Berner's 'Becoming Legend': How the Cookies Founder Built Cannabis's Biggest Empire
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If you've been paying attention to cannabis culture over the last decade, you already know the story: San Francisco street-level hustle gets translated into a billion-dollar global cannabis empire. But the details—the actual journey from corner-to-corner moving weight to building the world's largest celebrity cannabis brand—that's the part that actually gets interesting.
Berner (Gilbert Milam Jr.), co-founder and CEO of Cookies, just released his autobiography "Becoming Legend," and it's exactly the kind of cultural document the cannabis industry needs right now. Not because it's scandal-filled or moralistic, but because it actually chronicles what building a real global cannabis business looks like from the ground up.
Table of Contents
- The Empire That Is Cookies
- From Street to Forbes Cover
- Building the Cookies Blueprint
- The Domestic Footprint
- Going Global
- Beyond Cannabis: The Adios Play
- Why Celebrity Cannabis Brands Won in 2025
- The Cautionary Tale Side
- What Becoming Legend Actually Tells Us
- The Bigger Picture
- The Moment We're In
The Empire That Is Cookies
Let's start with the current state of things, because the numbers are actually stunning. Cookies currently operates 70+ retail locations across 6 countries. The brand dominates the celebrity cannabis space with such a massive margin that the gap between first and second place is almost comical.
In 2025, Cookies was generating approximately $6.375 million in monthly sales across all domestic and international operations. For context, that's celebrity cannabis on a scale that most people don't fully comprehend. The second-place celebrity brand—Cheech & Chong's—was running $3.47 million monthly.
Garcia Hand Picked was pulling $2.68 million. The gap is real, and it's massive.
These numbers represent more than just successful retail. They represent cultural dominance in a specific and incredibly valuable market segment.
From Street to Forbes Cover
The journey to those numbers started exactly where Berner talks about it starting: San Francisco, street-level, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This wasn't some Silicon Valley garage startup with venture capital and a business plan. This was real street hustle that eventually evolved into something legitimate, legal, and globally massive.
Berner's story actually became a cultural inflection point in 2022 when he appeared on the cover of Forbes—making him the first cannabis executive to land that particular honor. Think about that for a second. In an industry that now generates hundreds of billions in revenue globally, Berner was the first person from that space on Forbes' cover.
It wasn't about wealth; plenty of cannabis operators had made serious money by then. It was about legitimacy. About the narrative finally catching up to the reality of what he'd built.
"Becoming Legend" takes readers through that entire arc. It's not a triumphalist story, though—it's actually pretty grounded in the reality of what it took to get there and what it takes to maintain it. Berner's new book signing at Book Passage in San Francisco's Ferry Building (March 2026) has the kind of vibe that suggests he's not treating this as a victory lap.
He's treating it as an actual historical document of the cannabis era.
Building the Cookies Blueprint
So how do you go from street dealer to running the world's most valuable cannabis brand? The answer matters because Cookies' success formula is basically the opposite of what most people thought would work in legal cannabis.
When legalization started rolling out state by state, conventional wisdom was that big corporations would dominate. Pharmaceutical companies, alcohol brands, massive CPG operations—they'd have the capital, the distribution, the infrastructure. They'd crush the small players.
That's absolutely not what happened.
Instead, brands with authentic roots in cannabis culture started dominating. Brands where the founder wasn't just a businessman jumping into a new industry, but someone who actually grew up in cannabis. Someone who understood it as culture, not just commodity.
Cookies is essentially the distillation of San Francisco cannabis culture. It's not trying to be "California lifestyle." It's not trying to reach everyone. Cookies is specifically speaking to the core cannabis consumer—predominantly male, appreciating hip-hop and street culture, looking for quality flower and authentic expression.
That narrow focus is exactly why it's winning so massively.
The brand philosophy is remarkably consistent: work with elite cultivators, drop limited strains with names that carry weight in cannabis culture, maintain premium positioning, and stay genuinely connected to hip-hop and street culture in a way that doesn't feel corporate or appropriative. It's basically what luxury cannabis looks like.
The Domestic Footprint
Berner's domestic operation is actually geographically strategic in a way that matters. Cookies has major presences in Arkansas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, and Oklahoma. Oregon rounds out the west coast position.
These aren't random markets—they're actually chosen with sophistication around state regulations, cannabis culture, and population centers.
The reason this matters is distribution. Cookies doesn't have the kind of national distribution network that you might expect from a multi-billion dollar brand. Instead, the brand maintained a semi-exclusive positioning where you actually have to travel to certain markets to experience it.
That scarcity, combined with cultural cachet, actually maintains premium pricing and desirability. It's luxury positioning applied to cannabis retail.
Going Global
But here's where the story gets actually wild: Cookies went international with the same strategy that worked domestically.
Canada was first and obvious—Toronto became a hub. But then Cookies made moves that genuinely surprised people. International expansion went to Israel, with locations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Jamaica got a store in Montego Bay that opened in August 2025. These aren't random expansion plays. They're strategic positioning in markets where cannabis is either legal, decriminalized, or operating in a specific regulatory gray zone where Cookies can establish premium positioning.
The international strategy is basically: plant the flag in culturally significant markets where Cookies can maintain premium brand positioning before those markets potentially tighten regulation or get flooded with competition. It's actually very savvy expansion thinking.
Beyond Cannabis: The Adios Play
One of the more interesting side-moves in the Cookies ecosystem is the Adios tequila-based beverage line. Adios comes in lime, spicy, mango, and strawberry flavors—basically positioned as a cannabis-friendly social beverage, though Adios itself doesn't contain cannabis. It's a brand extension that makes sense culturally (social drinking + cannabis culture) and commercially (diversifying revenue streams, reaching consumers in jurisdictions where cannabis beverage options are limited or heavily regulated).
This kind of lateral expansion is actually smart from a brand positioning perspective. It keeps the Cookies ecosystem expanding without necessarily just pushing more and more cannabis through the same distribution channels.
Why Celebrity Cannabis Brands Won in 2025
Here's something that surprised basically everyone: celebrity cannabis brands actually outsold traditional cannabis brands at scale in 2025. Eight of the top-selling U.S. celebrity cannabis brands posted stronger numbers than brands that had been operating for decades before legalization.
That's a complete inversion of what people expected. The assumption was that established cultivators with legacy genetics and deep growing knowledge would dominate. Instead, brands with actual celebrity connection, cultural authenticity, and smart marketing started posting absurd numbers.
Cookies is obviously the king of this space, but the category is working. Celebrity cannabis has become a legitimate, dominant market segment instead of a gimmick. That matters because it suggests the cannabis market is behaving like other maturing markets—premium positioning, brand authenticity, and cultural connection actually do outweigh commodity metrics.
The Cautionary Tale Side
Not every celebrity cannabis brand succeeded, though. Plenty of celebrity brands launched with major fanfare and basically thinned out as the market constricted and normalized. The ones that survived and thrived (Cookies, Cheech & Chong's, etc.) had specific things in common: authentic connection to cannabis culture, consistent product quality, smart retail positioning, and actual engagement from the celebrity co-founder or founder.
Cookies has all of that in abundance. Berner isn't a distant celebrity investor—he's actively involved in brand direction, product drops, retail strategy, and community positioning. That matters way more than just having a famous name on the packaging.
What Becoming Legend Actually Tells Us
The autobiography isn't just a victory celebration. If Berner's candid about his process (and based on what's been shared about the book, he is), then "Becoming Legend" is actually a document of how cannabis transitioned from underground to legitimate in real time.
It's about how you scale a lifestyle brand. It's about maintaining authenticity while going global. It's about the specific moment in history where street culture and legal capitalism intersect and someone actually manages to navigate that with integrity (or at least the appearance of it).
The book signing at Ferry Building is happening in San Francisco specifically because that's the origin point. This isn't a national book tour at convention centers—it's a homecoming. Berner built this empire from the ground up, and the original ground was the Bay Area.
The Bigger Picture
What Berner and Cookies represent is actually pretty significant for cannabis culture. For years, the narrative was either "cannabis is medicine/science" (the pharma angle) or "cannabis is recreation/lifestyle" (the corporate angle) or "cannabis is criminal/rebellious" (the underground angle).
Cookies somehow managed to be all three simultaneously. It's got genuine product quality (scientific/medical credibility). It's got lifestyle and cultural positioning (lifestyle angle).
And it never actually shed the cultural legitimacy that comes from authentic roots in cannabis culture (the cultural authenticity angle).
That's genuinely hard to pull off. Most brands that try end up looking try-hard or inauthentic. Cookies mostly doesn't.
Whether that's genius, luck, or just Berner's genuine commitment to the culture is probably a combination of all three.
The Moment We're In
March 2026, when "Becoming Legend" drops, is actually a really interesting moment for cannabis. The industry is maturing. The emergency phase of legalization is over.
Now it's about actually building sustainable, valuable brands that compete at a global scale.
Berner's story, and Cookies' success, is basically the proof of concept that authentic cannabis brands can outcompete traditional CPG players if they stay true to their positioning while scaling aggressively. That's genuinely valuable information for everyone else trying to build something in this space.
The book signing will probably be packed, the book will probably sell well, and Cookies will probably keep expanding. The legend part isn't really becoming anymore—it's already happened. The book is just the documentation of how it got here.
Pull-Quote Suggestions:
"In 2025, Cookies was generating approximately $6.375 million in monthly sales across all domestic and international operations."
"The second-place celebrity brand—Cheech & Chong's—was running $3.47 million monthly."
"Garcia Hand Picked was pulling $2.68 million."
Why It Matters: Berner's new book 'Becoming Legend' chronicles his rise from SF street dealer to CEO of Cookies, cannabis's #1 brand with 70+ stores across 6 countries.