making tamales, making anything we can think of," she says. Carranza would help her grandparents with money by selling Mexican candy at her school, she recalls, even though it wasn't allowed by the school.
Her mom also sold goods like raspados, or flavored shaved ice, and other Mexican snack foods like "papitas, duritos, helitos" out of a "casita," or small house. Many of these snacks offered the combination of spicy and sweet that Mexican candies and snacks are known for.
Once Carranza grew up, she continued to make chamoys, or pickled fruit combined with spices, and tamarindo, which is the candied pulp made from the fig-like tamarind fruit, at home. Eventually she started adding these to THC-infused gummies.
"Really, everybody loved her flavors, so that's why I brought my product by using my mom's flavors," she says. "It's combining Mom's Hispanic flavors."
In 2003, Carranza was arrested when police raided her house in Arizona and found marijuana plants. She came to Colorado soon after the arrest in 2004, seeking "more opportunities," she says. She lost her house in Arizona after the raid, but her husband got a job in Vail.
She tried to return to Yuma once more in 2010 and open an edibles kitchen there, "but it was so regulated, we couldn't," she says. While watching TV in early 2022, however, Carranza saw an announcement that Colorado's Marijuana Enforcement Division was taking applications for social equity licenses. Another opportunity to sell her Mexican THC gummies had arrived.
Beatrice Carranza started Bachaz to make edibles that honor Mexican flavors and culture.
Courtesy of Beatrice Carranza
Signed into law in 2021, Colorado's social equity marijuana program was intended to spur diversity and benefit entrepreneurs from communities negatively impacted by the drug war. Several more social equity initiatives at state and local levels have been implemented since, with the state's new Cannabis Business Office and the City of Denver offering loans, grants and technical assistance to marijuana business applicants who qualify for the program.
Colorado law requires that applicants prove one of the following: that they or their families were arrested on certain drug charges, that they earn less than 50 percent of the Colorado median income, or that they come from a community designated as a low-economic opportunity zone by the state. According to Carranza, she qualified because of her 2003 arrest. She obtained her social equity designation, creating Bachaz in the process, with the goal of reaching Latino cannabis consumers like her.
"The reason why I created Bachaz was because of the consumer," she says. "There was no product to target my people. For Hispanic people, there's no product that's in Spanish that is targeted at them, or something that represents them. I thought, 'If I had the opportunity, that would be great.'"
However, it's since been a race against the clock to open Bachaz before that social equity designation expires on May 15; if it does, Carranza will be forced to go through the 45-day application process and pay another $800 in fees. She's now waiting to complete her state marijuana business license, which the city has to approve after starting a series of inspections.
The state Cannabis Business Office has awarded Carranza two business grants for Bachaz totaling $45,000, which Carranza says were helpful but are insufficient for social equity businesses.
"The grants helped us extremely with the development of Bachaz," she says. "But there was not enough to help start-up social equity businesses pursue their goals more effectively and successfully."
She expects to get approval for the business license on March 19 and aims to open Bachaz in Denver in time for Cinco de Mayo in May. She also has to send her product in for lab testing, she says.
In November, she leased a 640-square-foot commercial kitchen in La Alma Lincoln Park, which is rich in Chicano history. "It's just perfect," she says. "If it takes me more time, I guess I'll start all over, because I don't want to give it up," she says.
Until then, Carranza has to pay $1,5000 a month in rent at her facility.
Still unable to sell her product, she's been paying rent for the location for almost six months, only to have it sit empty and unused while she waits for her business license. Carranza estimates that she has spent more than $80,000 trying to get her social equity license and launch the business, including rent for her storefront.
"We shouldn't be spending this much," she says. "I knew this was going to be a process, but not this big of a process. So much money to be put into it, and time and mental stress."
Carranza has kept up with rent and application fees for the social equity license by working as a waitress and busser. For the past few months, she's been working full-time as an interpreter and translator for Denver's migrant services, but as the city reinstated its length-of-stay policy and started discharging migrants from shelters, her hours have been cut.
"It's tough — but if I quit, it's letting my community down," she says. "Bachaz is a product we want to bring, and we want to represent our Hispanic community, to be able to eat, to understand and to identify themselves with."
Carranza's native Arizona and over a dozen other states also offer marijuana social equity licenses, and she "would love to go back home" one day, she says. Carranza considered packing it up in Colorado and trying the social equity process in Arizona, but she's not ready yet.
"If we have a plan that comes together, we'll stay in Denver and make it work," she says. "We're almost there, to the finish line."
This article was updated on Tuesday, March 19, to include information about Colorado Cannabis Business Office grants that Beatrice Carranza has received.
