Peyton Manning Cashing In On Mile High City Munchies
Legal pot use has apparently been very good to Peyton Manning, the Denver Broncos quarterback and owner of 21 Papa John’s pizza franchises in Colorado.
On election day, November 6, 2012, Colorado voters legalized personal marijuana use by approving Amendment 64. Weed stores officially opened for business in Colorado on January 1, 2014.
In a Sports Illustrated interview published this past week, Peyton Manning — who was the Indianapolis Colts superstar QB for 14 seasons before joining Denver — answered a question about his voting history.
In so doing, the future NFL Hall of Famer diplomatically yet “bluntly” acknowledged how Amendment 64 enabled his pizza restaurants to “smoke” the competition in the Mile High City area:
Yeah, I do vote. I have voted ever since I’ve been eligible to vote… Yeah, I don’t do it just to do it. You try to know who you’re voting for. I was good friends with the Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, who’s now the president of Purdue. Probably could have been President of the United States. You try to get to know them. I’ve gotten to know some of the folks here in Colorado. There’s some different laws out here in Colorado. Pizza business is pretty good out here, believe it or not, due to some recent law changes. So when you come to a different place, you’ve kind of got to learn everything that comes with it.”
As Truth Revolt quipped about Manning profiting from the legal marijuana business, “Now this is a Rocky Mountain High any capitalist can get behind.”
Already a multimillionaire at the time, Manning reportedly bought up the Papa John’s stores two weeks before the statewide vote took place. Even prior to the Colorado marijuana law going into effect, however, Manning’s Papa John’s pizza locations were “baking” a lot of pies, according a 2013 TMZ report.
“Before Peyton purchased the locations, several restaurants reported sales of $3,000-$4,000 on any given game day — and that number has jumped up to roughly $5,000-$6,000/day… which equals about 60 pizzas an hour. One location reported a 25% increase in total sales since last year.”
Peyton Manning has also appeared in a number of Papa John’s commercials.
Apart from munchies-driven pizza sales, legal pot has supposedly been a windfall for the state’s economy in general, The Huffington Post claims.
“Pot shops in the state sold about $90 million worth of recreational marijuana in the first five months of legal sales — and that doesn’t include the $165 million in revenue that medical marijuana sellers brought in during that same time period. All of this has translated to a ton of tax revenue for the state.”
The 2-0 Denver Broncos visit the Super Bowl Champion and 1-1 Seattle Seahawks (the team that blew out Manning’s Broncos in the big game last February) tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDLpzqHRXAo
[Image via Bing]
