We caught up with Thomas Winstanley, who is heading up the new Edibles.com platform powered by Edible Brands, of Edible Arrangements fame. They had tried the chocolate-dipped CBD strawberry route in 2019+, but was very early in the market. Now their edibles platform features various tried and true gummies, chews and more with the goal to destigmatize the edibles space further and safely curate some of the best brands for veteran and curious consumers who are looking to be Healthy Not High.
ATHLEISURE MAG: Great to chat with you Thomas, tell our readers more about your background, and what led you to working with Edibles.com and Edibles Brands.
THOMAS WINSTANLEY: Prior to coming to Edibles, I was the CMO for Theory Wellness and Hi5. I joined Theory when it was just two medical stores in Massachusetts, and I came on, you know, there were maybe 35 to 40 people in the company. And over the course of 6 years, I just have always been a fan of these products, of the industry. Even before, when I was in my teenage years. I was always the guy who loved cannabis and THC.
I started my professional career in pharmaceutical advertising, one into CPG, one into alcohol, worked on, you know, Remy Martin, worked on Tampax, worked on big blockbuster drugs, really understood the regulated markets. And then went home and smoked a joint after work almost every night when I lived in New York. Fast forward, it’s once I moved out of New York, we went out west, I saw the early inklings of the Colorado cannabis market, and as a marketer it really made me think about, basically the 16-year-old’s dream of what happens if this is legal? How do you build a better brand? How do you build a better mousetrap?
So at Theory, when I got linked in with them, it was kind of an amazing kind of synergy with their team of two founders, where as a passionate steward of these products it was amazing to be able to say, OK let’s go commercialize this. And at Theory, as their CMO, I got to design retail, I got to design brands and products within our portfolio of about 250 products. And I got to architect a lot of the brand, I’d basically write the briefs of what new products do we want to make. And then Hi5 came along, and we did the beverage thing, and that was always this major unlock to the category. By the time I left, we had operations in about 7 States, with around 18 retail stores, we’re the largest independently owned cannabis company on the East Coast.
And to have somebody who’s for the better part of my life, loved these products and this plant, to be able to bring it into a place where people have access to, and that’s really what we were all about, was how do we connect more people to safe, trusted access to these products? And not just products that met a baseline need, but I always go back to a Steve Jobs quote, ‘give the people what they want, and then introduce them to the things they didn’t know they needed.’
And that became very clear, I’ve always loved these products. I’m somebody who now that I’m almost 40, with 2 kids, my relationship has evolved with the category, but I’ve always been a big believer in the health efficacy of this category. People think I’m crazy, my most common use cases during the time that I’ve used cannabis have been around tennis, cross-country skiing, running - I’ve always found it to be a great complement to that. That’s more of my core usage outside of, kind of, evenings of relax and unwind.
And a lot of this all led to one day, Edible Brands reached out and said, hey, we have a crazy idea. We own edibles.com, looking to commercialize this at scale nationally, and we need somebody to help guide us in building a business around this category. I was skeptical, to put it lightly, because I didn’t want to be a part of a cash grab. [A]s I went deeper and deeper into conversations, my skepticism was alleviated, because philosophically and fundamentally, we were very aligned on how we wanted Edibles.com to become as a company. A lot of my business around this category. I was skeptical, to put it lightly, because I didn’t want to be a part of a cash grab. As I went deeper and deeper into conversations, my skepticism was alleviated, because philosophically and fundamentally, we were very aligned on how we wanted Edibles.com to become as a company. A lot of my non-negotiables were; I want to do this around health and wellness; have curation of products - don’t want the Cheesecake Factory menu; an outcome-based focus on our category; work with the best brands who have been doing this for a long time; and use our name of edible brands and edible arrangements as a sign of permission for consumers to step into the category who may not have ever stepped into the category. And it’s similar to what we did at Theory when you were introducing this novel concept of buying legal cannabis for the first time. We’re kind of doing the same thing with hemp today.
And what really pushed me over the edge is that in a lot of ways, the mission for me hasn’t really changed of connecting more people with THC. We can just do it at a much bigger scale, and in many ways, I think hemp has succeeded where cannabis has failed in terms of access to the economics and the commercial supply lines of this industry. Hemp is the equalizer of THC access, and so for all those reasons, you know, Edible Brands has an amazing supply chain, they have an amazing brick-and-mortar presence, they have a lot of brand affinity. What was a crazy idea actually became something very material, and Somia Farid Silber, who’s the second-generation CEO of the company within her family - she and I were very much in alignment on all of these points.
Fast forward a year and a half later, here we are with national shipping, last mile services, and what I would argue is probably the most eclectic group of products available today outside of a dispensary that can be sent to your doorstep. That’s something that you could never do in cannabis, and that’s what really fuels me around this project.
AM: So when I first heard about this, I thought am I’m going to see edible THC arrangement bouquets, something like edibles on stems was going to be the vibe? And then I learned about the CBD-dipped edibles from 2019, so it would be good to start there as that was definitely very innovative.
TW: It was! So, in so many ways, the Farid family, Tariq Farid, who’s the original founder, who has stepped back.. his daughter runs the show now, but in 2019, this was actually the first iteration of what Edibles.com became. So, back then, it was called Incredible Edibles, and they were going in that direction of basically blending CBD, and then doing chocolate-dipped CBD strawberries, and the idea was incredible for so many reasons, but the challenge was it was so early after the Farm Bill. You know, they were almost too far ahead of where the category was going to have the connectivity to what consumers were expecting back then. And it really wasn’t until about 2019, when hemp really started to get this gravity that we see today. They had the right idea, but they were just way too early, and from what I’ve understood, I think they had a retail play at one point, and they had tried to engineer this thing.. the consumers weren’t ready for it yet, because CBD was still kind of a ‘snake oil-esque type’ of category, where it showed up everywhere, and there wasn’t that level of differentiation at the time. They were trying to commercialize it at scale, but I think they also realized too, that the manufacturing and production side of making a finished good using these type of blended cannabinoids that were non-intoxicating was a very different ballgame and that the market was still not totally matured into. So they knew they were onto something, and I think they were actually up in Connecticut at the time, too.
That’s when Theory was also starting to really build, so they knew about Theory at the time.
But they were just too early into the market, and the idea was right, and they had vending machines, they had some products too, and they just didn’t quite land, I think, in the zeitgeist of where things were heading, but they were positioned in advance of the market, where the market was going. I think they tried it again in 2020 and 2021, but it was still just too early.
Hemp accelerated beyond what anybody really was anticipating, and as a Pakistani Muslim-run group, you know, the intoxicating side was an interesting angle that we’ve talked about, where health and wellness is the driver of the success of this category, and for them, that was something that they wanted to hold very tightly. I didn’t want to touch inhalables, because I don’t think inhalables.. anything other than air in your lungs is not healthy. And I think where I see this amazing ingestible category is much more akin to a nutraceutical type of product category, Ollie’s and all of these new classes of these nutraceuticals that folks take.
And so we were very philosophically aligned on that, that this is their first real foray as a corporate enterprise to touch something that has potentially intoxicating effects. But I think they were missing the other component of the THC side, which, truthfully, does unlock the efficacy of CBD in a much grander way.
AM: I agree.
TW: I know what these products are, I’ve tried them, I know that we have the opportunity to use our scale and sphere to connect something that consumers really want in terms of their health and wellness. And how can we be an arbiter to create that point of access? And that’s really where Edible Brands is really remarkable. They want to curate these experiences with edible arrangements - gifting those moments of wow for consumers to get something on a certain day.
We just acquired a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant out of bankruptcy called Roti, to bring more nourishment and healthy eating.. And safe access to health and wellness products all focus on a consumer [online]. So now you have these moments of wow for consumers with the gifting side; you have nourishment through the food piece; and now you have this wellness angle with these products.
AM: Tell me about the Edibles.com marketplace you’re building out, how you curate, the brands that you’re selecting, and how you’re going to promote them.
TW: When I first joined, I literally went to my chief legal officer here and I told him compliance is paramount. That became kind of the first lens of looking at products. And the first calls that I made were to Jake Bullock over at Cann. You know, I knew all of these brands from the cannabis world, because we were buying it wholesale, I was in the beverage space, and I built the first beverage dispensary in the country with Theory. And so I had this kind of short list, you know, Cann, Wana, Ayrloom was a great team, like, Mack [Hueber] and Eddie [Brennan] are just wonderful guys. And the first two calls were, yes, Jake Bullock, I had him NDA’d up, and Joe Hodas over at Wana.
And Jake was terrific. I mean, I always remember this call, because he and I had worked together on some projects when I was at Theory, he said to me this is a little bit of a bellwether moment for hemp, because we just had DoorDash. And they’re not really promoting this. We had Total Wine, which was just coming on board. And, you know, when I started to really think about what a portfolio would look like, it’s how do you bring together these cannabis-adjacent brands who are currently now emerging into hemp and leading into hemp. How do I bring together the largest kind of market share of leaders on beverage and gummy and chews? How do I bring them under a portfolio, the likes of which maybe hasn’t been seen outside of a dispensary?
The reason I chose some of these folks is that, you know, you look at Wana, they started in 2010, they’ve been doing this for 15 years. They know the regulatory risks, they know compliance, they have really great formulations, they take it seriously, they’re not a fly-by-night group. Same thing with Cann. Cann broke the mold. I always remember the first time I had a beverage was Cann Cranberry Sage, and I remember drinking and thinking, whoa this changes everything when I was at Theory. What we’ve done is really tried to, with the starting group, the kind of first cohort, was to work with the brands that I know are making great products that are going by the rules, that aren’t going be a risk or compliance issue for us.
As a former CMO, marketing is powerful, and you can have a good brand and a bad product, or a great product and a bad brand. I was building this a lot behind the scenes, and nobody knew, and I didn’t want anybody to know. I wanted to have that moment where you pull the cover off and people go Whoa, this is big, but also like, Thomas is working on this, he knows these products, he’s not a shill.
You know, my goal is really to have a portfolio that is well-curated around these buckets of sleep, relaxation, uplift, energy, you know, really focused on outcome-based purchase habits versus get a distillate gummy at a good cost per milligram ratio. Anybody can do that. And it also aligns, I think, with the sentiment of the consumer base of the hemp industry, of the consumers, where you have so many of these new consumers coming in who are curious about these products. They see them everywhere, they hear about them. How do we do the homework for them where they can come and shop based on an outcome that they’re looking for?
I want to sell the Health Not High, a drumbeat that some people - [does] everybody want to get high?
AM: Yeah, it might be a healthy high for me. That’s a Yeah.
TW: And for me, it’s like, I think a lot of, when I talk to consumers, you know, and I talk to people who… my wife, my in-laws are conservative doctors from the South. They now went from being very skeptical about this category into saying, you know, oh, well, I don’t take it to get high. I take it for sleep, or I take it for my back, or I take it for relaxation and all these things. And it is true for me. It’s like, I’m not really here to get people high. People will do it on their own. I don’t want to sell people getting overly intoxicated, that’s not really my bag, it’s more about creating functional, health-based outcomes. It’s more akin to nutraceutical or supplements that add the efficacy.
And it’s like nobody goes and markets alcohol to get drunk? Do we all know we can get drunk by drinking more beers than we need to? Sure. But you don’t need to market that. I don’t think we need to market getting high, because when I talk to lobbyists and regulators and senators about this, one gummy is no more intoxicating to me than one beer or glass of wine.
What does become intoxicating is if you have multiple servings and irresponsible use, and frankly, I have no shame on consumers who want to do that, like, that’s totally up to them, but my goal is to really help people understand the functional properties of this hemp category, and introduce them to these things that maybe don’t take an Ambien at night, maybe take a Wana stay asleep chew, or a fast asleep chew, and see how that works for you, and maybe give somebody else an alternative. And so, you know, all of this kind of health-not-high criteria is something I strongly believe in as a consumer. And I also like getting high, too. So, like, again, no shame there, like there’s always a time and a place for it.
And I think that a lot of our strategy is emanating out of this Health Not High, because a lot of the consumers we want to have on here, these 60 and older folks who are part of the Reagan era. We’re trying to demystify a little bit of that stigma, and it’s not that we have anything against getting high, like, again, totally fine. But our mission is very critical, and so when we look at portfolio, we want that to be the reflection of outcomes. And that’s always how I’ve loved these products, too, you know?
AM: And looking at your project, one of the things I loved seeing was the educational part. So, when it comes to hemp-derived you obviously are a wealth of knowledge. I would love to talk about that a little more detail, because I do think it’s super confusing out there. There’s been a lot of quick progress, and consumers just are trying, experimenting, but I don’t think they fully understand what they’re getting.
TW: No. I spend a lot of time lobbying. We’re, you know, executive board members of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, the largest trade association. Education is paramount in this category. You know, the most frequently asked questions we get when we run social ads or I talk to consumers are, how is this legal, is the first question. I always give a very simple answer. 2018, we had a Farm Bill, and in that bill, 0.3% dry weight equivalency of THC can be commercialized into products. That small percentage is actually enough to have the impact that we want for consumers, which are functional outcomes that can help with sleep, relaxation, all these things.
And it’s a low enough kind of threshold of a dose that, it’s not egregious, it’s not over the top, and we always recommend folks start low and go slow. The next question we always get is, but is it weed? It’s technically weed, because cannabis and hemp are the same plant. Like, they’re scientifically the same cannabis sativa plant. But our government assigned an arbitrary 0.3% number to say any plant that produces 0.3% THC and below is a hemp plant. Anything that is 0.31% is a cannabis plant. Two are regulated very, very differently. Cannabis is a lightning rod with over-regulation. Hemp is less regulated. But also, you know, essentially the same thing, but you don’t have any of the restrictions that cannabis has in terms of interstate commerce, shipping, you know, all this stuff, regulatory-wise.
And, you know, but really what it comes down to, we’re talking about regulating a molecule, not a plant. It’s the molecule. And that’s the third question, is the THC different in a Kiva gummy from edibles.com, from a Kiva gummy from a Colorado dispensary. The molecule does not change. That is the most important thing that we want people to take away, that these are not very different from dispensary products. The molecule doesn’t change, because it’s all the same. It’s just the amount of the molecule you can have.
I think that is one of the largest misunderstandings and perceptions about the category, is yes it’s legal, and I think that’s where we fill in a white space. If you send strawberry dipped strawberries to your grandmother on her birthday, and is also partaking in this category, well you actually know it’s probably not as bad as it seems by comparison to gas station products and, you know, all of these other areas that these products are being sold. We really want to be a leader in the safety, the security, the compliance, the regulations. We want to give that permission to those customers who say, yeah maybe I should try it. Well, if you come to edibles.com, you know you’re getting all of this, a half Billion dollar company wouldn’t step into this space if it wasn’t legal, and it wasn’t safe.
And that’s where I think, for me it becomes really exciting to be the first kind of handhold experience for folks who are coming into the category. And on the other side, you know the people who love Wana, Kiva, and Wyld. Well, now they can get it shipped to their door if they live in a market where these products aren’t sold. And it’s the first time you can get all 3 of them in a package delivered to your house in history. That, to me, is a powerful moment for consumers.
AM: That’s really cool. I want to ask you about best practices taking a gummy, because there are some…
TW: God bless.
AM: ..there are some gossip points about having fat content, or how long it would take to be acting, and I’m sure there’s different products, but any knowledge to pass along?
TW: Yeah, so I’ll say for a novice consumer, start low and go slow. You know, anywhere from a 2.5 to 5 milligram dose is a good starting point. I would argue 2.5mg is always the best place to start. That way, you can always take more, but you cannot take less. And that’s something that over the history of THC, everybody has that story where, they took a brownie, and then they didn’t feel anything, and then they took another one an hour later, and then all of a sudden they were on the moon, and it was, you know…
AM: Or just the batter making it.
TW: Yeah, exactly, right? It’s just kind of like one of these things, and you know. I want to hear that story for sure.
AM: You got it.
TW: The other thing that I think is really important that’s not talked about as much is there is a difference between regular kind of products that are just standard action products of how THC is delivered, and fast-acting products. And this is where the industry’s matured in the last 3 to 5 years, is we finally figured out that THC does not necessarily have to bind with lipids and proteins because of fast-acting technology, which is basically the reason beverages exist is because somebody figured out that you don’t need fats to carry the THC, because you could never make a beverage without having oil or something in there. Well, now this new technology, this fast-acting technology, allows a quicker onset of these products. So, standard products, which I would call 45 minutes to an hour to see how it affects. Fast-acting products that we see today, you can feel effects as quickly as 10 to 15 minutes. This is important, because if it’s standard, you’re metabolizing it and that can take longer, because your body has to break it down. If you eat a huge pancake breakfast and then take a standard acting gummy, your body’s going to take a lot longer to metabolize it, versus if you took a standard acting on an empty stomach, that’ll happen faster. Fast acting, that goes directly into your bloodstream. You absorb the THC faster.
And what’s great is once you start to get a comfort level on how your endocannabinoid system starts to respond, that’s where the fun begins. Because for me, mostly, I’m a non-school night user at this point in life with my two little kids. It’s mostly on the weekends. But I’ve been a big advocate, too, for folks who do play competitive tennis like I do, and are competitive runners to try this stuff when they do those types of activities. Like, that’s where the fun really begins, when you can start to introduce the molecule and these products into areas of your life that become really compatible and symbiotic with these types of products.
AM: And what would you say for those that might say they had a high tolerance, or found that they need to change… it worked for them, but they need to change up their routine somehow? (Editor’s Note: Asking for a friend)
TW: Yes. So, I think for people with high tolerances. I actually have somebody in my office that I don’t want to name-shame, because they have a really high trough tolerance, but what I always recommend is, Tolerance breaks are great if you medically can. Responsible consumption is always important. If you’re somebody who just kind of pushes the envelope on wanting to go further and further, well, at some point, you’re kind of removing the efficacy that you wanted in the first place.
The other thing that I always like to recommend for folks is if you have a high tolerance, it’s always good to take those kind of breaks to see if that drops down, and then there are some people who are just like, yeah, I need 100mg a dose, or I don’t feel anything. I might not be the right place for you. You’re probably a dispensary customer.
The other thing I’ll just add into all of this is I think CBD is one of these things that we’ve written off in some ways because of the CBD, you know, for the reason that Incredible Edibles was a CBD company originally. CBD is actually this molecule that you need THC to unlock the values of. And what I actually have recommended for folks who are looking for different types of efficacy is I’m a big believer in high doses of CBD with lower doses of THC, or nominal doses of THC, because I think you can find a different type of efficacy that, until, you know, I’ve been in the industry for almost 10 years. I always kind of wrote off CBD because I thought it was snake oil, but I’m seeing it come back more where there are some incredible brands who are just, like, a one-to-one, where it’s, like, 5mg of THC, 5mg of CBD. There are some brands that are doing amazing work where it’s, like, 25mg of CBD with 5 of THC. Those products are super interesting to me. And there are a couple of brands that I’m going to be bringing onto the platform, who are taking kind of the innovation side of these form factors and really peeling them a part in a way that traditional landscape of THC products hasn’t really done in a long time.
Cann was one of the first where they did a 2 to 1 with, you know, 2mg THC, 4mg of CBD. But there are some really great products that I’m so excited about, that are leaning in on more niche formulations than more of what we see, you know, on our website today. You’ll see kind of just, like, straight THC or one-to-ones. The ratio products actually are probably, over time, going to be more interesting to me, I think, as I look at the landscape. That doesn’t necessarily help the high-dose people, but it might be a different way of looking at consumption of these products, where maybe it’s combining a couple of different products to get the same outcome. Maybe it’s a little bit more CBD-focused with less THC that might get them to the same place. You know, and that to me is, again, where this landscape is fascinating with how people are starting to gravitate and find the right balance of what works for them.
AM: Sure, I would say there’s nothing like a week tolerance break. It’s on the other side, like your brain and your body just are born again naturally.
TW: You get used to the feeling of being high, which almost underrides the impact of the kind of the category at large. Like, if you take these products every night, you’re kind of building your own tolerance in some ways, and the same thing with alcohol. Like, if you drink alcohol every night, kind of the value of alcohol that you feel is tampered. And so, you know, that’s one of the reasons, you know, to be quite honest, that I like to reserve my consumption of these products to non-school nights, Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays, because for a long time in my life, I used them every day, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I started to feel like the effects for me were dulled heavily, and I started to lose a little bit of the nuance of what I was actually seeking to achieve.
And there’s nothing like, you know - I’m a big fan of the… it’s not quite a wake-and-bake anymore, but, you know, Saturday mornings, having an infused beverage, you know, functional infused beverage. It always kind of fires me up, and then, man, when I play trains or Legos or whatever it is with my kids, it’s dialed up to 11, and so, you know, it’s one of these things where tolerance is really important.
But again, there’s so many reasons why people come to this category. It’s about finding the right balance for yourself, and really exploring, why do you want these products? Why do you need them? What are you looking to achieve? And then figuring out, in the same way we do with, like, supplements. When do you need to use them, how much do you need to use? And, like, what products work the best?
And I will say there are some products now that I have tried that I’m like, wow, this is a product that I’ve wanted forever, and now it exists. And I’ll shout out OFFIELD is, one of probably my favorite breakthrough category products, and they make athletic products. Athletic consumables, and they have gummies for pre-workouts and post-workouts, and they have an electrolyte, L-theanine, THC, basically a Gatorade equivalent. And I bring one on the tennis court during matches.
AM: Yeah, interesting!
TW: You know, and I just love now where we’re getting to a point where the category can really get more niche in terms of its focus and growth.
AM: Yeah, I’ve had some interviews where it was interesting to see use for training, practicing, and playing in the sport, rather than just recovery or recreational.. And it was very interesting to hear, like, are you more focused? Are you enjoying the sport more? Is it adding focus or detracting from it, or parts? And when? For these people, and me, you know, of course it’s not about overdoing it.. It’s about being productive and healthy.
TW: Yeah, so I’ll give an example, right? So, I run, you know, probably 3 or 4 mornings a week, and it’s usually low Zone 1 thresholds, just kind of getting my legs going. But then on the weekends, when I want to go for a longer duration run when I take a dose of THC, I actually find I can get into my rhythm and flow state of a long run faster with a little THC, because it almost kind of takes away a little bit of the overthinking. When I first started running, I’m like why am I doing this to myself? Like, this is not fun, but I know I have to do it. But, you know, the THC actually kind of helps me kind of dissolve that a little bit, and I can actually feel.. be a little bit more in tune with my stride, my pacing, my steps per minute, so on and so forth.
And it’s the same thing on the tennis court. You know, instead of thinking about do I need to tune up my forehand a little bit? You know, am I over-extending or am I too close on my forehand?
It actually helps bleed away a lot of that where I can get into a flow state a little bit quicker, and it kind of dulls a little bit of the noise. It can be a little bit physical, but it can be very mental. It can give you a little bit less of that stream of consciousness when you’re doing something that’s very technical. And so, I’m surprised that athletes haven’t come more into that. Maybe they are, and maybe they’re not in a place where they can talk about that, but you know, for me this is the next phase of where we’re going, is I think there’s a lot of application today for THC in these types of products in those types of activities. And that is what really energizes me about the future growth of the category and the innovation that can come. And people think I’m crazy when I tell them that I like to take edibles and go running. They’re like how do you know how to do it? It’s like, no, it’s not what you think. You’re not kind of looking off in the distance, you’re getting into a very focused mind state, and you’re quieting your subconscious a little bit.
But it’s again - right products, right time, right outcomes.
AM: Yeah, also as a celebrity photographer, I’ve vaped before and during most shoots.
TW: I love that call.
AM: Yeah. I think for me, it’s about loosing up, mood, creativity, picking up on lighting, poses, opportunities and context. Improv is very much about being open and adaptive, so many nuanced aspects light up for positive productivity.. so when you’re saying healthy, not high, I’m hearing for wellness, fitness/sport, recreation, also for art and creatives and, and.. Being productive is healthy and also, you have to be true to yourself that you have, in my opinion, you need to tell yourself you could easily do it without it as well. So it shouldn’t take over though.
TW: Right? That is one of the most important things, like, you have to be able to do it without it. And that’s where I look at my comparison of running during the week and on the weekends. On the weekends, I’m stoned and I’m running. During the weekdays, I’m sober. Because I want to be able to say, yeah it’s still fun either way, I could use it or lose it, and it wouldn’t really impact my interest in this activity. Right.
AM: It’s often a big net plus.
TW: Yeah, and I spend a lot of Sunday afternoons when I have a really interesting strategic problem to solve for. I will, on my own time, on the weekends, have a couple of infused beverages, and lay out a design, or look at a problem I dealt with during the week with a different lens. And, you know, that to me is that duality of these products have this really wonderful massive benefits when used responsibly.. can be used creatively, you know, physically, mentally, all of these things - this category can unlock a different type of value set, that most consumers, unfortunately, haven’t had the privilege of engaging in. And I think over time, we know that more and more consumers are going to start to engage it this way. And we want to be the person who can recommend to you to try this, and this may help. It may not, but, you can try it and see if it works for you, and if it doesn’t, that’s also okay. And if it does, great! And if you like it, then there’s more that you can try, too. And that’s usually where what we see is we have a very high retention rate right now of return customers, because they try something, and then they come back and try 3 more things, and then they come back.
AM: Yep.
TW: Building on that, because there is an educational curve, like everything, but once you find that right balance.
AM: Now, let me ask you, are we going to see a lot more products on the edibles.com marketplace coming up?
TW: Yeah, and we once crossed our national shipping kind of expansion that put us into the 65-plus percent of households in the country.. But this is where it becomes really exciting for me, because we have all these big, major brands, right? There are a lot of smaller brands that deserve to be discovered. OFFIELD is one of them. Todd Hunter, who’s the CEO, he’s a great guy, and I think he created this product, this brand of products that I’m really interested in, and I want to continue to grow the portfolio, because I think the future of this category is going to be very specific to needs, states, and outcomes.
And I love when, you know, I take it with a healthy dose of skepticism if somebody’s like, I have a creativity chew. And I’m like, yeah, like, I’ll try it and see if it does what it’s supposed to. I think over time, you know, now that we have so much capital coming into the space, we have so much innovation, we have people really pushing the boundaries in ways that maybe cannabis didn’t as much, because it was a very binary sales channel. Now we’re starting to see a much more nuanced approach to innovation of these new types of categories of products. You will see probably in the next couple of months, a lot of new brands coming on board. I have a list of folks that I have tried over the last year and a half and beyond that I want to be a part of this, and I want to have on, and nobody has said no to coming on the platform. We’ve had to say no to a lot of folks, unfortunately, but it’s really about making sure that we have this portfolio that continues to grow. And the other thing that we’re also looking at, too, is not just THC products, but we’re going to bring on a bunch of CBD products. I think it is another really important part of this portfolio that can be complementary to other products, and also stand alone. And furthermore, we’re also going to bring on likely some nutraceuticals as well. You know, so a lot of different types of non-infused, non-cannabinoid products that edibles over time will probably continue to expand into. Yeah, you may be able to get a magnesium sleep powder to mix in with tea, but you can also get your infused gummies that also help with sleep. We really want to build this as a wellness-focused platform, and that doesn’t just need cannabinoids, but it’s where we’re starting to open the door to great brands that we want to help bring to consumers in this marketplace type of approach. And it’s very novel in its kind of concept, because we’re In a white space today that we want to start to increase people’s appetite for alternative health products.
AM: Well, I think Edible Brands is super fortunate to have you, the space is fortunate to have you, and nothing bothers me more when I go into recreational or medicinal dispensaries, and they’re constantly just saying, this is the highest potency, and what is best for cheapest.
TW: Oh, yeah.
AM: Maybe many consumers are programmed to think bang for buck and all these things, but they’re not looking at the art and science of it, they’re not bettering themselves, maybe they’re not looking at wellness in other parts of their life also, but often the dispensaries are not curating or explaining things well, and I think it’s terrific that in leading in the edibles space, you’ll be able to educate people, safely destigmatize, and curate and help guide towards desired outcomes.
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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | Edibles.com
