94: The West Coast MSO – ft. Oren Schauble – Transcript

Oren Schauble, 8th Revolution

Editors’ Note: This is the transcript version of the podcast. Please note that due to time and audio constraints, transcription may not be perfect. We encourage you to listen to the podcast, embedded below if you need any clarification. We hope you enjoy!

This week we were joined by Oren Schauble President of Unrivaled Brands to break down their unique strategic approach to the Cannabis Industry

We discuss 

  • California Competitive Cannabis Market 
  • Process of acquiring and merging another company into your organization.
  • How Unrivaled Brands utilizes R&D to test new products categories 

About Unrivaled Brands :

Unrivaled (Unrivaled Brands Inc) is the West Coast’s leading vertically-integrated cannabis multi-state operator and the parent company of multiple dominant, cannabis brands spanning consumer products, cultivation, distribution, and retail.

The Unrivaled brand portfolio leads in our respective categories and markets by a focus on customer experience, product innovation, and organic brand building.

Unrivaled currently operates in California, Oregon and Nevada, and our brands are licensed in Arizona and Oklahoma.

Get in touch with Oren and Unrivaled Brands

https://twitter.com/unrivaledcorp/

@orenmeetsworld

This show is presented to by 8th Revolution: At Eighth Revolution (8th Rev) we provide services from capital to cannabinoid and everything in between in regard to the hemp & cannabis industry. Our forward-thinking team can diagnose, analyze & optimize every detailed nuance of your company to keep your business safe, smart, and profitable. Our flexibility and experience combined with ongoing research create unique insights into how to best grow your market share. Contact us directly at [email protected] Follow Bryan on Twitter @ BryanFields24, Kellan Finney: @Kellan_Finney 8th Revolution, Follow The Dime on Twitter, Follow The Dime on Instagram 


[00:00:00]Bryan Fields: What’s up guys. Welcome back to another episode of the dime I’m Brian Fields. And with me is Kellen Finney. And this week we’ve got a very special guests, Oren Schauble. I think I messed that up. President of unrivaled brands, orange. Thanks for taking the time. How are you doing?

[00:00:15]Oren Schauble: What’s going on. I’m doing great pleasure to be here.

[00:00:18] I’ve encountered, how

[00:00:19]Bryan Fields: are you doing? I’m

[00:00:20]Kellan Finney: doing well. I’m excited to chat with another west coast stir with the and the west coast brand. Really?

[00:00:26]Bryan Fields: How are you right now? That’s fair. He is a west coast brand, but he’s got east coast ties. And I think maybe that’s where his heart may lie still. So I think for the record, it might be,

[00:00:37]Oren Schauble: we’re doing this for a global listenership, we’re just seeing people of all race, the shape sizes.

[00:00:42] Let’s,

[00:00:42]Bryan Fields: I love it. So I guess for the record, we’ll put him in the global category and I love it or, and we’ll take it there. So for our listeners that want to learn more about you, they want to get, how did you get into this space and a little background?

[00:00:53]Oren Schauble: Got it. I asked, I guess I have a history inside regulated products.

[00:00:57] So I worked in, initially I was at an agency in New [00:01:00] York. We worked a lot with liquor companies who worked with Ciroc and grey goose, red bull companies like that. After that I was in the firearms industry is also heavily regulated. You a lot of restrictions on how you can advertise how you can talk about your value proposition, that kind of thing.

[00:01:12] Plus regulated to the customer as well. And then I was in the drone industry after that consumer drones. A big hurdle to face in adoption because, people didn’t like the word drone who is associated with kind of, remote death versus taking cameras, which I think is now that battle has been won.

[00:01:27] And people probably more commonly associated drones is what they see flying around in the park, then what they do seeing it as an act of war and and then now, and then into cannabis. And I got into this because a friend of mine called land force. We’d worked together at two previous businesses.

[00:01:39] He worked with me at some companies before this and I went to a A enterprise drone tech software company that they got acquired when he was starting a company called Letterman. And I got to watch his journey as we went through a pretty rapid journey at this other company.

[00:01:51] And then after that, they were getting up to the size where it made sense for someone, with my skillset to be a part of it is they were going through a big merger. And so then the last three years, I’ve just been [00:02:00] working in the industry bringing together all the companies inside this kind of massive roll-up, we’ve done across dispensary’s and brands and all kinds of things to become this big company.

[00:02:08] We are.

[00:02:09]Bryan Fields: And I appreciate you sharing that. I want to dive into some of those specifics about some of those challenges by guests. Before we dive into that, was there ever any hesitancy to dive in cannabis? Obviously you’ve worked in some of the challenging markets from regulation standpoint, but any challenges or hesitations to come into cabinet.

[00:02:23]Oren Schauble: No, I’ve always had an alternative backgrounds. And so it’s a, I wasn’t like worried about how that would look for professionally or for just your friends and family or anything like that. It’s always actually been really exciting to me. If you had told 15 year old me that I’d be working in cannabis, I think I’d be shocked just imagining it was legal, but now I see the opportunity is so big and so exciting in so many ways and just so positive so that you can really sink your teeth into and be emotional about that.

[00:02:46] I was a, I was ready to go. It’s just a matter of, it was good that. I was going into a viable business because there’s a lot of about these cannabis businesses that have been fly by night. So yeah, as long as I knew the opportunity was I was real. I was ready to roll. So let’s talk about unrivaled

[00:02:59]Bryan Fields: brand.

[00:02:59] Can you [00:03:00] share a little bit about the company and what your

[00:03:01]Oren Schauble: role is? Got it. No problem. So on rival brands, we are the west coast MSLs MSO stands for multi-state operator, which is a kind of term in cannabis is separates people that operate in one market for people to operate in multiple. The reason that’s important is because operating in multiple markets and cannabis is really hard.

[00:03:16] There’s different regulations in every market. There’s different product standards. There’s different just overall quality consumers are different. It’s not Hey, I’m selling widgets, in this state. And that state is strategically complex, but what we’re doing is we’re bringing together a house of brands across retail and across, Consumer packaged goods into the west coast and the markets that we’re in.

[00:03:33] And then we’re looking to make a squash with those brands that we feel can impact the globe and help us be global brands as the cannabis industry grows. And so we’ve done that through a kind of a long and complex series of mergers and acquisitions where we’ve brought now, six or seven kind of total companies together into this kind of one functioning organization.

[00:03:53] And we’re going to keep doing that, headed into the future to create this. Trusting company, we feel can represent brands and [00:04:00] the modern cannabis customer experience to the world. And so I’m the president of that company. So all of the day-to-day operations across our retail stores, our distribution, our sales, our product strategy everything that kind of goes on day to day is falls in my purview.

[00:04:13] A lot of the public markets stuff getting through the M and a. And, kinda like the financial analysis, et cetera, lives in the teams on our business that service the public facing side of the company. But yeah, all the internal operations I’m working through every day.

[00:04:26]Kellan Finney: I have a quick question. How was, how much has

[00:04:28]Bryan Fields: changed since that.

[00:04:30]Oren Schauble: Oh, I mean in the last three years so I guess we’ve had a series of mergers. We had a big merger in July where we actually went on to the couple market. Yeah, exactly. And so the previous mergers, starting three years ago, it was a completely different market, but since the actual public merger, yeah, look, there’s a lot more spotlight on exactly what you’re working on. There’s a lot more challenges because you have to maintain a large, a larger number of corporate infrastructure to actually support being a public company. And, we went from, in the traditional.

[00:04:54] The kind of traditional and rival that wasn’t on the public side and we had about 150 employees and going from that to where we’re at now, which is like [00:05:00] 370, it’s just a massive jump. And I’m looking at really what we’re focused on right now. And this quarter is just bringing all these pieces together.

[00:05:06] What are our shared values as a group? How are we making sure we know there are just no redundancy across what we’re doing? Do we have the right systems to function at this size? That’s the kind of thing that, in a different industry you could spend a year doing, but here we’re trying to condense that into 90 days at, before we go, it continued to expand.

[00:05:22] That’s gotta be

[00:05:23]Bryan Fields: so challenging from a macro standpoint and then getting down to those specific details. So how do you go about doing that obviously with your role? You’ve got your hands all over the place. And like you’ve talked about in cannabis, especially as an MSO, the challenges aren’t just, one way, the whole way it’s different state different rules.

[00:05:39] So how do you go about

[00:05:40]Oren Schauble: staying on top of. Yeah. And so I think it’s one of those things where you have to be really hands-on. But I think the the top three things are going to be just understanding what’s happening on the ground. I spend a lot of time I’m above one of our retail stores right now.

[00:05:51] I work above another one of our retail stores making sure that our kind of core teams, or just actually like in the streets and talking to customers and talking to buyers and ensuring our hand is on the pulse. Because if we’re making [00:06:00] decisions like in a corporate vacuum, that’s not going to work. So basically having our hands on the pulses is number one.

[00:06:05] Number two is communicate. Intercompany, so it’s just what are the meetings where people are actually sharing information back and forth and sharing the challenges back and forth. And a lot of what I ended up doing, it comes into problem solving into a company where it’s like, what does things that just can’t get done or aren’t getting done that should have been done like three weeks ago, and why, and like, how do we, how do I jump in and make sure that gets becomes prioritized and how do we set it up? So that works well in the future. And then the last piece is scenario planning because there’s so many things happening in cannabis. Okay, what if their organization is.

[00:06:31] What a federal legalization happens, but we can’t be vertically integrated. What if, the mark, the market pricing falls by 40%, which is, can happen in a heartbeat in cannabis. However, have we outlined at least a couple bullet points for each of these things, so we know what’s going to happen, or we know we have a, the start of a plan based on what’s going to function.

[00:06:49] And so I think those three things like, again, being in the trenches, communicating within the company and then doing planning for multiple scenarios is how I approached this on the. Oh, I

[00:06:57]Bryan Fields: love that you shared about the scenario planning. No, one’s kind [00:07:00] of brought that to our attention and for, so for so many conversations, you always wonder, is that a kind of constant consideration by these leaders of these companies?

[00:07:07] Because you’re right, like with all the happenings that go on, you need to have these scenarios playing out because you can’t be reactive. You have to be proactive. And I’m just assuming you’re in these whiteboard sessions, the variables underneath it probably constantly changing because the input that what’s coming in is Hey, maybe safe will pass tomorrow.

[00:07:22] Will you be able to get some more push for federal legalization? So how does that go down when you’re scenario planning, are you constantly tweaking those variables and moving that. Yeah.

[00:07:30]Oren Schauble: If you obsess too much about it, then you get lost in continual planning. And so really it’s at least a like edited is trying to how has the scenario changed monthly basically then going into this next month?

[00:07:40] What are the variables have changed? What more have we heard? We update any of these current ideas that we have, and then ask you the question. Okay. In the various departments, how does that impact what we do with them to either prepare for a future scenario or to act on what we seeing happening.

[00:07:53] Yeah, too much, you can get an analysis paralysis, if you’re constantly thinking about it. But a lot of this, I just learned from I’m a very like mathematically focused [00:08:00] person. And when I was more focused on sales in previous jobs, this is how I would work through my sales process would be just like, objection, planning, essentially.

[00:08:06] Okay, if they say that. What do we counter with that and preparing that the reps that worked for me and stuff with that kind of thing. And now it’s just a, like a mental model that is just really useful in, in life. And then in particular, in a business, that’s as complicated as this. I have a

[00:08:19]Kellan Finney: question.

[00:08:19] How do you blend like the hard data from a mathematical perspective with the anecdotal kind of conversations you’re having with consumers?

[00:08:28]Oren Schauble: Yeah. It’s perspective. It is interesting. We weight them both pretty heavily because we find that the data can be a little bit behind. So a lot of what happens is do deals with fluctuation in price.

[00:08:36] And so we can say, Hey, we are if we’re hearing a fluctuation in price on the ground, that might not make it into like store data or sell through data for a month or two, because the time it takes for things to go into production and things to catch up. So I w I think we rely a little more on what’s happening.

[00:08:50] Anecdotally on the ground, especially when it comes to pricing or when it comes through regulation than we do on what the data is saying. And the data is more supporting of that. When we look at the data is more of, okay, like what [00:09:00] is the market doing overall, like macro level analysis?

[00:09:02] Are these categories growing that we believe that we’re a part of, or is the market, is the California market dipping and we’re going up or yeah. How can we validate our performance versus these baselines as well? Yeah. Which one of those categories? There’s a there’s a couple things, I’m really personally excited about the drinks category and used to be posts a lot about this on Twitter.

[00:09:21] I don’t think that’s a short-term win whatsoever. I can basically tell you from what I, owning an operating multiple dispensaries right now is that it there’s just a room that takes to. Units like that. And then the value per dollar of those units went like an extract. That’s the size has a hundred dollar value.

[00:09:36] And again, a drink that size has, $6 value. It just isn’t, especially when you’re space constrained, it doesn’t make sense. And but I do think that, when we’re outside of the dispensary industry, And we’re looking at, okay, am I gonna be able to buy cannabis at whole foods or Erewhon or, whatever the equivalent is, across the country, like the drinks are probably that Trojan horse, and and so I think that’s something interesting on a macro level in the future, but I think that the companies that are focused on that now aren’t necessarily going to have any amount of leg up [00:10:00] to when that actually happened. But know other than that it’s really still a, I get excited because the California market’s moving so fast, we see constant new products and I just love new products and packaging and it just gets me excited.

[00:10:10] And so I look at all that, but really, the business is still tactical. It’s about who has great flour, who has consistent quality and the things that they are doing and, and do people feel an affinity to your brand? And so the product end of it is almost what’s exciting to me personally, it doesn’t matter as much.

[00:10:25]Bryan Fields: Yeah, I was

[00:10:25]Kellan Finney: just going to say from a, an innovation standpoint, it’s gotta be challenging to build a brand around, say like a specific product. The product landscape is ever changing. So like how do you grab on to maybe a new trendy product and hope that it, that trend lasts a year

[00:10:42]Bryan Fields: to implement it from a manufacturing

[00:10:43]Oren Schauble: perspective?

[00:10:44] So we actually, we think and talk a lot about this and part of that, and the Kroger brand is actually really based around dealing with that. So Chrome is our biggest brand. It’s focused on high potency and but the approach we take to it is we have staple skews. So we have our, of our mini cookies.

[00:10:56] And we have our. Yeah, we have our extracts. We have our flour that we always [00:11:00] have no matter what, and they’re big sellers for us. They’re all six degree presences in the category or more, and those are always there and we’re working on how do we make those consistent people always come in and shop for them, how we do good with it.

[00:11:11] But then we’re rotating in all these other basically categories or products. We have a big lineup of things because we want to keep that excitement there too. And if something does really well for instance, our thousand milligram tinctures are doing well enough that. At some point no longer be, Hey, this is an exciting thing we’re doing.

[00:11:25] And it might be one of those core products that we always have, or we’re rotating in a ton of stuff, you’ll see it online. Like we did a hot sauce seasonally for the holidays, like a thousand milligram hot sauce. We did a Delta 8,000 milligram cookie and and they come, they get.

[00:11:38] Sometimes, if they’re on the menu for a couple of months, sometimes they’re on the menu for six months. Sometimes they’re gone in a month, I’ll bring them back for four months. We’re continually throwing those things at the wall because it’s an opportunity to have a conversation with, buyers and people at stores.

[00:11:49] It’s an opportunity for consumers to get excited about the brand. And then if it’s a trend, okay, guess what? We designed some packaging, we ordered some things, we sold it, we made money and then we’re able to cut it and be like, Hey, that was seasonal. Or, Hey, [00:12:00] this doesn’t work, but also if it has legs, we can transition it over to being a core part of the brand.

[00:12:04] And this isn’t something I would ever recommend in like another industry because of the amount of work it takes to do R and D and do those. But in this industry, Just keeping up with, okay, do we think this is going to be a thing? Can we latch onto it? Can we do it well? Can it be unique?

[00:12:15] Can we have the crowbar angle is a is something that I feel like has helped keep our brand alive through a lot of ups and downs and changes inside the industry.

[00:12:23]Bryan Fields: I think that’s so important because it gives a consumer just continuous reason to come back and to see new products. And I want pick on some of those details.

[00:12:31] When you’re setting up, let’s say the hot sauce is there like a minimum amount. The team is willing to invest. And then is there a metric to determine success, to say, Hey, it’s worth doubling down on this over the next quarter. How do you guys define those metrics?

[00:12:43]Oren Schauble: Yeah, the sauce is actually a great example for that.

[00:12:45] So we’re lucky to get the point where we make enough edibles and do enough things where the R and D component of this with our vendors is essentially they’re happy to develop something for us because they know that we’re going to order a certain quantity. Like for us, we don’t want to do less than 2000 to 3000 units of anything because inside of a cost model, if you’re [00:13:00] amortizing the cost of testing and R and D and things across a certain volume, like we want to be ensuring we have.

[00:13:05] For every single skew. So if we have three flavors or for instance, and so they know our partners know we’re going to be doing two to 10,000 of any given thing, even if we don’t keep it. And so for them, they’re incentivize to help keep that R and D together. So we have a constant flow of. We’re throwing at the wall that don’t even make it out.

[00:13:21] And the hot sauce is one where we’re like, oh, this actually tastes good. And the costs actually works really well. Okay. Let’s put out two flavors. We did cook a couple thousand units of each and it sold through faster than I think we thought, at the first couple of weeks where people were like, we want to do this.

[00:13:34] And then all of a sudden it was bigger on social and then it was just gone. And so then we look at that and we go, ah, Yeah, we developed this with a partner. It didn’t cost us a bunch of R and D. We, we, we made it with them. They made money on it. We made money on it. We got excitement in the market and then is it okay?

[00:13:47] Is this something that was good seasonally? We want to continue doing this. Are people going to buy a thousand milligram, hot sauce all the time? And we basically were in the middle and this one we’re like, Hey. Like this isn’t something we think is a constant staple, but it did go better than expected.

[00:13:58] Like I thought it would probably take a few [00:14:00] months to sell through them all. And so it’s like, all so maybe it’s like a feature project. We do it more frequently. Hey, let’s put on another flavor for four 20 let’s, let’s do it two or three times a year, and so we gauge that velocity on that.

[00:14:10] We’re always throwing a lot of things at the wall. Cause even with the excuse we do have, it’s can we update flavors? Yeah. I think it’s a combination of the cannabis customer. Always wanting to try something new and then millennial shopping habits in general, where it’s okay, take me to a.

[00:14:21] Exploration is part of the excitement of a shopping trip or something that is a completely different mentality that for consumers and I think was generations prior hat where it’s okay, can I just get wonder bread again? It’s the same thing

[00:14:32]Bryan Fields: also, we’re still so early on in the process that the products that you know, might become mainstream might not even been developed yet.

[00:14:39] So I love the idea that you guys constantly throwing new categories at the wall to see, what is there, because that’s how you test like new innovative products and you push the boundaries from a customer.

[00:14:47]Oren Schauble: The also the nice thing too, is we have this big catalog of things that we’ve tried that, again, we may not keep in the California market, but when we look at okay, we’re, we’re licensed in Arizona, we’re licensed in Oklahoma.

[00:14:56] We have constant people hitting us up to try to bring the brand to new states, even new countries. [00:15:00] And I get to go, Hey, here’s a. Things that we’ve done and based on your regulations, based on what you think the market works based on your capabilities and your facilities, if you want to license the brand or build the brand, you can pick from this huge range of things.

[00:15:10] And and we already have the packaging already designed. We’ve already validated the recipe. And I think that’s something that people don’t think about is like that footprint. When I look at. What can Corova be across the globe is, we can have all these different products. It’s still meet this kind of high potency concept.

[00:15:23] That’s still work with the brand, but there are differently represented throughout. And so it’s also a sneaky way to approach having a really effective, strategy for expansion when that time comes. Yeah. He also have metrics to

[00:15:34]Bryan Fields: back up how it’s sold. This sold really nicely during this month and we’re going to run out another flavor and that just provides more value when you’re having these conversations, especially with states like Arizona, or maybe even the east coast.

[00:15:44] Newer to markets and still learning about consumer. Yeah, I think

[00:15:48]Kellan Finney: for sure, demographics also probably play a role too. Like the east coast is a different culture than the west coast. So a product that maybe flopped on the west coast might have a huge success on the east coast. You know what I mean?

[00:15:59]Oren Schauble: Cause I Corova Yingling [00:16:00] collab, for, from a Philly heads, where that’s.

[00:16:04] I completely agree, demographics, time of year, all that kind of stuff matters. And so we have a lot of this data, a lot of these things together it’s a lot to manage, but just knowing we have all these things pieced together for the future is helpful as well. So let’s talk about being

[00:16:16]Bryan Fields: vertically integrated and one of the challenges so most can understand actually how challenging it is to be vertically integrated, but from your position, what’s one idea or concept that most wouldn’t understand about the.

[00:16:28]Oren Schauble: Yeah, what’s biscuit, it’s running, we run seven businesses, not one, like that’s the biggest challenge, right? Is sometimes, w I think late at night, I’m like, Hey, what would it be like to just do one thing really? It would seem much simpler, but then, you get the you’re never amazing at anything.

[00:16:40] You’re good. At many things, maybe you’re amazing at one or two, if you’re lucky, but also you’re hedged we go, the market’s changing. These prices are going down. Oh, we can lean more in this direction with the business. It just gives us more fluidity to be able to survive. Potential changes of the cannabis industry.

[00:16:53] And that’s how it helps me sleep at night, on the other side of that, knowing that like, all right, guess what if all of a sudden everyone’s vertically integrated, we can lean [00:17:00] on our own stores. All of a sudden, if, if you cultivation prices drop to X amount of level or are they, or they rise to X amount of level, we have our own, we have control of it.

[00:17:08] But yeah, the hardest part is just running. All those different businesses effectively is is never going to be, you’re never gonna be as proficient at that. As you are going to be running one or two things. Really well

[00:17:17] said,

[00:17:17]Bryan Fields: Kellen, you want to expand on that from an operational excellence standpoint?

[00:17:20] It’s gotta be incredibly challenging to do what orange. Yeah.

[00:17:23]Kellan Finney: It’s real what you’re running like an agricultural focus, big knit business chemical refineries, last pharmaceutical regulated business, as well as like a retail CPG business, all wrapped into

[00:17:34]Oren Schauble: one distribution and trucking.

[00:17:38] It’s all, it’s a whole set of things. And then like in

[00:17:40]Bryan Fields: certain

[00:17:40]Kellan Finney: states, right on the west coast, like in Washington, you’re not allowed to be vertically integrated. So like this sweet business model that you guys have worked so diligently in Califor. You can’t just plop that right into Washington with the same results you have to play almost a different game.

[00:17:54] So like what has that been like from an expansion

[00:17:56]Oren Schauble: standpoint? We already have, so in Oregon, for instance, we have brands, we [00:18:00] have farms, we have distribution, but we don’t own any stores. And we’ve just looked at the way that the retail model works there and, potentially in the future, it might all work together, but we, it’s like the presence we have, but what’s nice is we can do those versions of cutouts.

[00:18:11] Our business doesn’t have to be vertically integrated in California because it’s so brilliant. Yeah, Martin margins are super low. Prices are low. There’s a thousand brands. There’s all these stores like we need every penny, we can squeeze out of anything, and this that’s a great way to ensure we do that to survive and succeed in California.

[00:18:27] And the reason you want to succeed in California is it’s the size of all the other markets combined, essentially at this point in a. inside US And so it doesn’t matter. As long as we are a we’re surviving there, we’re building what we can there. We know, Hey, we’re well equipped to, in any market where everything else is easier by comparison.

[00:18:43] So we’re ready for that. And then we can, we know we have certain level of expertise. We’ve had to work through hyper competitively inside each of these that when we go and say, we’re going to do retail in Louisiana or whatever that is. And in X amount of time, we’re able to apply our expertise from it.

[00:18:56] But yeah, a lot of this just comes from being. fluid And just knowing, like I’m not [00:19:00] waking up today and I’m dead set, and this is exactly how we have to operate. If the conditions change, we need to move with the flow. So

[00:19:07]Bryan Fields: important. So let’s talk about some of those roll-ups your team has done. Obviously you’ve been pretty loud with some of your ropes.

[00:19:11] Can you share some information on some of the most recent ones and what’s on

[00:19:14]Oren Schauble: the. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I can’t talk as much about the pipeline obviously, but I think we are looking to expand. Yeah. So we, we acquired a big retail, a single store with a bunch of pending stores called peoples. And so people’s is a couple of the most prominent dispensary locations in California period.

[00:19:31] Just big freeway frontage people’s dispensary in orange county and the suspensory called airfields. In San Jose, they just got acquired by our friends over at gold. Flora are like two of the really. Yeah everyone knows on people. See them if you’re in that region. So we acquired that and which was a big deal for us to have, instead of us having a couple of small shops have a really marquee retail store that we can that we can be prominent in.

[00:19:50] And and then to be able to open those additional licenses underneath it we acquired a delivery service in Sacramento, mainly because the Sacramento. Is a, there is no huge presence from the really large delivery services [00:20:00] out there. And we thought it was an interesting opportunity to be able to get a foothold in that market where it’s a little bit more complicated to get retail.

[00:20:06] None of the big players have delivery yet. That’s really taken off. And and right now we’re, we’re looking at a kind of a wide range of things, we’re looking at. What brands fit in our portfolio and really help us work through things. What retail helps us get new locations to help, make sure we have reached all the way across California.

[00:20:21] We’re always evaluating new opportunities. This is an expansion driven industry. And I think that’s how we’re looking at what brands and categories, really fit with our portfolio and what retail really fits with our footprint. But now, we have five existing dispensers.

[00:20:34] We have the delivery service. We have the sticks brand or the cabana brand, the Corova brand district hubs and Southern California, Northern California, Oregon to era to indoor grows in Oakland to greenhouse slash outdoor grows in Southern Oregon. It’s a pretty big footprint. And so we’re just kept continuing to add to that, but, yeah, a lot of those challenges were not just logistical, cultural as well.

[00:20:52] How do you make people feel like they’re part of a team? How do you feel like you’re all fighting for the same thing? Those are things that we have not, finished and gotten to the point where we want to get them, but we’re working towards it every [00:21:00] day. What is

[00:21:01]Kellan Finney: The, what was the politics like in terms of acquiring.

[00:21:04] That people’s dispensary. How big was that talk about how competitive California is. That’s a, those two people’s dispensary’s are marquee locations. They’re beautiful stores. The two story one in Santa Ana is phenomenal.

[00:21:16]Oren Schauble: Yeah. guess the Baltics is it’s more of, we’d already had a store in San.

[00:21:18] And so we were already competing inside the mix there, but, getting that was just a I don’t, there was politics around it, but it definitely was a, it was eye-opening for a lot of people at the scale we were trying to function at and the ambition that we have going forward.

[00:21:30] Because, we have been a like a mid-sized private group prior to this kind of merger. We merged with Terra tech. They were a bit of a language. A company on the markets and you combine a ambitious kind of tenacious, medium-sized group with that.

[00:21:43] And then immediately start doing big name acquisitions, I think was a, what was eyeopening. And so there’s a lot of just kind of people saying, all right, now we’re we’re on the map. We’re on the radar people for what we’re trying to do. And we’re just continuing that trend with how we’re going to execute throughout that.

[00:21:56] When you’re

[00:21:56]Bryan Fields: looking to buy the people’s dispensary or the distribution model, how [00:22:00] does your team like look at it from an internal standpoint and knowing this is where the capital’s best going versus let’s saying, Hey, we need to hold this capital for future. Is there like internal numbers you look at from a forecasting standpoint, or you look at more about what it’s currently doing now and how you can operate.

[00:22:14]Oren Schauble: Yeah, I think there’s a couple of variables on that. There’s obviously the business variables okay, how much cash does this generate versus how much cash we’re outlining? How’s it changed the overall figures we have, what is the upside potential that we could add to it? How much can we expand from there?

[00:22:26] And then, what is it playing into a category that we feel has a greater macro level value? If we’re looking at. Take brands into different states in the future. Or if we’re looking to create a narrative that helps support, what what we’re trying to do as a group. So there’s really a lot of factors.

[00:22:40] It has to be looked at one by one, but a lot of what we’re looking at currently is like, does it have the scale where our kind of. Can I can really help build it right where we have enough people, enough brands, enough things that we’re already doing. That if we rolled into that system, it could run significantly better.

[00:22:54] And I think that’s a big part of how we look at what we evaluate. Nice.

[00:22:59]Bryan Fields: Let’s talk about the [00:23:00] distribution. If I’m a brand and I’m interested in partnering with your team, how does that work? Do I have to hit certain minimum order quantities? We get people to hit us up all the time that ask about these types of partnerships and I’m sure you do as well.

[00:23:12] How does.

[00:23:13]Oren Schauble: That’s why I basically I’ve stopped referring to, our, that operation as distribution. And now I kinda refer to it more as an accelerator because, we’re just, yes, we’re have trucks on the road, but really what we’re doing is a combination of, since we own our own stores, if you’re a brand that comes into our district, I like to basically say those stores are now essentially your stores.

[00:23:30] You want to try specific promotions. You want to try new styles of portion dicing. You want to evaluate products for you, bring them to the market. This is your playground to work with us, to work with the team, to feel like we’re one place to do that. And and then we have these different piecemeal options of whether we help you just with the trucking, whether we help you with trucking and sales to work through that.

[00:23:46] And so where our sweet spot is really, if you’ve hit a certain level of brand growth, like low six figures where you have your product market. Yeah, people are interested in excited by your brand, but you have a hard time taking it to that next level because that’s, a lot of people with a good [00:24:00] concept and decent execution can get to there, but then taking it to half a million or a million dollars a month in sales, you really need all the tactics of how to succeed in retail.

[00:24:08] You need the network of people to support it. You need that kind of trial and error basis of what we’ve built. And you need people who will tell you straight up, be like, yeah, Hey Patrick, we’re used to change, or Th this is our data. It is Christ who doesn’t work. And so if we find people that have achieved that level that are humble enough, that they know that they won’t need to work with people, cooperatively to get to the next stage, that’s really perfect for us, but we also only do things that they compliment our portfolio.

[00:24:30] I don’t want to have four cartridge brands on our menu that our sales reps are trying to sell. That doesn’t make sense. I want to have kind of one. At least by price point by category. And so you’ll see when you look at our district lineup is like we have a really prominent sun-grown brand. We have really, we have our existing outdoor brand.

[00:24:44] We have a drinks company in the category, we there’s a, a cartridge brand that’s Thor focused on all natural. We have a sustainable flower brand. Like they’re things that can stand on their own in their own niche. Rather than trying to build a full 50 company distribution, I’d rather have the right 10 that are [00:25:00] expanding in the right way to fit in the right categories.

[00:25:02] When we go to a shop, we could say, Hey here’s like a, best-in-class offering the console up a large amount of yourselves. If you want to lean in with us.

[00:25:08]Bryan Fields: Does any of those data points help lead back into what you said originally about the hot sauce in making those inferences for short-term decisions for let’s say new product.

[00:25:17]Oren Schauble: Yeah, I think all of this is just with a more open conversation with more intelligent people, seeing things in different ways than the market is great. And just the fact that we can all have a conversation between, the owners are disturbed brands and the retail partners that were really deep with our own retail stores and validate things is huge.

[00:25:30] And I think it’s a significant advantage for kind of everyone working together. Large majority of our listeners are

[00:25:35]Bryan Fields: east coast speak based. What is one concept or statistic about the California market that would surprise them?

[00:25:41]Oren Schauble: I think they’d be surprised when they see the weed versus the weed they get on the east coast.

[00:25:44] Yeah. Y’all, can’t keep smoking that sticks and dirt forever. You know what I mean? You gotta ask for more from your, if your local MSO, some of us get good stuff. Oh, Hey

[00:25:51]Bryan Fields: my guy.

[00:25:53]Oren Schauble: No. Yeah, I think that’s the biggest thing.

[00:25:55] I think we see is people will be shocked at how refined.

[00:25:58] Product experiences are [00:26:00] like you walk into you go to our dispensary downstairs from where I’m sitting right now. And if do you want stuff that’s hits you normally, do you want fast acting? We have that in within every variety, eight different types of carts, like that are, not just by flavor, but Hey, today’s live residents full spectrum.

[00:26:12] It’s know there’s a, it’s just pure. HDE, there’s just so much variety. So many experiences, so many cannabinoids, CBD, CBG, THCV, is it the Delta eight stuff, the variety and the efficacy, and then how refined those products are, find someone through a label on it. They’re fully merchandised, et cetera, is I think is shocking for people that have only experienced kind of what happens inside these dispensary’s in the kind of for lack of a better term, like what less developed markets and, just, it is, it’s a full CPG, it’s walking into a whole foods, and it’s all taken super seriously.

[00:26:39] The product quality is all extremely high. And I think for people that haven’t experienced that, and it’s similar in Washington and And Oregon, and to a lesser extent, Arizona and Nevada but if you haven’t experienced that, it’s extremely eye-opening and then people walk in and be like, oh, I didn’t realize it was like this, there’s legitimate brands, there’s hundreds of options.

[00:26:55] There’s all these things I haven’t heard of before. It’s a, it’s pretty eyeopening. [00:27:00]

[00:27:00] Oh, for sure. And that is definitely a problem with the customer too. We have to always remind, especially we talked to staff, so if we have to dumb it down, like they don’t, people do not understand these concepts, they’re not, and it takes a ton of research.

[00:27:08] It’s like, how can we enable them on that journey is a, always a conversation point.

[00:27:12]Bryan Fields: I think what you said it. It should it surprises people. I remember Kelly took me to one and tell this story and I walked in and I was just blown away. I was like, there’s a million products here I’d walked into.

[00:27:24] I was expecting to have six products, very like low experience. And I walked in there a million products. Almost dumbed down. I was like, I don’t even know what to do in counties. What do you want? Do you want edible go into that corner and like pause. And I think for a lot of people here in the east coast, I’ve never been to a dispensary.

[00:27:39] They’re going to be surprised by the experience because they are conceiving these initial thought processes because for most of them, the only experience they’ve had with cannabis is someone dropping it off.

[00:27:49]Oren Schauble: Yeah. Yeah. Completely. It

[00:27:51]Bryan Fields: controlling that experience

[00:27:52]Kellan Finney: is so important for brands right now, not only from an educational standpoint, but from a macro perspective as [00:28:00] well.

[00:28:00] You know what I mean? And having the ability to cause the budtender consumer interaction is absolutely paramount to creating that successful brand awareness and brand loyal. So what do you guys do to educate your budtenders? Do you guys have like a specific system that you implement at new dispensaries that

[00:28:18]Bryan Fields: you move into?

[00:28:19] Like

[00:28:20]Oren Schauble: we do all kinds of stuff. It’s a constant working flow. So we have two really great trainers to work across our dispensary’s who kind of, that’s all they do. And so there’s onboarding training and there’s ongoing training, but it’s even more challenging than one. I think of two. Cause we have people that walk into the dispensaries every day and we’ll talk to their budtender who is in, in, we have pretenders from all walks of life, but in most cases they’re.

[00:28:38] Early to mid twenties, maybe they did a food service job before this, maybe they were at a grocery store at just new world or one of those kinds of things. And they’re moving into the cannabis industry if they have job experience prior, and they’re saying, Hey, I have you, I have osteoporosis.

[00:28:50] Like, how can you help me? And and so for that person, who’s, that’s a heavy. Yeah. And so we have to I will give like a hundred percent credit to the team. That’s worked through that training. That’s a big part of what some, what we got those [00:29:00] intangible from the people’s acquisition is because they see people will see more people a day than all the previous dispensaries we had combined.

[00:29:06] And it’s also a very different demographic. It’s like an older demographic. So they’ve really had to work through how do we have this consultative experience that, that works for that crowd and works at scale. And so we took a lot of their training methodology and. Especially for onboarding new tenders through the rest of our organization to work through, okay we’re treating symptoms, we’re not treating, an actual thing and even treating is a complicated word.

[00:29:25] So we’re helping relieve symptoms. We’re giving people the choices, we’re helping them track those choices, and we’re educating them on all the different parts of the plant. But then a lot of it comes down to there’s so many new products, so many new things. And so we do a lot of R and D sessions, a lot of product that actually gets given out to the budtenders.

[00:29:38] And then we have we have slack channels in our company where, but tenders basically review products for. And the other people can can look at, and it’s really interesting with those involved into it because I go in some of these and it’s essentially poetry. That’s like being written inside of them.

[00:29:48] Like people are really going in on these descriptions and for some people that can actually eloquently write and things like that, it’s a great opportunity for them to be able to share that knowledge. And for some people that aren’t that way, but who can consume it and to take it in and be like, oh, this [00:30:00] guy whose opinion I trust, I’ve got to get Jared to really rise, eloquent stuff inside of these.

[00:30:03] If one of our other bartenders can go, oh, I really trust his opinion because I know the things that he likes. He puts a lot of work into his reviews. I’m going to recommend this based on what he said. That’s it’s really getting that kind of peer process in there because when brands come in to train, they care about selling points and intangibles of their history and things that customer doesn’t want to know they want to is this.

[00:30:20] Why is this going to help me sleep differently than how that helps me sleep? You know what it’s like? There’s a, there’s these things that, that the brands just want to get their history across. And so we try to take a lot of that into our own hands and they give a lot of power to the budtenders to work within their own groups.

[00:30:32] But yeah, it’s constantly a conversation of how do we improve on that? How do we make sure we’re offering a modern experience? And a lot of what we’re focused on this year is translating a lot of that to. And translating that into recommendations. And how do we give people some tools for their journey above and beyond talking to someone?

[00:30:46] Is it like a downloadable PDF where you can fill out stuff about products and how you felt and what turkeys they have? Like, how do we make it more of a overall experience? Cause that’s been totally, hasn’t been unlocked, right? There’s no, when I order on a delivery app, I don’t get to say, oh, I like this product or [00:31:00] not like this product.

[00:31:00] And it recommends me things when I liked a couple of products based on the terpene profile, if we’re not there yet, but. And it’s something we’re actively thinking about as we try to build our modern cannabis experience, that delivery

[00:31:10]Bryan Fields: service

[00:31:10]Kellan Finney: would probably be really good to understand that a little deeper, a.

[00:31:14]Oren Schauble: Oh, yeah. Just, until I try to do, trying to understand every piece of the market and see what we can build there and look at, as you guys think you guys had Collin on prior, right? So he’s really focused on how do we build a, like a technology stack that really enables the business, because right now, most of the cannabis industry relies on people who’ve built these little software pieces that are all like, okay, but they don’t, they’re not really, they’re incentivized to improve their software.

[00:31:32] If they’re not incentivized to have a great customer experience and us being able to build all of our own tech internally, and we’re developing almost everything that we do now, ourselves. Is, it gives us an opportunity to look at that from the customer experience standpoint, not from the I’m trying to sell you a software standpoint, the sharing

[00:31:46]Bryan Fields: of the information internally, and then pushing it out for the outbound side.

[00:31:49] Kind of the origin of the idea of the buyer’s

[00:31:51]Oren Schauble: corner that you started really releasing. Oh yeah. No, that’s more than just a, I’m trying to put content out there. I feel like a. Yeah. Cause people see to interested in those products and I’m really interested in them and we’re we’re [00:32:00] looking at them, we analyze we’d get tons of stuff sent to us.

[00:32:02] Obviously Edward’s always trying to sell you something. And I just like to highlight what those are, but I was trying to think of, okay, everyone’s, got their videos, talking about their brands and their companies and everything. That’s come on top of what we’re seeing in the space, how we analyze and look at products what’s different and then appeal to the audience outside of cannon.

[00:32:14] I understand that not everyone that is either going to invest in our company or that is going to follow, myself or call them on Twitter or anything like that is necessarily a cannabis consumer, but are they interested in packaging? Are they interested in entrepreneurship? And can some of the things we could talk about from that Hey, this is, this is how this packaging differentiates itself on the shelf.

[00:32:30] It’s interesting whether you’re looking at cannabis or not, I’m trying to just have content out there that is more universally appealing to, to to, to CPG. I think we just see so much interesting stuff, I asked. Yeah, you commented on it earlier. Yeah, I got last night, I got these little like cordials and these little cannabis cordials, and it’s just I’ve never seen anything.

[00:32:45] Like it I’ll make a video about it and people are interested if they have questions. And it just it’s an exciting thing to share. Cause product discovery is such a big part of the cannabis industry. Yeah. I

[00:32:53]Bryan Fields: think it’s really well done. It’s informative. It’s educational and it shows value. And I love the fact that it’s not your brand.

[00:32:58] You’re bringing value and [00:33:00] education to the space. Heavy pushing your own products this way, which could be easily done. But you’re not doing that. And the cordial products were really interesting. I’d seen that. And I was like, is that a tincture? Is that a beverage? Which I didn’t think you were gonna respond to?

[00:33:11] Is that a five-hour energy replication? I was like,

[00:33:15]Oren Schauble: Yeah. It’s just like me. There’s so many unanswered. The funny part too, is I’m not really sure. I was like, have you asked the question? I’m like, because of beverage, because of the cause of the potency, it’s just it’s a, it’s interesting to see where things are going.

[00:33:24] And then also see the feedback we get from people when we when we put that stuff out there, are they commenting on the packaging or are they commenting on the product? So they want to try that, and what does it look like? And so I’m interested, I’ve got a couple of those recorded and we record a few more and just see what catches on.

[00:33:35] Like I said, kinda this new world we’re living in where, whether it’s investor relations or brand awareness, What do we put on the brand’s Instagram account? Or what do we put out in the press release? It’s like, how do we engage in a dialogue? And that’s what Colin I’ve been tried to do on spaces.

[00:33:45] Every Friday. I just wanna tell you some of these videos, but it’s never going to be hugely successful upfront. I’m not expecting to have a hundred thousand views when we start off. It’s okay, is this getting somewhere in the conversation? Are we putting enough of them out for people to care?

[00:33:56] And I want to make sure, I also feel like it’s a great way to get feedback too, especially from other [00:34:00] marketers, what excites people or what gets noticed because oftentimes it’s different than what.

[00:34:04]Bryan Fields: Yeah, and I got to hand it to you guys. You’re out there in the public. You’re building directly with the consumers and you’re taking the feedback from them.

[00:34:10] And I think a lot of episodes and a lot of these other big players can learn a lot from what you encounter doing. And I definitely tip my hat to you guys because you’re doing it the right.

[00:34:17]Oren Schauble: I appreciate Twitter’s been great. Cause I have, I probably talked to a hundred investors in my DMS, over the last couple months, I’ve toured easily 15 to 20 to our stores.

[00:34:25] Cause I’ll happily be like, Hey, you’re in orange county or you’re in, you’re coming to LA I’m there. I would prefer that you do it with me. I want to know what you think. Cause we have some people have a history, they all invest for different reasons and like that level of availability. For the investors and for me, I’m sure they’re excited and stoked to be able to have that dialogue directly.

[00:34:39] And also I genuinely want to know what they’re thinking and not just be like, okay. Some graph presented to me by an IRR firms telling me what, like the sentiment is let me know what people think in the streets. And, I was never like big on Twitter kind of before this.

[00:34:50] And I think that just having that availability is such a massive advantage and like we should leverage that community as much as we can. Yeah. A hundred. So let’s talk about legal versus

[00:34:58]Bryan Fields: legacy trends. Does your team [00:35:00] analyze, let’s say more of the legacy trends to figure out, what can be brought to the legal market?

[00:35:05]Oren Schauble: No, not really. It’s funny. Yeah. We’re competing, especially I’m in our downtown LA dispensary and there’s like a trap shop right there, like across the street. And so we, we are aware of the illegal market and kinda what’s happening there, but I think they are th they’re focused on doing things that you can’t inside of this like really high potency caps and things like that.

[00:35:20] But then when you actually. Try the product for test the products a lot. It’s just like lies that are on the packaging, and and so I think we’re more concerned about the legal trends and what we can do within our constraints and looking at what the black market’s doing.

[00:35:29] Whereas I think that might’ve been different, two or three years ago, because it’s okay, what’s selling there. I do think that, strain. It’s universal across both but what we’re seeing, and especially from this dispensary we have here is a lot of our customers here are younger.

[00:35:39] They’re more gen Z focused, which I can’t say about any of our other dispensary’s. And I think that they’re a generation that isn’t okay with that. If you’ve been in California smoking weed for a long enough time, you’ve been buying out of a trash shop. And especially if you’ve been there, it would open for 10.

[00:35:52] And so you’re used to the experience. It’s not novel to you, but for gen Z, they have it. And they’re, and so they, their ability to go in and have a different customer [00:36:00] experience and go to the legal cannabis is an interesting opportunity to get this like gen Z and older demo that would never kind of approach that middle ground.

[00:36:07] And then you get like the millennial, gen X who like it’s a 50 50, and it’s really interesting to think through, but I think that the trends were being set in the legal market in college. Do you think that it’s going to

[00:36:17]Kellan Finney: take a full generation to get rid of the legacy market?

[00:36:22]Oren Schauble: I don’t know if that legacy market will ever go away.

[00:36:23] And I only think it needs to either. I, it is look, is competing with it annoying. Sure. Is it is it destroying the, our business not necessarily. And I think it is a it’s something that like, People are, have been selling drugs person to person, and and CA cannabis for forever and the store in stores in California.

[00:36:39] It’s a part of the culture. And look, we get a lot of our best employees have come from that angle. A lot of customers have, may start there and then graduate into the legal market. And I think it’s just a, it’s something that, it’s not like some massive crackdown changes, anything.

[00:36:50] It will always continue. It’s how it is. The main thing is are people, do people have access to safe cannabis? It’s giving them the experience that they want, and and how can we continue building, awareness of the [00:37:00] efficacy of cannabis overall, going forward.

[00:37:02] I

[00:37:02]Bryan Fields: think some people are just comfortable in their routine, in their habit, right? And there’s this trust factor that they’ve had. They bought cannabis from the same guy for 25 years. Why change now? And I think it’s just hard for some people to

[00:37:11]Oren Schauble: change in those. And that’s not necessarily wrong.

[00:37:13] And the price is the price might be lower, and they’re just a lot of it goes there, but look, the market is so huge. It’s big enough for everybody essentially. And and with the, everyone has a huge desire for just massive immediate growth and wealth creation in the cannabis industry that is unrealistic.

[00:37:27] It’s a, and I think that there is the opportunity is huge in a decade. Is this market have a hundred. Size of what it is now, like a completely a hundred percent. And but like that isn’t gonna happen in six months. And if we look at it that way, like the opportunity is there to, to build those generational brands, build these real companies have that infrastructure.

[00:37:43] But that doesn’t mean that we have to stamp out every single, stolen who’s growing weed and then selling it to their friend. That’s okay. It can all live harmoniously. The thing that we, biggest thing we care about is it. Is it controllable is do people have experiences they can feel good about?

[00:37:55] Because what does hurt is if someone goes there and buys the edible, it’s too much, or from brother from a friend or for someone else, it has a [00:38:00] bad experience. It makes them never want to try it again, versus having a experience that could’ve been perfect for their first time. I think that stuff really does matter.

[00:38:07] I agree with that. That was really

[00:38:08]Bryan Fields: well said since you’ve been in the cannabinoid industry, what is the biggest mistake?

[00:38:14]Oren Schauble: No. I think the biggest misconception is that people are just doing it to get high and have fun. Whereas we see it. It’s so much more tactical than that. Like people come in, let’s say half our customers come in and just have a good time.

[00:38:23] The other half are coming in to solve a problem. They’re saying. I can’t sleep. I have this pain, whatever that is, and they’re solving it with cannabis and whether that’s a gummy or a tincture or a flower product, and it is so much more that, and it is so much like all walks of life. Like our spot dispensary in Santa Ana, where our office is above.

[00:38:39] If you get people in scrubs, construction workers, folks, young folks groups. It is every single walk of life. It’s not just like a bunch of people that are going out to party, and they’re all trying to like, a good chunk of them are trying to solve like real issues in their life. And so I think that, a lot of people assume that it’s essentially akin to alcohol, when really it’s a tool.

[00:38:55] It spans wellness, Hispanics like kind of medical relief and it spans recreation. And I think [00:39:00] that’s something that, The mass public has. You have to understand. It’s a really powerful concept. Before we do predictions.

[00:39:05]Bryan Fields: We ask all of our guests, if you could sum up your experience in a main takeaway or lesson learned to pass onto the next generation, what would

[00:39:12]Oren Schauble: it be?

[00:39:16] Yeah, I would say to be to prepare yourself or your organization for for change. The biggest thing that you can do to be successful is that it’s innately humans having any problem with change. And if you can build a culture of people and you can build your own personal kind of mental model or approach where changes easy changes, natural changes a part of your day.

[00:39:32] So you can make decisions on the fly and you can move things over and you’re not stuck in your ways. Then you guys have such a higher chance of succeeding in something that’s like an emerging market or complex. And our entire world is becoming an emerging market and complex. Everything is changing around us.

[00:39:45] And so if you, can you make that mental shift, both yourself or your team or your company or your group of friends, you’re going to be really well equipped for what’s coming in the future. I

[00:39:52]Bryan Fields: like that. Yeah, me too. All right. Prediction time. Orrin. What can wide eyed east coaster east coast [00:40:00] operators duplicate from west coast markets to position themselves for potential.

[00:40:03]Oren Schauble: I would say just really focusing on refocusing on flour and strains and what can be done like consistently at high quality and like raising those quality standards. Cause I think there’s a just because in virtue of being in the light in the market, whereas only a handful of people competing and the customers are already coming, there is an opportunity to rest on your quality standards or on your laurels.

[00:40:20] And so if you’re a kind of company working there, it’s no, I think you need to be constantly working on improving that quality, whether you’re competing or have to, or not because you are the standard. What’s around you right now, the standard is okay. When you can ship anything from California, anywhere in the world, or from some of these small boutique growers in Canada, they’re amazing anywhere in the world.

[00:40:36] Are you able to compete with that? And I think that that’s a key thing to think about, and then, and for customers, I think I’d just be prepared for so many more cannabis experiences than you could ever have imagined that are going to do so many good things for you. And to be really excited about what that future is.

[00:40:49] I

[00:40:49]Kellan Finney: think the east coast, it’s a good question. I was gonna, it’s gonna take origins. Honestly I think organic growth is probably something that needs to be focused on more than anything else. From an east coast [00:41:00] perspective. I think a lot of companies on the west coast. That are no longer in business anymore, got in trouble from stars in their eyes and dollar signs and thinking that they were going to come in and just have this massive opportunity to build a tech company, if you will, and have it explode in terms of the market size and everything.

[00:41:17] So I think that by focusing on like a small organic kind of facility and an operation that’ll inherently lead to a higher quality product, and I think that’s the only way you compete in. These new markets now, especially with existing MSOE, having a presence there. It’s not going to be like when Oregon’s market came online five years ago and there was high quality stuff from a legacy grower.

[00:41:42] And there was stuff from a guy who had never grown before sitting on the shelves next to each other. I don’t think that’s going to be the case in most east coast dispensers. I think that it’s going to be a much higher competitive market, just because you have companies with so much more experience entering those markets.

[00:41:59]Bryan Fields: I think [00:42:00] flexibility and constantly demoing new product categories like Oren described. I think it’s so important to have that catalog and be able to show. Other operations, this is what we’ve done. Here’s the pricing, here’s the packaging, as well as giving consumers another reason to come back into the store.

[00:42:12] I think, you know what we’ve seen with deliveries that people like the easy convenience method, but what they can’t get in those experiences, at least as easily replicated is that one-on-one experience with the bud tender. The ability to have new products continually hit the shelves is really exciting.

[00:42:26] And I think gives consumers another reason to add it into the routine so it can be part of their habit stack. So I love that concept and I think that’s a major takeaway. And I think if you’re operating here in east coast date, it’s probably something you should probably look to do sooner rather than later.

[00:42:40] So Oren for our listeners that want to get in touch, they want to learn more.

[00:42:43]Oren Schauble: Where can they get. So I’m at Oren meets world on Twitter. That’s the easiest way to do it. Same on Instagram, but not as much on there. Just orange on LinkedIn. But yeah, Twitter’s definitely the best way. And yeah, and look, I’ll talk to people.

[00:42:54] Love, I love ideas. Cool packaging, cool products, cool feedback. Send them all to me. And yeah, let’s [00:43:00] chat again.

[00:43:00] We’ll

[00:43:00]Bryan Fields: tag up all of unrivaled brands in the show notes. Thanks for taking the [00:43:04]Oren Schauble: time. Thank you. Appreciate it.

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