Cookies is the San Francisco cannabis and streetwear company that rapper Berner and breeder Jai built on Girl Scout Cookies, the Sunset District cut whose family tree runs through Sherbert, Gelato and Runtz. It now counts more than 70 proprietary cultivars and over 2,000 products, and by October 2025 it had more than 80 stores in over 28 markets across eight countries.
A grow house on Noriega and 25th
Jai Chang, known as Jigga, is the breeder at the center of the brand and its co-founder. Girl Scout Cookies came out of a house at Noriega and 25th Avenue in San Francisco's Sunset District in the mid-2000s. The name came out of that house and stuck.
Jai's hand shows up all over the family. He crossed his F1 Durban Poison with Granddaddy Purple to make Cherry Pie. Mario Guzman, the breeder known as Mr. Sherbinski, made Sherbert from GSC under Jai's mentorship, and Gelato, a Sunset Sherbert and Thin Mint GSC cross, was pollinated in a Sacramento garden the two shared and pheno-hunted in San Francisco.
Berner was the one who carried it out of the house. In the crew's telling, Bern "literally got it out to everyone."
Berner, from Tully's to the Forbes cover
Gilbert Milam Jr. grew up in San Francisco and spent his teens working days at Tully's Coffee and recording music at night. He became a Billboard-charting rapper and runs Cookies as co-founder and CEO. The longer arc of that climb is told in Cookies: How Berner Turned One Strain Into a Global Cannabis Empire.
The mainstream nods came fast. Ad Age named Cookies one of America's Hottest Brands of 2021, a first for a cannabis company. In August 2022 Berner became the first cannabis executive on the cover of Forbes since the magazine launched in 1917, and he called being picked as one of the faces of federal legalization "a huge compliment."
In May 2026 he published a memoir, Becoming Legend: The Billion-Dollar Blueprint to be a Whale in a Sea of Sharks. One of his biggest remaining goals, he told KTVU, is seeing Cookies listed on the Nasdaq.
Gary Payton, Jealousy and the cultivar pipeline
Gary Payton set the template in July 2019. Kenny Powers of Powerzzz Genetics, an original Cookie Fam member, finished a pheno hunt, the #20 plant stood out, and Powers named it after the Hall of Fame basketball player. Cookies licensed Payton's name and image for the joint venture and dropped it in its California stores first, with Michigan following that August. Berner called it "the Wheaties box for the weed game."
The bench runs deep. Cereal Milk crosses Y Life with Snowman, London Pound Cake sits on Sunset Sherbert and a heavy indica, and Georgia Pie is a Seed Junky Genetics cross sold in the Cookies bag. Cookies also brought Ridgeline Farms' Lantz, a Humboldt cross of Emerald Cup winners Green Lantern and Ridgeline Runtz, to its indoor partner Madcow and onto California shelves.
Seed Junky made Jealousy, too. In 2018 breeder JBeezy hit Sherb bx1 with the Gel Bern cut of Gelato #41 from Jai himself; Berner said the result smelled "like Gelato times 100" and named it. Jealousy debuted in California in late 2019 through The Minntz, a Cookies and Seed Junky collaboration brand, and became Leafly's 2022 Strain of the Year.
From Maywood to Montego Bay
Cookies opened its first store in Los Angeles in 2018. By mid-2019 it had flagships on Melrose and in Maywood plus a third door in Redding. In September 2021 it opened its first U.S. consumption lounge in Coalinga, in Fresno County, with EVIDENCE, the social justice brand run by siblings Dan, Casey and Kelly Dalton.
The map widened quickly. In 2022 alone Cookies opened 15 stores in eight new markets, among them Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and its first dispensary in Canada. Asia came next: the Bangkok shop on Soi Ruamrudee opened in January 2023, a 500-square-foot room with wall paintings carrying a blessing from Thai Buddhist monks.
Each market brings its own partners. Natura, Golden Triangle Health and Great Earth International backed Bangkok. CKS Distro opened the first Caribbean store in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in August 2025, and the New Buffalo, Michigan store that opened that October under management from Terra joined Grand Rapids and Monroe as its three Michigan stores.
An equity round and 80-plus stores
In April 2023 Cookies closed an equity round led by Entourage Effect Capital, with 12/12 Ventures joining, at the highest valuation in company history. It had 58 stores in 23 markets across six countries at the time, and planned to put the money toward working capital, paying down debt and more openings.
The count kept climbing, from more than 50 locations in 17 markets at the time of the Forbes cover to more than 80 by late 2025. Cookies calls itself the most globally recognized cannabis company, and it ties part of that reach to advocacy and social impact work for communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs.
Lemonnade, Cookies SF and the family business
Lemonnade is the sativa-leaning sister brand Berner started in 2015 with breeder Brett Wilson, and Lemonnade stores and products share shelf space with Cookies in California. The clothing runs as Cookies SF, a streetwear label with four retail locations of its own.
Berner's wider portfolio takes in 12/12 Ventures, Hemp2o water, Santa Cruz Shredders, Social Club, Vibes papers and his Bern One Entertainment music label. Licensed gear carries the blue further: G Pen's Cookies edition of its Connect e-rig comes in Cookies blue from battery to hemp travel case. Cookies also runs a hemp web shop that ships hemp-derived flower, pre-rolls, vapes, gummies and drinks under the federal PACT Act, with state-by-state exclusions.
For adults 21 and over.