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Local spellers fall in Round 3 of national bee

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Golf 2019

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Al Everetts likens his 25 years in the Italian ice business to his prior job refurbishing furniture.</p><p>Both included the art of mixing &#8212; colors for furniture, flavors for the ice.</p><p>But neither quite prepared him for the challenge his son Troy came up with after a trip to Colorado and a visit to a store selling edible marijuana products.</p><p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t see any frozen products,&#8221; Troy, 24, recounted. &#8220;I thought, why not try to infuse CBD into Italian ice?&#8221;</p><p>The ultimate result: Mt. Everetts CBD Infused Ice, a new product which will soon be available locally.</p><p>Short for cannabidiol, CBD is a non-toxic, non-psychoactive component of marijuana and hemp, and while it is now widely accepted as a treatment for numerous disorders &#8212; and for cancer patients enduring chemotherapy &#8212; back then, in 2015, it was all still pretty new.</p><p>Maybe not knowing much about it is the only way what happened next could be done. Troy and dad Al, 60, recall how experts in the edibles market emphasized that the unsavory-looking, and not particularly appetizing, CBD simply couldn&#8217;t be mixed with water.</p><p>Al concedes that initially &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t get my head wrapped around&#8221; the problem. It was tough enough to figure out what, if anything would be legal in Pennsylvania.</p><p>That changed with the 2018 Farm Bill, which made cultivation of hemp in the state legal.</p><p>Using CBD from hemp, rather than from marijuana, cleared one hurdle. Figuring out how to create a stable infusion of the costly stuff into Italian Ice without negatively impacting flavor and texture was a different conundrum.</p><p>&#8220;I worked hard at dialing in the numbers, doing ratios, figuring the temperatures,&#8221; Al said, pointing out the cost of CBD precluded trial-by-error experiments. Despite being told unequivocally by experts at marijuana infusion company Dixie Elixirs and Edibles that it <em>couldn&#8217;t</em> be done, when he finally attempted to infuse the oil into the ice, &#8220;it worked.&#8221;</p><p>They sent it to a prominent lab for scrutiny, &#8220;They said you could teach Dixie Elixirs how to hit the numbers,&#8221; Al recounted. A company that makes infused products (including beer) offered space to exhibit it at MJBizCon in Las Vegas and it proved the most popular booth in the place.</p><p>&#8220;We had 5,000 visitors in three days,&#8221; Al said. Interest has boomed, with queries from places as diverse as Alaska, Mexico and Germany.</p><p>Now they are poised to put the product on the market, at a cost of $5.95 for five ounces of flavored ice with 30 milligrams of CBD in each plastic container. The packaging, Al notes, was a project in itself. &#8220;We went to hell and back over this,&#8221; he said as he showed off the childproof cap and the inner foil safety seal, complete with one of those mini wooden spoons between top and foil.</p><p>They made those choices because the federal Food and Drug Administration has yet to weigh in on this, and they hope they are heading off future problems once regulations start coming down the pike.</p><p>Right now the business is operating out of the headquarters of the family enterprise, Josie&#8217;s Italian Ice in Kingston, but expected growth prompted them to buy a former dairy factory with two very large freezers &#8212; nearly 69,000 cubic feet each.</p><p>All of this comes with a lot of support from Wilkes University&#8217;s Alan P. Kirby Center for Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship. Troy graduated from the entrepreneurship program in 2017 with a bachelor&#8217;s degree in business administration, but confesses he never expected school to lead to this.</p><p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t really know what I wanted to do, other than be my own boss,&#8221; he said. Indeed, he started out at Luzerne County Community College, and when he had to pitch a business plan as part of his work at Wilkes, he initially proposed an Internet business, even though he confesses &#8220;I knew almost nothing about it.</p><p>Kirby Center Executive in Residence Gerald Ephault praised the duo for creating an entirely new process and product that, projections show, could be an enormous success. Yet asked if they expect to be millionaires, both father and son seemed almost baffled at the thought. &#8220;Honestly,&#8221; Al said, &#8220;When we started this all I could think of is the chance to help a lot of people.&#8221;</p><p>Many of those helped are likely to be children suffering from the side effects of chemo. The early impetus for what is now Mt. Everetts Frozen Creations LLC was to make the benefits of CBD available to children with cancer who would not tolerate the oil in most other forms.</p><p>Kirby Center Executive Director Rodney Ridley was a bit less altruistic. &#8220;You owe me a yacht,&#8221; he said to Al and Troy, prompting laughter around the table.</p><p>Truth is, if they do become a big success &#8212; a distinct possibility as they began by doing something experts said couldn&#8217;t be done &#8212; it is not an overnight victory. Al&#8217;s skill at infusing CBD into the ice took 25 years to hone, and Troy got the initial spark four-years ago during a winter trip to Colorado. </p><p>&#8220;They did a lot of hard work,&#8221; Ephault said.</p><p>No doubt, but Troy related one incident while visiting his aunt in Colorado that sounded the opposite of &#8220;work.&#8221; His host&#8217;s hyperactive German Shepherd got hold of a marijuana-infused candy bar.</p><p>&#8220;He wasn&#8217;t hyper after that,&#8221; He laughed.</p><p>Considering Josie&#8217;s Italian Ice promises that &#8220;pets eat free,&#8221; that could open up a whole new world.</p><p><strong>Mt. Everetts CBD-infused Italian Ice availability</strong></p><p>Available beginning June 7 in three flavors &#8212; lemon, cherry and mango &#8212; Mt. Everetts Frozen Creations CBD-infused Italian Ice will be sold at:</p><p>&#8226; Josie&#8217;s Italian Ice, 115 S. Wyoming Ave., Kingston, and 1510 North Keyser Ave., Scranton.</p><p>&#8226; Primal, Pine Mall, 695 Kidder St., Wilkes-Barre.</p><p>&#8226; Hazle Drugs, 1 East Broad St., Hazleton.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Al Evertts talks about the frozen ice infused with CBD he and his son created.	 </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_TTL053019evretts2-2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Al Evertts talks about the frozen ice infused with CBD he and his son created.	 </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_TTL053019evretts3-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Mt. Everetts frozen ice is infused with CBD. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_TTL053019evretts3-2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Mt. Everetts frozen ice is infused with CBD. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_TTL053019evretts4-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Mt. Everetts frozen ice is infused with CBD. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_TTL053019evretts4-2.jpg</photo2><caption2>Mt. Everetts frozen ice is infused with CBD. </caption2><photoCredit2>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_TTL053019evretts1-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Al and Troy Evertts pose for a photo at the Allan P. Kirby center for Free Enterprise at Wilkes University. The father son duo invented Mt. Everetts Frozen Creations, CBD-infused Italian ice. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_TTL053019evretts1-2.jpg</photo3><caption3>Al and Troy Evertts pose for a photo at the Allan P. Kirby center for Free Enterprise at Wilkes University. The father son duo invented Mt. Everetts Frozen Creations, CBD-infused Italian ice. </caption3><photoCredit3>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit3></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Father and son defy predictions, bring CBD to Italian ice</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>Mt. Everetts CBD-infused Italian Ice availability</strong></p><p>Available beginning June 7 in three flavors &#8212; lemon, cherry and mango &#8212; Mt. Everetts Frozen Creations CBD-infused Italian Ice will be sold at:</p><p>&#8226; Josie&#8217;s Italian Ice, 115 S. Wyoming Ave., Kingston, and 1510 North Keyser Ave., Scranton.</p><p>&#8226; Primal, Pine Mall, 695 Kidder St., Wilkes-Barre.</p><p>&#8226; Hazle Drugs, 1 East Broad St., Hazleton.</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>