$20 a smoke, and the Cigar Underground Herf

$20 a smoke, and the Cigar Underground Herf

We put Cigar Underground online two days ago with the Chovy Premium Blend at $200 a cigar. Then we looked at the waitlist. It had two names on it, and I know both of them.

$200 is a price you charge when people already know your name. Nobody knows ours yet. So the Chovy cigar and the Chovy spliff are $20 each from today.

That is not a sale and it is not an introductory rate we quietly walk back in a month. It is what a smoke should cost from a brand you have never heard of. Same leaf, same hands, same bench in my dad's workshop.

The Cigar Underground Herf

The other thing we did was give people a reason to show up.

Four times a month we shut the laptops at our headquarters in the SF Bay Area and light up in the yard. Profullstack, Inc. by day, Cigar Underground when the smoker is running. A seat is $100 and it covers two cigars from the latest roll, BBQ straight off the smoker, and food and drink until everyone goes home.

Every other Sunday at 6pm Pacific, which is 9pm Eastern, and every other Wednesday at 9am Pacific, which is noon Eastern. They alternate, so there is one most weeks: two evenings and two mornings a month, because not everybody is free on a Sunday night. It is the Bay Area only, because you have to be standing here to eat. If you are too far to drive, join it online on PairUX, the video app we build ourselves, and smoke your own while we talk. That one is free. We cannot pass a cigar through a screen.

The RSVP is on the site. Nothing is charged there: the date, the address and the rest go out by mail, and seats are settled in person.

A room beats a checkout

The shop still sells tips, tools, cutters and cases, drop shipped and paid in crypto. Cigars and spliffs are not sold or shipped online and they are not going to be, because that is not a thing we are willing to do to a wrapper or to a lawyer.

So the herf is the one place the thing we actually make changes hands. That turns out to be the honest answer to the question people keep asking, which is some version of "fine, but how do I get one".

Two names on a waitlist is not a business. A dozen people in a yard with something lit, arguing about wrappers, is at least the start of one.

The prices, the herf and the RSVP are all up now: https://cigarunderground.org