A Higher Calling

Billionaire Beau Wrigley is building his cannabis company, Parallel, to be bigger than his family’s chewing gum business—and he’s not banking on getting consumers stoned

- WILL YAKOWICZ

In 2017, when billionaire William “Beau” Wrigley Jr was pitched cannabis as a new investment opportunity by his family office’s managing director, Jay Holmes, he shut it down immediately. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “I’m not excited about wearing orange and possibly ending up in prison.”

Still, Wrigley, heir to the al-Ameri can chewing gum fortune, couldn’t deny that the burgeoning legal marijuana industry checked off all his investment criteria: A trend in changing consumer behaviour, a transforming regulatory environment and multiple applications in health care.

The legal marijuana industry checked off his investment criteria: Changing consumer behaviour and regulatory norms, and applications in health care

So Wrigley rethought the proposition. He told Holmes to find a target company, and he eventually located one at home in Florida: Surterra Wellness. Wrigley and his team flew down to its 180,000-square-foot operation outside Tampa, the company’s biggest facility where a cannabis flower is grown. After inspecting the cultivation site—it was the first time the 57-year-old Wrigley, who says he has smoked pot only once in his life, had seen a room full of cannabis—the group boarded the plane home with the flowers’ sweet, pungent smell permeating their clothing.

“No one had known where we were, and I think they thought we were out getting high,” Wrigley recalls on a sunny afternoon while sitting on the patio of his North Palm Beach estate on Lake Worth Lagoon.