Juicy Jay's is the flavored rolling paper Josh Kesselman named after a nickname he picked up in Queens. Owned by his Phoenix company, HBI Innovations, and made in Spain alongside RAW and Elements, it puts flavor through the whole sheet instead of only the gum strip. What started as a single menthol paper has grown to about 40 paper flavors, plus flavored wraps and incense.
Cool Jay on Farmers Boulevard
The name goes back to late-1980s New York. Kesselman and his friends were LL Cool J fans who cruised Farmers Boulevard in Queens in a white Mustang GT 5.0 convertible, hoping to spot the rapper. The car got a reputation of its own, as in: "yo, over there is that Vanilla Ice's 5.0, no that's Cool Jay's Stang."
The nickname Cool Jay stuck. About a decade later, when Kesselman developed a menthol rolling paper, he put it on the pack.
From one menthol paper to 40 flavors
Cool Jay's came first. Juicy Jay's Watermelon followed, then Java Jay's, Jay's rolls and, eventually, 40 flavors under the Juicy Jay's name. Cool Jays still sits in the 1¼ lineup.
The machinery came from Spain. José Emilio, the Valencian paper man who helped Kesselman launch Elements in the late 1990s, "also had old machines and techniques for flavored papers," Kesselman says, and the first things they turned out were Cool Jay's menthol, then Juicy Jay's watermelon.
Flavor in the sheet, not the seam
The whole brand rests on one distinction: Juicy Jay's papers are fully flavored, where many flavored papers only treat the gum strip. The brand credits a special process for the intensity and backs the idea with a bit of anatomy.
The average person has about 10,000 taste buds, and they are not all on the tongue; some sit under it, inside the cheeks, on the roof of the mouth and even on the lips, which, the brand says, is why its papers and wraps taste the way they do.
Wraps get the same treatment. Juicy Wraps are built on what the brand calls its 3x dip flavor system and sealed extra tight to stay fresh, pitched squarely against cheap, dry wraps.
When Herb broke the papers down in 2018, it described a hemp sheet with natural sugar gum, a watermark meant to keep the burn from running and a triple-dipped flavoring system, with more than 30 flavors on offer at the time.
The flavor board
The paper range reads like a back-bar menu, with the boozier flavors sitting next to fruit and dessert profiles.
- 1¼: Absinth, Jamaican Rum, Tequila, Blackberry Brandy, Root Beer, Very Cherry, Green Apple, Peaches & Cream, Maple Syrup, Watermelon and the original Cool Jays
- King Size: Liquorice, Mello Mango, Strawberry Kiwi, Blueberry, Jamaican Rum and Very Cherry, among others
- Superfine: a 1¼ series that includes Greenleaf, White Grape, Black Berrylicious and Wham Bam Watermelon
Hemp wraps, Super Wraps and incense
Beyond papers, the catalog covers hemp wraps in Natural, Mango Papaya, Strawberry, Tropical Passion, Black N Blueberry and Grapes Gone Wild. The Super Wrap line runs from Wrappers Delight to Tequila Gold and Wham Bam Watermelon, and a natural-wrap series adds flavors such as Cognac Honey and Red Rum Raspberry.
In flavored hemp wraps, Juicy Jay's shares the shelf with Zig-Zag, whose own hemp wraps come in flavors like Sour Squeeze and OG Purp.
Incense sticks come in scents such as Patchouli, Midnight, Pear and Strawberry Fields, pitched for meditation or a better-smelling room. An herbs-and-seeds section sells seed packets for growing herbs at home, billed as 100% natural with no added chemicals or sprays.
Made in Benimarfull
Juicy Jay's papers come out of a factory in Benimarfull, a village in eastern Spain dating to 1574, that also makes RAW and Elements for HBI. The towns around it, including Alcoi, Banyeres de Mariola, Xàtiva and Muro de Alcoy, have been part of Europe's paper trade for centuries. "Rolling paper production in this area refuses to die," Kesselman says. "It was crushed and reborn many times."
José's own factory was sold to Kesselman's family in 2019, as José neared 80.
Part of the HBI family
Kesselman's career started in 1993, when he turned a class project into Knuckleheads Tobacco & Gifts, a shop in Gainesville, Florida, during his senior year at the University of Florida. HBI Innovations, formerly BBK Tobacco & Foods doing business as HBI International, is Kesselman's Phoenix wholesale company. It does not sell directly to consumers: Juicy Jay's reaches smokers through smoke shops and other retailers, and stores open accounts through HBI.
In HBI's lineup, Juicy Jay's sits beside RAW, Elements, Zen, Skunk Brand and Rolling Supreme, plus the MyWeigh, J-Scale and ProScale scale lines. Elements came first and shares Juicy Jay's Spanish roots; RAW, whose first real shipment landed in 2005, became the headline act. Kesselman has since told the whole story in High Times, the magazine he bought in June 2025.