Seth Rogen on His Cannabis-Inspired Brand Houseplant’s First Coffee Line: “It’s a Very Winning Combination”

The 'Platonic' actor and his company's co-founders have teamed with flash-frozen caffeine brand Cometeer on a line of medium and dark roasts.

By Danielle Directo-Meston

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Danielle Directo-Meston

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“With Houseplant, we always wanted to make a company where we can dive into the things that we were really personally passionate about and excited about beyond movies and television,” Rogen tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It started with weed-based things, but we very quickly started selling records and vinyl. We very quickly found that we kind of built an infrastructure to just explore things that we generally loved and were excited by. And coffee is something that I drink all day, every single day. I drink a crazy amount of coffee.”

Houseplant debuted in 2019 in Canada and was followed by an internet-breaking U.S. launch in 2021. Co-founded by Rogen, longtime creative collaborator Evan Goldberg and his cousin, Michael Mohr (who serves at CEO), the brand offers everything from trippy ashtrays and sake sets designed by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles star, to rolling papers made in France, stylish leather and stainless steel carrying cases (equipped with smoking acoutrements) and vinyl box sets, to name a few. As for the green goods, the company offers pre-rolls and flowers indica and sativa strains with 20 percent THC to a hybrid with 39 percent THC.

Cometeer

The launch comes after Point Grey — the production company co-founded by Rogen, Goldberg and James Weaver — inked a first-look deal with Universal Pictures and the second-season renewal of the actor’s Apple TV+ series, Platonic, co-starring Rose Byrne.

“Whenever I work on a movie, several people come up to me and they’re just like, ‘You drink a lot of coffee and we’ve noticed it.’ It’s a lot,” the Platonic actor notes.

Adds Mohr, “If he’s making coffee, it’s six to eight times a day.”

Houseplant and Cometeer held a private launch party Tuesday afternoon at the cannabis brand’s midcentury bungalow headquarters in Hollywood, where Rogen naturally hosted a joint-rolling session.

“We couldn’t be more excited with you guys. You’re generational creatives, your reputation precedes you,” Cometeer CEO Matthew Roberts said at the fête. “Our goal is to partner with farmers, roasters and tastemakers to deliver the absolute best-tasting coffee on the planet. I know there’s a lot of brands out there saying that, but we’ve proven that our unique approach where we brew coffee at its peak and flash-freeze actually delivers nuance that you can’t capture in any other format.”

Our mission is to make better-tasting, fuller-flavor coffee accessible to the masses. From the smell in here right now, it’s clear that the masses enjoy another creative fuel.”

Rogen and Mohr explained how a trusted restaurateur pal helped inspire their Cometeer coffee collaboration, how many cups the Pineapple Express actor has by noon and what else is coming down the pipeline for their caffeine-powered collection.

How did this partnership with Cometeer come to be?

SR Cometeer was a thing that people I know just started drinking and talking about a lot. [Restaurateur and Momofuku founder] David Chang, who I’m friends with, he would mention it and I trust him when it comes to things of delicious taste and high quality. I would just see other people I know — writers, actors — I would see them drinking it and having it in their offices and at home.

It just became a thing I started noticing that people really loved, and then I tried it and it completely blew my mind. I truly couldn’t believe how much I liked it. This idea that maybe they were a company we could work with to develop some coffee, and then we met them and their whole approach is just so interesting and new and unique and specific. The more we dove into how they do it and how accessible it makes a level of coffee that I think most people would need a several thousand dollar machines to kind of emulate.

MM You could see the passion and know the amount of time that they spend thinking and talking and working on coffee to make it amazing.

SR I relate to that with our weed stuff. There are times where we’re like, there’s a good chance we put more thought into ashtrays than any other humans on earth. I think when it comes, comes to how to serve people delicious, prepared coffee, it seems like they put maybe as much thought into it as anybody.

MM We respect that.

Some people value the ritual of both cannabis and coffee, but sometimes you just want to have something ready. What’s your approach?

SR It’s funny because I’ve been making it at home and it actually has created a little bit of ritual in some ways. If you want it, it is there in that we have the kettle and we heat it up, we boil the water and it makes a little noise when it’s done. But also we have some in the fridge and I’ll just bump it in a cup and put the water in and chug it in a second if I need some coffee. What’s nice is the optionality of it. I found that as opposed to when you are making espresso or have a fancy coffee machine, there’s no shortcut and you are opted into a long process no matter what, whereas what’s nice about this is you can drop the process if you like, or you can make it very fast and convenient if you want.

And what does both of your coffee rituals typically look like?

SR I’m on cup 15 of coffee!

It’s almost 1 p.m.! What time did you get up?

SR Seven a.m.! I just really drink a lot of coffee, I’ve been told it’s ok! I’m medically sound. I sleep well!

Well, you’ve gotten a lot done, with your production company Point Grey signing the first-look deal with Universal, your Apple TV+ series renewal and now this Cometeer launch.

SR It fuels a lot of productivity. And I really think for me and Evan specifically, the combination of weed and coffee agrees with us a lot. Whatever therapeutic effect weed has on our brains and whatever stabilization it has on us, combined with the momentum and boost that coffee gives us, is a very winning combination that allows us to be very productive and in a very good mood all day.

MM That’s why doing it from Houseplant. It’s here to dispel the negative stereotypes of stoners. Seth and Evan’s work helped define contemporary cannabis culture. And Houseplant is here to continue and to express that through the different ways and relationships that people have with weed and their daily lives and the things that they like to do when they’re high.

SR And to me, weed and coffee are way more similar than weed and alcohol and especially my relationship with them personally. I consume weed and coffee the most out of any things throughout my day and I could not do that with alcohol.

That’s why I’m so happy with this partnership of a company based in weed and a company that is a coffee company. Because when I see those two things together, that to me is very representative of my lifestyle and that’s what Houseplant is supposed to be, is representative of the things that we love and are passionate about and our lifestyles and few things are more some of my lifestyle more than weed and coffee!

We noticed the two ceramic wheels in the back area. Will Houseplant’s ceramics and music also extend to the coffee world?

MM Yes! Very soon. We constantly have a few new albums in the works, so we can expect more releases in the future.

SR We’ve released three box sets, one double LP at this point. I think we have more albums than Frank Ocean at this point!

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Seth Rogen on His Cannabis-Inspired Brand Houseplant’s First Coffee Line: “It’s a Very Winning Combination”

Danielle Directo-Meston

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