Bad Gramm3r and local cannabis retailers banding together to donate 100 Thanksgiving turkeys

WASILLA — Bad Gramm3r is preparing to donate 100 turkeys to the community in time for Thanksgiving during the second annual Great Turkey Fest.

“It’s really needed right now with all that’s going on in our world,” Co-owner Teri Zell said.

Zell and her teams at Bad Gramm3r and the sister store, Higher by Bad Gramm3r have joined up with the local cannabis community to gather submissions for the free turkeys. She said that customers at participating stores can enter to be randomly selected to receive a turkey the week of Thanksgiving.

“That’s the only way we could make it fair,” Zell said.

Zell said she started this community-oriented tradition last year after seeing such a dire need across the community in wake of the pandemic.

“I was seeing a lot of people that were really hurting in a lot of ways, and I thought, ‘what could we do to make life a little easier for you?’ I thought, ‘well, let’s provide some Thanksgiving meals for these people,” Zell said.

Zell said they distributed 30 turkeys last year and wanted to step it up this time around. She said she had help from the cannabis community last year, this year and plans to keep involving them as much as possible with this and other philanthropic efforts.

“It was really well received. It was so heartbreaking to see them just break down in tears and say, ‘if you had not of done this, we would not have had a Thanksgiving. That just really resonated deeply with me. After that, I said, let’s go bigger. Let’s go big or go home,” Zell said. “I think we should do more. I think it’s really great that this industry is getting involved this way. This is just another way for us to give back to the community and the more people involved, the better.”

Zell said she ultimately hopes to keep growing the annual tradition on top of their ongoing community efforts such as collecting toys for the Mat-Su Special Santa Program.

For more information about the Great Turkey Fest, call 907-357-0420 for Bad Gramm3r or 907-745-0420 for Higher by Bad Gramm3r.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reporter Jacob Mann at jacob.mann@frontiersman.com