Mobile botanical shop Botana-Cart rolls out products 'of this Earth,' including Delta-8

Hunter Bolesky and Brandon Srinath aren’t average businessmen. They’re the co-owners of Botana-Cart, a bicycle-powered botanical shop. Their cart, which sports a marijuana leaf, serves the Chapel Hill and Carrboro area.

“We started four months ago, and we were able to save up the funds together and put it all together,” Bolesky said. “I’m just an employee for this company that me and Brandon started together and we are not affiliated with anything. This is just something that we did.”

Botana-Cart sells locally sourced, plant-based products from its cart, which can be spotted around Franklin Street on weekend nights and via delivery. Among the company's product offerings is Delta-8, a cannabis compound. 

“We have a wide range of botanical products that deal with all different herbs,” Bolesky said. “Around 70 percent of what's on the cart is locally sourced, so we work with some local farms. Everything that we sell is just agricultural — plant-based, essentially.”

The company is operated out of a 600-pound bicycle cart that is battery-powered and carbon-free, according to its website. 

Srinath says that Botana-Cart’s Delta-8 products have been particularly successful.

“Our gummies are really great,” Srinath said. “They're accessible to a lot of people that are out and about and within Chapel Hill, and it gives people the option to be able to try different strength CBD or Delta-8 and to be able to see what works for them. We get a lot of people that mainly get plant medicines for pain, anxiety or just 'mood-lifting alternatives,' which is what we usually call them.”

Botana-Cart has seen success in products aside from Delta-8 as well, such as kratom, a plant-based stimulant sold in forms such as tea, and mushroom powder that can be mixed into any drink. Bolesky and Srinath also plan to add more products to their current lineup.

“We’re dabbling in all botanicals, and it’s something that we’ll be looking through every day,” Bolesky said. “We're always adding new stuff. We're always looking to work with new people, but we really try to make it sourced locally and we try to do the best that we can.”

The iconic Botana-Cart can be spotted starting in the evening and going well into the night around Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

“We're usually out every night, but especially on the weekend,” Srinath said. “We're out from anywhere from 5 p.m. anywhere as late as 2, sometimes 3 a.m.”

Donovan Herndon, a business administration major at UNC, said he first noticed the cart near the beginning of the school year.

“I heard about him a month after we first started school,” Herndon said. “I was just walking down Franklin Street, and I just see this dude driving down with a cart and a huge weed sign on it. I’ve got two or three friends who have bought something from him off Franklin Street.”

Alex Carrasquillo, the public information officer for the Chapel Hill Police Department, said Botana-Cart is a legally-operating delivery service.  

"We have received no complaints about them," Carrasquillo said. "While we understand this business to be based in Carrboro, we hope that any business working in the Chapel Hill community is successful."

Srinath said that Botana-Cart is looking to work with local bars in the near future.

“We pull up to different bars, and we're really looking for work within bars in the near future,” Srinath said. “That way we can be able to pull up in conjunction with the bar and let the people know while they're in line. Sometimes we serve people while they're waiting in line at Goodfellows. We want to be able to offer that and bring it straight to them. It's just easy accessibility and it's even the novelty of it.”

Bolesky and Srinath are also hoping to expand Botana-Cart beyond the Chapel Hill and Carrboro area.

“I think it really just comes down to providing a product that is of this Earth that we as humans have been consuming for thousands of years,” Bolesky said. “We try to make everything well-sourced. We want to give an alternative to the community and help grow the community and the brand.” 

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