Business focused episode. The cannabis landscape is evolving quickly. It moves even faster in “pro small business” States that didn’t create an Oligarchy with high costs and low license caps. Our guest is Elbe from Elbe’s Edibles, the longest standing edible company in Oregon. We discuss their 10 Years experience in cannabis and why “crystal ball” predictions are hollow.
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Episode Transcription:
Laura “Elbe” Brannan, Guest: Oh, thank you Wayne. I am really excited to talk to you today. And yeah, our 10 year anniversary will be coming up on July 1. Well, we're about nine and a half years in, but we are super excited about that.
Wayne: Yeah, I'm sure it's been a hell of a journey. A lot we could talk about - how did the name Elbe come about for the company? And I always thought your name was Elbe until recently.
Elbe: Yeah, well is the name I prefer to go by, in general, my biological name or birth name is Laura Brannan as you introduced me. And when I was in junior high, my friends just started calling me LB. I think there was a character on Happy Days Lori Beth and she also went by LB, so kind of the same timing that might have been the start of that. And then I just kept being LB through high school and Coach ended up putting E-L-B-E on the back of a jersey. And that's how Elbe became LB. And that's who I've been since I was about 17.
Wayne: Awesome. I imagine early on and even still, now the market is so, you know, it's very relationship based. Was there kind of a thought when naming the company that putting the face behind it in the name? What were you kind of thinking with naming the company there Elbe's Edibles?
Elbe: Well, Wayne, if I really would have had this magic crystal ball, I wouldn't have put my name on it. Because I have to tell you that is problematic at times because I'm no longer a private person. I'm a public face. And so that is something to think about for anybody who's listening to this. When you're thinking about naming your company, really think about those things. It became Elbe's Edibles because my husband Hovering and I, we had a photography business. We were professional photographers, and we started making edibles because my best friend's mom got breast and lung cancer. And we just started making food for her. We went to a patient potluck. And these two kids walked up to us and said, "Hey, have you ever heard of brothers cannabis club?" And I was like, "no sure haven't." And they're like, "Well, we're one of the few clubs in Oregon that gets food to patients, would you come and talk to our boss?" And so when I went and talked to their boss, Bo from brothers cannabis, he's like, "Really, if you just put these in packaging and put a name label on it, we could really get these locations." Well, my name was Elbe, so we just started calling it Elbe's Edibles, and that was how the accidental business started.
Wayne: That's amazing. So that's how the - What was it, what was it like? I mean, back then was a really hard for patients, I'm assuming they could source flower, probably some extracts, RSO, but was the edible landscape really difficult for patients?
Elbe: It was ridiculous. It was really hard. In fact, most of our patients - I told you we were photographers; about three weeks after we met Bo from Brothers Cannabis, I just looked at Hov one day on a drive and I said, "I want to quit photography and I want to do this full time." And he was like, okay, crazy. Let's do that then. And we had - I think there was WeedBook, was like a forum online for a few days. There was reader boards at dispensaries. But truly in those first years, we only had three or four dispensaries that we delivered to. But most of the time we were meeting patients in the Fred Meyer parking lot after dark or going to their apartment. But you know, there was so many fears around it at that time, we really were still meeting people in dark alleys. And we were meeting people outside of their homes because they didn't want their kids to know that they were using cannabis or they didn't want their kids to know they were even sick sometimes. Yeah, it was very, very hidden, hidden in those first couple years.
Wayne: And what kind of patients - I mean how are you thinking about products? I'm guessing you probably were meeting a lot of different people with completely different kinds of ailments or issues they were trying to figure out by using cannabis. Was it difficult to figure out products early on, like what types to make and then different, you know, for different patient needs?
Elbe: You know, Yeah, that's kind of kind of a long answer to that. When we first started, we were basically just growing and making food for the majority of our friends and then their friends. It was like one of those networking things. Hey, my friend has breast cancer. Do you think you could help? Hey, my, my brother's having seizures, my sister's having migraines. And so by word of mouth, even in those first couple of months, we were flooded with requests. And though as soon as you start taking care of patients then other patients - you know, the, the, you know, if you even just thinking about how the internet was even 10 years ago, when we started this was a lot different. So you asked about how we came up with the items. Truly what we were doing at first was treating symptoms, treating side effects from medications and treating side effects from treatments for cancer. And so we were looking at things from that perspective. How do we make people who are sick, feel better? And we had the - as I mentioned before, my best friend's mom Kathy, she was really kind of our guiding force and is still kind of the voice at the back of my head. She made it very clear to me just in her actions and her words, how awful it was to go through cancer, not just because she was sick, but because everything phone calls you have to do all day paperwork you have to do explaining to other people in your family. It's just this whole life effect of having cancer.
Wayne: Money, finances, on top of all that, which is such a burden.
Elbe: Dealing with your spouse and how your spouse is doing - and here's the other thing, Kathy's husband was a retired sheriff's deputy. And he was a sergeant. So it wasn't like they were going to be open to smoking weed in their house. It was something that also too you know, the conversations had to start very delicately. That said, there wasn't a lot of information out there. There wasn't a lot of THC cookbooks out yet. There wasn't Canna-butter recipes on the internet really yet. So what I did was my mom was an antique dealer. My mom and dad, and I had a bunch of old antique cookbooks from them on hand because I always cook. And what I noticed about them was, in the old days, the cook or the mom had to be the doctor in the house because your doctors were 400 or 500 miles away. And so in a lot of these old pioneer cookbooks, they talked about different foods that were good for different ailments. And in one particular cookbook, I remember it being like, you know, they were - moms were treating heartburn, hemorrhoids, headaches, tooth aches, muscle aches, and it had all of these things in this book on how to use ingredients to make your family feel better. And I started thinking, well, if lemon was used 300 years ago for belly aches, what was that about? And so I started digging into it. And I found out that when you add lemon to something, it hits your belly, it upsets your pH balance. And then there's a signal from your brain that says, hey, we need to mellow out this belly. And so really what it was doing was, how can I use ingredients that we know how they already worked with the body? How can I figure out how that works well with cannabis? And we just started experimenting on about 12 of our friends, you know, every way we could think of.
Wayne: Getting feedback and - that's so funny. My significant other is Chinese and her grandma, you know, grew up in rural China. She doesn't speak English, but whenever like one of us gets a little bit sick or something like she's got something for you to eat. That just reminded me of that so much, because doesn't matter what it is, she's ready. She's making something, some kind of soup, some kind of terrible tasting elixir that you gotta drink and it's gonna help.
Elbe: Let me stick this thing on your chest. Yeah, I grew up here in Oregon. I was born here in 1968. My parents were parents in the 70s. They are - they hate to be called this but there they were hippy dippy. And for sure my mom would stick cloves in my mouth if I had a toothache, or made me drink aloe vera in my orange juice, you know, like, so those things were kind of already in me. And because I had this influence of moms trying to make things better on a budget or because they didn't have doctors. I just went with that. And so I spent a lot of time researching foods, how they work in the body, how the body reacts to breaking down fat and for me every little single bit of that just added to my recipe book.
Wayne: Yeah. How - What did you learn early on, and how are you thinking again, what different products you were making? And then I guess leading up to rec I want to, that probably is gonna be a separate conversation. We'll get there, but I mean, the markets changing, you're learning. Were products changing every six months every year doing new ones, or did you have some consistent, like your foundation products? I mean that right, because you went five-six years in the medical market before the rec came around.
Elbe: When we - when we went from medical to recreational I had 32 menu items. And so yeah, and they were so this is how I did it in the old days. First, we started with just a couple basic cookies. And I was like, oh, okay, that works. And you know, again, this was before labs, and what we did was, I don't know if you've noticed we have a star on our logo. We decided, well, if we make a recipe with this amount of butter in it, it's probably going to be this strong. From our test group. We had this group of friends that were all genders, all ages, some sick, some healthy, tall, short, fat and skinny. And we were collecting information on them all the time. And one of the things we found out right away was, it didn't matter size, shape or gender. Every single body reacted a different way to edibles. But that body reacted consistently to that, to edibles once you figured out their, their - their puzzle. And so we figured out that if we put this amount of butter in the candies, the - we should put a one or a two star on it because that was going to be a lower dose around. Now we would probably compare it to five or 10 milligrams, and then we had things all the way up to 12 stars. And that's how when we labeled things in the medical days, we would put the stars on our package. So a customer, a medical patient can walk into a dispensary and said well, you know, I tried one of Elbe's cookies, it was three stars, and that was a perfect dose for me. And then you could look across my menu line. And anything that was three stars, whether it was savory or sweet, would then work, that would be about the same amount of medicine getting into you. And so like I said before I started it by treating symptoms. And so first it was cookies. And then I started thinking about, well, mostly everyone I know is really nauseous from their radiation or their chemo. So how can I deal with nausea, so then I started digging in and making foods that had a lot of lemon bases in them and an orange bases in them. And then I started having a lot of patients request, I get migraines all the time, I've got headaches all the time. So then I started digging into what really works well for migraines, and then develop menu items from that. So everything in the, in the beginning days was patients coming to me and saying, I have this thing that's going on, can we fix it, and then if I can fix it for them privately, then I would introduce that to a dispensary and if people enjoyed it, then I kept it on the menu and if I introduce something dispensaries and nobody liked it, I was like, Well, obviously that didn't work. And so really everything for the first five or six years until recreational, everything here was reactionary. Like you we have a problem. Let's fix it, you have a thing that's going on. Let me see if I can make that better for you. So that's how we decided all of our product lines. And we got really sick of making candy. So we made cookies. We got sick of making cookies. So we started making pound cakes and lemon bars. And then everybody started telling me you know, sugar feeds cancer. Can you make savory products? So then we did a spaghetti sauce. We did empanadas. We did chicken pot pie, beef pot pie. Macaroni and cheese, macaroni and ghee-se. So we you know, every time somebody complained or asked for something, that's how we developed our menu, and that's really it. It was really just that that's silly and simple.
Wayne: Yeah, that's so beautiful too because the early days to be able to do - I mean that's the ultimate way I think you want to build a business, is test quickly, small product batches, and let the market tell you if they want it or not. The state we're in this, rec - you need regulations, it's, I don't know, it's always a back and forth of how much how little but you really can't operate that way now,. If you want to roll out a new product line, the control study, the packaging, the approval, like you're investing a lot of time and money just to get a new line out. You really, that's difficult to do now. And then if it doesn't work, to turn around and walk away from it, you're like, well, I just put so much money into that and time to get it through. That's great you were able to do that.
Elbe: It's the biggest stumbling block about working in edibles in the current market. We tell everybody, it's about $10,000 to bring an item from recipe to the shelf. And that's a huge investment without knowing something's going to work. Or in my case last year, I had two items that I brought to the shelf that were really working well and customers loved it. But then the state said, how you're testing it is not working and we had to pull that product. So we have this tested product. We put the money in into it the label into the labor into it. And then the state's like, "Yeah, no." (Laughter)
Wayne: Yeah, that's the other thing, that states set the regulations and enforces them and there's always a little bit of gray. You know, how they're going to interpret it. And ultimately, what comes down to it. It's their decision when they're not as informed normally, they're not inside the business doing it day to day and yeah, that's Yeah, it's growing pains. It's a big part of this now, it makes it a lot harder.
Elbe: It's also hard when you are talking about hiring employees who love to work in food, you know, we have always considered Elbe's "Food First". I try to really explain this to people. I know a lot of people get very excited, Oh, I want to work in cannabis. I want to come work at your edibles company. And I you know, I just never hire anybody who wants to work at an edibles company. I only hire people who want to work for food. Cannabis is one tiny ingredient in my food. It's just one of the things. And most of the time when people work in food, they get really excited because it's a creative environment. And you get to try new things. And, you know, I've worked in plenty of kitchens where recipes are developed on the spot. Right now, we're not really able to do that, because we can't be creative in our kitchen. And you're only allowed so much R&D and you're only allowed to try, you know, so many things. And, you know, we'll get there Wayne, but I'm not very - it's not as much fun as it was for sure. And I mean that sincerely across the board. It was a lot more fun to work in edibles in the medical day. Yeah, because there was so much satisfaction from the consumer. And from making it and I think right now one of the problems, and you probably feel this too, is you don't get a lot of joy in being able to make your product because it's so regulated and so regimented. And then we are cut off from our consumers because we have a retail store. And so we don't get that feedback from them that they like our - the only feedback we get is how many units were sold. And that's, that's hard. That's a that's - when you work in food in general, most people who work in food are making food in an area and then serving it to somebody right away, you know, and some of that stuff is lost on us.
Wayne: Yeah, that's such a change. And I think the perception of what people would think edibles are, or how this business works, you know, that you really got to correct that misconception, because it's really important one, how much it changes, you know, the business and the role or what someone might be doing. What would - You know, you talked about savory, people. I've heard that more and more. And over the last three or four years that we've been operating, people wanting more savory options. I still don't see very many of those on the market, is that because we went into the recreational market now? Was there more savory options in the medical days? Do you know why those just aren't as - I hear the demand for them, but I don't see them on the shelf just savory option edible options. There's a few but not very many.
Elbe: Yeah, I tell you, it always comes down to the same thing for me, I, I say this a lot. We're all learning at the same time. And just like you and I had to learn how to go from medical to recreational food processing, the dispensaries had to go through that change too and right now the dispensaries are retail stores, right. And the people who are running the retail stores and who are managing the retail stores. They probably didn't spend a lot of time working with their background in grocery stores or food services in general. And so until the dispensary's understand how to deal with fresh food, how to deal with rotating stock, there's just not going to be probably a lot of people who are going to take that risk and jump into savory food because your shelf life is shorter. And it requires attention from the store and from the manufacturer. And that's because food has to be handled safely. And right now, the dispensaries and I get it, It's really easily easy to handle things like gummies and things like that, right? You throw them in a safe, and you throw them on a shelf. My food has to be refrigerated. My food has to be rotated, my food has best by dates on it. And when you are running a dispensary and you have 500 brands to take care of, having a brand that requires extra care is not always easy for the dispensaries. And so when we talk about savory foods, we are going to be talking about the dispensaries having to level up on their responsibility for dealing with vendors who deal with food. Because one of the things you might have noticed is in the winter time, my food is in the refrigerators and it has all the space I need. But in the summertime, when the dispensaries get warm and the extracts start melting, suddenly my food leaves the shelf and they throw the extracts into the refrigerators. You can't do that with food. I still have, I still have dispensaries who have in the last year, taken my food out of refrigerators at night and put it into their safes to lock it and then put it back into refrigerator. That's something we can't do. You can't take food out of the refrigerator and put it into a warm space and then back into a refrigerator.
Wayne: Yeah, and they have their own regulations, they've got to store everything in their secured storage area.
Elbe: Yeah, and so until everybody kind of elevates our responsibilities and our eyes for detail. There's going to be a lot of things that are going to be coming down the road and I think savories are coming down the road kind of situation. The packaging alone is a nightmare for food, as you know.
Wayne: Yeah. And you can't make small batches. Which you probably need to do for savory. With the lab costs you have to do a big process lot. So you want to do you know, at least 1000 units, maybe around or even a little more. And then that whole time while it gets lab tested and you got to get the packaging printed with the right - and next you're looking at a three week hold. Where normally in any other food industry, you make that product, potentially go sell it the next day. There's nine weeks off your shelf life just by on the waiting time.
Elbe: That's - That's what I'm saying, it's like, do you want this chili that's been sitting in my fridge for three weeks, right? No, no. (Laughter) But, eventually we'll get to canning and we'll get to you know,. pressure - pressure containers, all of that stuff is available to us. But again, a company like ours at Elbe's, we are a tiny mom and pop, there are really six of us that - three full time people and three part time people and the six of us make the food, sell the food, deliver the food and keep the place clean. They're like that's, that's our full time job. And so we don't make a ton of money, we're not you know, nobody's making money in this industry right now. But if I want to get into savory food I have to invest $50,000 for a horizontal flow rapper machine. You know and then I have to invest another $50,000 for machine that I can make soup, you know, a kettle machine. So those are also the things that are down the line. A lot of the savory foods require huge amounts of money going out the door just for the equipment.
Wayne: Yeah, that's one thing I found so interesting, you know, smaller companies. I'm always curious, you know, cuz we're in a very similar position, smaller company and wondering how we can compete against bigger companies. But one thing that's interesting is everyone looked at this industry as the green rush, but the bigger companies that have went public or on the Canadian Stock Exchange, they have to release their numbers. I have not seen a single profitable company be listed or - that has to like publicly show their numbers, not a single one. And I still see some people say green rush every so often.
Elbe: I'm still related to people and I still have friends, even though I've been doing this for 10 years. Even though I've been broke as a joke for 10 years. They still think that I am going, like I have gold in my house, I have gold bars. But Wayne the truth is, is that Hovering and I have gone without heat for the last four years. We can't afford oil. When you say how do we - How do we survive against the big companies? I don't know. But I do know this, that we have sacrificed everything for 10 years. We work seven days a week, we work 16-18 hour days, our business partner Gretchen who works with us, she came on as an employee, we've given her part of the business. She works as many hours as we do. And we also don't have any money to waste. So when I look at the big companies, and I see them with banners everywhere and I see them at conferences everywhere. I just assume that they're losing money. But I don't know for sure. I don't, all know is for us, how we're going to manage this is we are just going to keep our head down and keep working and keep working and not ever quit. Never, ever quit, be super flexible and never quit. And I think that's how we'll stay open. If that doesn't work, then I don't really have any other math because it's just hard work and determination. And I think that any respectable brand will tell you that it's hard work and determination. Not Instagram followers. But that said, that's a huge important part of this industry that I wasn't prepared to deal with. As somebody in my 50s, I hear all the time, "Elbe, your social media game is weak." And I'm like, "Dude, I know, my computer game is weak. But my bacon game is strong." (Laughter)
Wayne: Yeah, right? I think if anything in this, you know, if anyone's selling a product online or the hemp CBD stuff, you know, it's so much more important there, because someone can hit "buy now" from your website, but I think the reputation, the relationships, and then the legacy that you've built, being in the stores, and just that word of mouth over time, I think you can be a little weaker on the social media game, I think you cover the more important part, quality and delivery of product, people skills.
Elbe: Yeah, but you know Wayne, the people who are telling me that are the people in their 20s and 30s. Like you really got to get on the social media thing. And I try to listen to them because, you know, it's - it's the world we live in.
Wayne: And you got to pick and choose, like you said, when you know, you're looking at every dollar you're spending, what's going to be the most effective- money and time to spend. How do you - This is such a hard question, but it's something we struggle with and think about, like, how do you see this playing out in three, you know, one year, three years, five years? Is there a balancing point, like some stability, where we can say, Okay, this is our revenue, it's probably going to stabilize because Oregon, there's a ceiling, Oregon's not a big state, you know, there's only so many stores you can sell into. But we've seen this flood of new companies new investments, like constantly coming. Does that end eventually? And then then I think, well, interstate commerce or federal legalization? And does it start all over again? Like it's so hard to know, this timeline that we're on? You know.
Elbe: I think one of the things that I have figured out working in cannabis is that all of the crystal balls are completely fucked. Right? None of them are right, nobody has any idea. And I mean that sincerely. Because I cannot tell you how many meetings I have set in with potential investors or idea people or future tellers or future trippers, and none of that has come true. I would say it's a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. The rules are a lot worse than I thought it was going to be. The banking is tougher than thought it was going to be. And you asked me When is it going to change? And I'm, I think that I'm going to constantly stick with this answer - it's going to change when enough white powerful people have lost enough money in cannabis that banking gets changed.
Wayne: Or the tax code would be a huge one for us.
Elbe: Tax code, again though, like what I was just talking to you about, I would love to be able to go to my bank and say, hey, I've been in business 10 years, I have a great following. People love my product. I really love to expand my product line, can I please get $150,000 so I can buy these pieces of equipment? And, and this new, you know, labeling that I need? And every other industry, you have that ability to go to your bank and if you have good credit and you are in good standing, your bank will say yes Elbe I approve that loan. And let's make you a bigger badder company so you can hire more people in your city and state. But that's not where we are. And so always until we get banking, investors are going to be sketchy. People are going to be nervous, and there's - it's almost impossible to expand your business. And so without expansion, no growth right? Without growth, you die. And so I think really truly until banking gets turned around, I don't know how this industry is sustainable.
Wayne: Yeah, yeah.
Elbe: I mean, everybody I started with is out of business.
Wayne: Yeah. 10 years. Yeah.
Elbe: Not a single person that started with me is in business. And I think that probably three or four years into it is when Sour Bots started. And Danodan, and I think he's, he's in CBD now. Like, you know, it took three or four years for people to really be in the dispensaries with me, and most everyone is gone. Yeah. And it's you know, it's devastating because these are friends and family members that you get attached to and we're all trying to work towards the same goal. And, you know, I gotta be honest, though, at this point 10 years in, I try really hard not to focus on those things anymore. Right? Honestly, when I said that, that the future tripping it does not help, it does not help trying to figure out how this industry is going to go because this industry, we don't even know who, who our president is going to be in a couple of months. Right?
Wayne: Yeah. You just got ready and adaptable constantly. Yeah.
Elbe: I mean, I think that's really the key. That is the biggest, I think the biggest reason that we're still open is flexibility. Every time we get new rules, okay, pivot, every time we get a new challenge, pivot, every time something doesn't work out, pivot. I mean, you know, Gretchen Homer, our CAO, she sent us a text on Friday when we were out delivering, saying, "Oh, the new rules are going to be published. I can't wait to read them this weekend." Because that's her jam. She loves reading the new rules, and figuring out how we're going to adapt. And I'm so happy to have somebody on my team like that, because I see the new rules and I'm like, Oh my god, what's happening? What? What can we do?
Wayne: Yeah, you know, we started in 2015 and I'm trying to - You saying that made me kind of think, you know, who I saw when we started versus now and have might be, you know, we're five years later, almost six it was late 2015 and half the companies maybe that I remember and recall, but I have seen a lot go over to the hemp instead because lower regulations, easier, there's not that tax code, maybe the banking's little easier. Have you looked at or considered the hemp CBD side or I guess have thoughts on that?
Elbe: You know, for sure we've definitely thought about it because we're awake. (Laughter) You know, we lived through watching weed go from $5,000 to $400 a pound, and we are seeing that with hemp, right. And we're also because - we lived through an unregulated market with medical and have really hardly any competition and now entering into an another unregulated market with more competition than you can handle? Like, you know, it's, it's one of those things, it's, it's something that we're definitely not opposed to. I mean, we're always looking at other states and we're talking to other investors. You know, we still don't have any investors, we're still just a mom and pop with just friends and family investment, we're still looking for that team or that person that wants to help us level up. Part of that leveling up would of course be to have CBD lines only and hemp lines and all of that. Again, though, my focus every day is keeping the doors open for my employees who work here and getting the products on the shelf for the customers who are already relying on it. The big picture ideas, I leave those up to Hovering and Gretchen, because it's not my specialty and it's really not my, what I'm interested in. I am a product developer, I am a food specialist, whatever title you want to give me, I want to be in the bakery, making the food, coming up with new ideas and, you know, just working that angle. The rest of it, whether it's CBD or hemp, I can make any recipe with those products in it if you want food wise, also topically, so yeah, the big the big answer is yes, we've looked at those things. The short answer is no, I'm not in a big rush. I'm not in a rush.
Wayne: Yeah, see how it plays out. And you almost - I mean, you can't make it in the same kitchen. That's the other huge issue, if you could it would be a lot easier. But now you need a second operation, a whole new commercial kitchen. I mean that - there's a lot of cost opening up a second location just...
Elbe: And that, I have got to tell you, it is one of the most ridiculous parts of our regulations in recreational cannabis. The rules concerning how I can use my bakery, my personal bakery that I have built and you know, that is really hard to handle for me. I get requested all the time to make non-medicated munchie food, I can't do that here. I am not supposed to make birthday cakes here for my friends and family members, you know that - the rules of how I can use my office space in off hours is really prohibitive when you're trying to build your business as well.
Wayne: Yeah, and those are side streams of income that you could really use to support yourself you know, when you're a small business, that's the adaptable part but yeah, being locked in, it's hard to be adaptable or come up with those unique creative ideas that could you know bring cash flow.
Elbe: I mean, wouldn't you love to teach classes in your, in your space? I would love to teach people how to do Canna-butter classes here, but we're not supposed to do that.
Wayne: Is the fear then - I, I don't know if you know this on the regulation side or why this is the case - are they just really afraid of cannabis or THC ingredient could somehow get into that other food accidentally and then go out into the market? Is that really the only reason why they don't allow like even making hemp products in the same kitchen?
Elbe: I think that is their public answer. But I do not believe that that's the reason. I believe the real reason they don't want that is they're afraid that we're going to put stuff into the black market without them being able to track it. It's all about taxation and tracking. You know, "we're so afraid, a random person is going to eat a cookie and accidentally get high." If that was really the fear base, we would have a lot more regulations than we actually have. So really, it's about taxation always. And, you know, even how our rules are set up, you know, you know, I think we're only allowed to give our employees a certain amount of edibles. You know?
Wayne: It's very low, yeah. (Laughter)
Elbe: Very low! And you're trying to train people, so I have to go to the dispensary and buy one of my own edibles, and pay tax on it, so I can train my employees. That's problematic for me. So but again, that's, that's down the road. And I have patience for that. You know, when I think about the big picture, really, truly that you and I get to wake up in the morning, and we get to put Canna-butter into some really amazing products, and that there are people waiting all over the state for our products to show up so they can eat them to feel better or to get high. I get real dizzy when I really think about it that way. It's really, it's really fucking exciting.
Wayne: Yeah, we have to remember that. Yeah.
Elbe: Yeah, we have to Wayne! Because when you concentrate on, where are we going to be three years from now? Or how many regulations or how many stupid rules? Or all the things that make it not fun, it can really zap the love out of your food. And so I just really tried to focus on - it's really amazing that we get to do this and this is something I think maybe you can think about too, especially because I think you and I are the only ones who use canna-butter in Oregon. Right?
Wayne: Yeah. It's all I can think of.
Elbe: And I love Crop Circle Chocolates, they put hash butter, but I think we are truly the only masters of Canna-butter in Oregon. Now think about that worldwide Wayne. How many people do you think in the world get to do what you and I get to do every day? Very few! Like that is such a rare air. And I just really concentrate on the fact that at this special time in history, you and I get to do this thing that we were both made to do. I was made to do this. My body is made to make recipes a certain way, my brain works a certain way that I understand how cannabis and food work together. All of those things came together at the perfect time for me to do this thing, which is impossibly hard and ridiculously over regulated and stupidly taxed. But it's fucking amazing.
Wayne: Yeah. It's so funny when I started - and I want to ask, you know why you decided to use Canna-butter and also why you think it's not common and almost nobody does it - and when I started originally, you know, I liked the idea it's simple and clean and I can make my own and not have to buy an extract or set up this you know, huge fire code facility. But when I started, you know, small scale doing r&d batches at home, and then you Google how to make Canna-butter at a larger scale. There's nothing that exists, and I'm like, wow, I guess I have to figure this whole process out. You know, cuz I can't use a little, you know, one gallon crock pot anymore. But why is it so rare?
Elbe: You don't have 55 magic butter machines? (Laughter)
Wayne: Yeah, on a daisy chain of 20 (Laughter) Yeah, outlets and yeah, no, but -
Elbe: I - very simply, I picked butter because I'm a foodie. I'm a food maker and a candy maker and a baker and all those things. I picked butter because butter is full of fat, and fat and cannabis love to hang out together. Oil is you know, monounsaturated or polyunsaturated at best, it has less fat in it therefore less THC in it. Also, as a baker, baking with oil makes cookies flat, baking with butter and makes them fluffy and yummy. So for me again, it's always that cannabis is just an ingredient. I am a baker and a candy maker. How you make food best when you bake is to put a shit ton of butter and sugar and flour in it. That's baking. The same with candy making - How do you make candy great, you put a shit ton of sugar and butter in it and you boil and you stir, you boil and you stir, you boil and you stir. So that's why I use butter. Why do I think everybody else is using oils and extracts? Because butter is hard to make and it's expensive, and it's a lot easier to throw an extract into some oil I have tried it and just whirling around and then put on your - it's easier. Also when you are making gummies and food like that, it's better to not have butter in it because butter is a natural product and butter has a short shelf life. And so there's a lot of reasons to not pick butter when you're doing things. But I just choose to use butter because I think it's a better effect on your body for sure when Canna-butter hits your body. It is a completely different high than when you get high off of an extract or oil based edible. It's just science, and it's just real. So we started in medical, we wanted the most bang for the buck. We wanted to get the most THC into the most fat, and I wanted to be able to make foods that tasted amazing, the number one thing with us and going back to Kathy, the woman I started this business because of, her big thing was because her life was so miserable all the time, that when she got her medicine, which is what she called my food, her medicine, she just wanted it to look good and taste good. And she didn't want to have to plug her nose to swallow it. She didn't want to have to taste stems or seeds. And she really hated the flavor of cannabis. And so well, that's what we did. We just figured out a way to pack as much THC into the butter and then to make that butter tastes amazing and so that - and another reason we use butter by the way, is I find it easier to get the cannabis flavor out of food using butter. That's just the way we make it. Does that kind of answer that for you?
Wayne: Yeah, there's a lot of good points and some things I've similarly thought it is. It doesn't fit into every type of food product. But on the cost side early on. It was interesting. I always looked at it as being a lower cost. I haven't priced out distillates and extracts, you know assuming you still want a full spectrum extract right in there, but early on, you know, it's much more labor intensive. So your costs are on the labor side, the actual ingredients compared to buying an extract were a lot lower cost, right? But I had to build this whole process to make it, there's no like resource or guide on how to make large scale Canna-butter. You know, we need 20-30 pounds a week or something like that.
Elbe: You and Hovering should really sit down and compare your methods because he is my Canna-butter maker. And he, I think there's 37 steps to it. It takes several days, and I just usually stay out of the way because what he gives me is this really clean, highly concentrated butter and you know, we're so - we're just so blessed with the abundance of amazing weed in Oregon, like you know, and I know you know that we source all of our material from Doghouse Farms. And we source indoor bud and close trim. And the reason we do that is because that also helps our process. If something's from outside or it's dirty, or it's, you know, that takes longer to get that clean. And so, for us the method like you said, it took probably a solid year of Hov tweaking the different ways to get it to work for them, you know, making 25 pounds of butter at a time. And the reason we had to figure that out quick is because as you know, when we started this, we were unfairly you, your company and my company, we were unfairly looped in as concentrate makers or extract makers, and my butter went from costing $3.59 a pound to $1,100.99 a pound. And I mean, talking about a heart attack when Gretchen told me the cost difference I was like, well, then we're just shutting the door. Yeah.
Wayne: Yeah I was having similar thoughts. I'm like, I gotta change something huge. And thankfully, I was able to meet up with you guys. We got it figured out. But yeah, that was terrifying.
Elbe: Well, luckily we hired smarter than us and Gretchen was like here I have an idea. Let's fight this, and we're like, we can fight this?
Wayne: Yeah.
Elbe: And so she did. She contacted the OLCC. She got the Department of Justice involved. They all came here, the DOJ came here, the OLCC came here, the OHA came here, all of the, the big brains who make the decisions, and we walked them through our process, and we showed them that we were not concentrating, we were actually diluting, and that this was like the safest method you could possibly, you know, extract cannabis. And when they saw what our method was, they're like, well, there's zero danger in this. Yeah, that's what we were trying to tell you. And so as you know, then we were able to not be considered a concentrate. And we now make a beautiful canna-butter that does not fall under the same restrictions that concentrates fall under so yeah, good job. (Laughter)
Wayne: Yeah, another part of the story, that was an interesting time.
Elbe: Are you considering putting extracts in your food?
Wayne: No, we aren't. We're looking at the hemp side. We've been messing around with that for a little while but even there now with craft hemp. I mean if we had these industrial hemp that wouldn't be possible, but now the craft hemp sources are so - there's a lot of them out there, we would probably just make butter and we do the vegan caramels so for that we use coconut oil instead of butter.
Elbe: Oh, right.
Wayne: But when we put so much time into the method, and we've got it down, it takes you know, the week to make it but a lot of its holding time and certain things so I don't - I can't see a reason I think our costs are still, would be lower than, even factoring in the labor, than just buying an extract or a distillate. And it's one of our big selling points now because it's not an option in almost any other edible so it really helps differentiate us I think as well.
Elbe: I want you to know too Wayne, when we're out selling. You are the company we talk about. We always sell our company with your company. And I mean that, like 99% of the time when I'm talking to somebody, and I'm explaining to them Canna-butter I go, you realize that there's only one other company in Oregon who does it like this - us and Periodic. Like, we are Canna- butter masters, and it's really full spectrum and it's not marketing. And I really try to go in with every one of these sales calls, how we do what we do and why that's different than an extract high, why that's different than an extract edible. And I am so pleased to announce that after how many years we've been doing recreational when I have these conversations now, managers are very open to listening to it customers are very open to hearing about it, because at first it just didn't matter. You know?
Wayne: Yeah, those products on the shelf now there's so many stores they're thinking like they're looking at these things now. At first it was just put products on the shelf. Customers just flood in, and you sell everything you got. That doesn't work anymore. So now it does matter. Yeah.
Elbe: Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm really proud of being able to say that we are the two companies that do it. And listen, I know there'll be more canna-butter companies coming down the line. And that's great, good luck to you all because it's hard. And it takes a lot of work. But the other thing is, is I think that one of the things that we can continually do is always educate our consumers, right? And so consumers are catching on that having the whole bud is more important than part of the bud or just this one little part of the plant and I will say that always though marketing is really tricky because there's a lot of people now calling themselves full spectrum and it's just not true.
Wayne: The worst one I've seen is - I saw a product and I won't name any names but it said infused with Canna butter but when you looked at the ingredients, you realize they just put distillate into butter, and then called it Canna-butter and I saw that and I was like oh my god..
Elbe: Oh I know exactly who you're talking about, it's very irritating. And that's why I'll publicly announce - You and I are going to start a Canna-butter Association and you have to bud into your butter to be part of our association. (Laughter)
Wayne: What have you seen around - I think another thing that we constantly are struggling with now is our pricing. So we've really maintained and held our pricing, we haven't decreased it. And it's been important to us for that margin for all these reasons we're listing, but now there's so many other lower cost options coming in. I don't know if those companies are sustainable, if it's to get market share. I just - what have you seen on the landscape? Have you considered consider doing a price reduction or is it a struggle competing against other products? Because there's all these other low low options or what do you think about that?
Elbe: Yeah, it is a struggle, but I'll tell you one thing for sure. We cannot drop our prices. We are - if we drop our prices, we're shutting our doors. We're, we're trying to stay open. And the other thing is, is I'm really irritated by that, that that that people would think that we need to drop our prices. When I have managers asked me to drop my prices lower than a pre-roll, which is bud and paper, and I put eggs, flour, sugar, fresh fruit, fresh juice, I have a bakery, I have employees, I have insurance, I gotta drive a van. And now you want an edible for real like for $1. What? You know, I think it is. It's a real it's a real hard one. In fact, I have a hard time with this conversation because I understand that everybody needs to stay in business and I understand that our tax implication has made it so retail stores have to markup our products 100% - the consumers do not understand that. Soo when they see a price at a dispensary. They think it's crazy, right? They think oh my god, I have to pay $20 for an edible? (Sigh) Yeah, you do, because there's taxes and these people have taxes and I have taxes. And this is a social experiment. We're all trying to do this together. But also, there is food in our food. And so I can't cut the cost. My food costs change all the time. I don't know what it's like to work in a gummy factory. I don't - I assume I've made plenty of gummies in my life, your costs don't really change. You put sugar and flavoring and some, like whatever your recipe is, right? My costs change all the time. And my costs change because gasoline prices because I'm getting eggs from farms, I'm getting butter. I'm getting flour, I'm getting sugar, and I'm getting vanilla. I mean, when I started this company, a bottle of vanilla was $9 and 99 cents for like, you know, like a little eight ounce? That same bottle is 49 damn dollars now because vanilla is almost extinct in America or in the world. And so the cost of vanilla has gone up ridiculously and so, I don't use fake things in my food. So I use real vanilla. I don't use, you know, imitation and so my costs are constantly going up for food. And so I can't lower my costs in the dispensaries and it's really frustrating. Do I think the companies that are selling gummies and hard candies for two or three bucks out the door are going to stay in business? I don't know how. And I also don't understand - this is another confusing part to me. If a dispensary is marking up 100% at least - Why do you want to sell a $2 item versus a $10 item?
Wayne: Yeah, yeah.
Elbe: Aren't you making more money on my item than a $2 item? Yeah, like so it's again, this is one of those things when I talk about the entire industry needs to grow and elevate - dispensaries are learning how to run a dispensary, farms are learning how to run a farm. We are learning how to run a processing facility. All of those things are happening at the same time. And that is very unusual in any industry. I think it's probably out of the world that this is all happening at the same time. Because in any other industries say we you and I decided to sell shoes. There would be watermarks or templates already for how to do that, right? Like, I know if I make a shoe, that I have to have this much margin and that Payless shoes is going to make this much on me and my taxes are going to be that, like we could understand that supply chain. In this world. We're all figuring it out at the same time. And we're all making a lot of mistakes and some small victories and so none of us really know how to do it for sure. And so, unfortunately, we have to learn on each other's backs. And so dispensaries are learning. We're learning and farmers are learning all at the same time. And so - I get that the consumer wants the price point to come down. I really do understand that, I really understand that budtenders and managers will have an easier time moving our products if they're nearly free. But in reality, in sales, I don't understand why anybody in Portland thinks or anybody in Oregon thinks that they should be able to buy an edible that gets them high for six or eight hours and spend less money on that that they spend on a coffee or a cheeseburger.
Wayne: Right. Yeah. Do you think - do you think it's like um, you know, flower, the flower market was really high per pound, 2018 it really crunched it got all the way down to $300-$400 and now it's really went back up to $1000 you know, $900 on the low end even higher. A lot of our growers are like we had a great 2019 our prices are back up. Are we now where - were we just a little bit after the growers and now what's happening to us and it seems like retailers too and it's going to. You know, potentially with backup, or does it feel like it might be a bottom that's not going to move? It's a crystal ball question again, which is never good, like we said earlier, but-
Elbe: It is a crystal ball question but one of the things we have that's different than a couple of years ago, is, and this is the first time I've seen this for our company, you know, we used to have Croptober, and then the market would kind of dry up. And then in January, the market would kind of dry - like, you know, we'd have these cycles, and that's because in the medical days, our customers were customers who were patients. And so they were getting their stuff at the dispensaries and then in the black market. And then when we first went to recreational, we had plenty of customers who were still had a foot in the black market and a foot in the recreational market, right? But as the black market has kind of shifted and done its own thing since the black market cannot - Doesn't really, can't really sell stuff cheaper than we can at this point. What's happened is a lot of customers have crossed over, and now they're just recreational users, or they never used it before, because it was illegal, and now they're users. And so our consumer population has gotten bigger, which I think kind of helps the prices stabilize a little bit. And we don't have those fluctuations because we're not just, you know, counting on the stoners to get us through the year, we're really truly getting a more robust and a bigger variety of consumers. That helps. That said, I don't think that the ebbs and flows are done yet. I do think the prices are going to go up and down and up and down. Because the consumers in Oregon really got used to medical prices, because we had such a robust medical dispensary and robust medical prices. And really, the consumer in Oregon really got used to getting weed for very, very, very cheap prices. And so when you're talking about Oregon, we're always going to have this struggle. If you and I picked up this conversation dropped us down in Michigan, or Ohio, or anyplace else in the United States and we were talking business owner to business owner. I can say to you, you know, Wayne it's probably you know, as we get more customers and our state gets more active, we're just going to get bigger and bigger. And that's a reality if you're someplace that hasn't been growing weed for 400 years.
Wayne: Yeah. Think of California.
Elbe: We ARE California! Washington, Oregon, California have been producing the best weed in the world for 100 years. Yeah? We're not sitting in - we're not sitting in the desert. We're sitting in the rain forest of the weed, huh?
Wayne: Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, every state is so fascinating how it's so different and how that plays out in the market. And then yeah, as soon as we cross state lines. So many more questions.
Elbe: I was talking to a friend, friend of a friend who does edibles on East Coast and like a cookie that would sell here for, you know, 10 bucks out the door, sells there for 40 bucks. Because there's not that many cookies right?
Wayne: And a lot of those markets are so hyper restrictive. I mean, you'll look at like Florida or something - one company and there's like four or five companies that own all the dispensaries. I mean, I kind of - that sickens me when states create an oligarchy, and you're looking at people with $10 million or more minimum to get into it, and then they own everything. Where Oregon. I mean, we're probably as close as to a free market as you can get, looking at cannabis industries in different markets. Sure, which has been one of our struggles.
Elbe: Yeah, I'm gonna say that wasn't exactly - that didn't serve us. It didn't serve us when we - initially when we had the no out of state investor rule. I think that this, this would have been a little more fair market in Oregon. I think companies would have had a little better time, have been able to start slowly and build up. As soon as that changed, and we allowed outside money, this just became a beta testing zone for cannabis. And I really keep thinking of Oregon is that. I think a lot of people come here, try out things, see if it works. And then they want to take it to other states. And I think as long as that's going on, as long as there's a long line of people who want their licenses, a long line of people who are willing to wait, I think, again, we're just going to keep fluxing on prices up and down, up and down. But I don't know, for sure, because I'm not a farmer. And again, my crystal ball has been broken for 10 years.
Wayne: (Laughter) It's a little hazy!
Elbe: (Laughter) Oh, so hazy. It's cracked, it's full of pot smoke. (Laughter)
Wayne: One thing I want to, as we get near the end here, you mentioned Gretchen, and having employees that turned into equity owners, I was just curious. I think that's really fascinating. I've heard of other companies doing that. I just I wonder how you thought about that, making that decision. And I just I think any listener that's operating in the industry. Whether they're an owner or manager or considering something like that, how does that work exactly? Or how did that play out? And I guess, how did you go about that?
Elbe: Well, I think from the beginning Hovering and I have always been really inspired by companies like Ben and Jerry's, Chobani's. These are companies that we have, as you know, we're entrepreneurs. I told you a photography business before this. I think we've always been really interested in companies who embrace employees. It's just so rare. And we've worked in, Hov and I both worked in such places, such crappy places, and we've hated our jobs. And we've also had the privilege of working in places where we felt like family members. And so when we started this company, we sat down and we said we wanted a couple things out of it. Hov said how do you - how do you think you're going to know that we're a successful company? And I said to him just off the top of my head, when we have 30 employees, full time, full benefits, working for us, I will feel like we are doing something good with our company. And he's like, right on. So that was kind of like one of the first things we thought. And then I said, and then we started talking, and then very next thing that we - I don't know, I think Hov might have brought it up. And he's like, and what about employees owning in the company? And I'm like, absolutely.
So, for us, we kind of look at the world in a different way. We don't have kids. We don't, we're not thinking about this as a legacy we leave on to our children or you know, anything like that. We've always just wanted to build a company, hire smarter than us, stronger than us, and have more vision than us. And if those people get hired, then we would just let them take over their areas of responsibility until it was theirs. And that was just kind of a general idea. So the first five years of our business, we just had that in the back of our mind. And, you know, we've had plenty of part time people and that - there was people that you know, we considered early in our early medical years, hey, should we bring this person on as a partner and? But something never really felt right in our bellies. And then Gretchen Palmer walked into our lives, and she walked in here to do a project for us. We were going to hire her to just kind of do an autopsy on our company say, hey, what are your problems? What are you - What are you doing good, what are you doing bad. She was supposed to be here for like 30 or 60 days, two or three days after working with her, I said to have, oh, we we need her. Like this woman needs, we need to work with her. She makes my brain itch. She makes me think in a different way and Hov's like, "Oh, I was thinking the same thing. Like she has a completely different perspective on this. She hasn't worked in cannabis. She hasn't worked in this world. And so she looks at problems in a different way." So the project got done. We said, we're not, we're leaving. We want you to work with us. Please come and work with us. And she said yes. And then about three weeks after that, we were driving home one day and I looked at Hov and I said in all sincerity. I want to say this - there is no longer in Elbe's unless Gretchen Palmer's involved. And he said, I agree. I said, I don't want to do this anymore without somebody like Gretchen. I want it to be Gretchen. She makes us better. She makes us think that, you know better, she makes us think about things we've never thought about. And that's when we knew we had our first equity employee. When we realized that we had somebody that we wanted to spend off time with. We wanted to have somebody who challenged our brains, challenged how we viewed the world of business. When we had that person standing looking at us directly in the eyes, we knew we needed a partner and that was Gretchen. And that's how we - that was like our first solid one.
We also had a contractor who worked for us, who built this bakery for us. And we told her that if she helped us build this bakery on a good budget, we would give her equity in our company. And so she has a small piece. And then over the years we have told people if you come into this area and you make this area your own, and you're responsible for it and you make it bloom, we will consider making you equity in this company. And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. And a lot of people think that they want to be an owner and a lot of people think that they want to do sweat equity. But sweat equity is exactly that. You work more hours than you put in, you work when you're not here. You think about it all the time. And so Gretchen Palmer fits that to a tee. She loves this company and loves this product no differently than Hov and I do. She can walk into any room and represent us. She can speak for us in any way. And that's how you know you have an employee who deserves part of your company - when you trust them and know that they can represent you when you're not there. Yeah. I think it's so important too because I don't - what do I need a full company for? What, why couldn't Why couldn't Hov and I create something that can create a better life for other families. So Gretchen Palmer now works here. Now her son in law works for us. Her daughter works here part time doing gig work for me. And occasionally her husband, who is a genius in the geek world. He fixes our stuff. And so because she's invested in us, and we've invested in her and her family, and now that will go on to when her son in law and her daughter have a kid, maybe we'll be open long enough that this will help support their family. And we just kind of think in those ways instead of just thinking of p&l, and you know.
Wayne: Yeah, no, it's definitely I mean, it's, it's such an interesting approach and it makes me think about it, it's really a long term long-sighted strategy. And also as an owner, you know, for me right now, as a single owner, it's a struggle because I have certain areas that I think I feel like I'm really good at and I enjoy doing, but I also have to cover so many other areas that I do not enjoy doing, and if I could just free myself to really go out and I'm working on that. I've got some people here that are amazing and really fill in my gaps, but you know, it's still a salary or might be hourly and you don't, it's not - they don't have equity. They're not fully invested. Right? If this thing goes amazing, they're always wondering in the back of their head, could you know I be left with just my paycheck and nothing else? Even if they're invested a lot extra into it. But it's it's interesting to think about and how you might go about that and set that up.
Elbe: I think one of the things you can think about is the risk that your employees take. You know, it's one of the things I think a lot of cannabis companies don't think about. The fact that Gretchen sets here every day and everybody else who sits here every day and works for me. They are - they're giving up other things in their life. You know, you want to go get a home loan, you want to buy a house? Try telling the bank you work for cannabis company. You want a credit card? Try telling a credit card company, you work for Elbe's edibles, it's not happening. And so that is one of the other things we think about. We know we can't pay anything. We everybody here is making a really low wage. So we have free lunch here every day, we give our employees lunch and I make them lunch every day because I appreciate that they are working here on a lower wage, I appreciate that I have to - that their bank account can get closed because I pay them money. I appreciate the fact that they are still doing a federally illegal activity every day when they show up here. Like Hov and I really get that and so, if you can just kind of think that way, your employees feel that and the loyalty that they give back to us and the hard work that they give back to us. That is why they get to own this company too - they take the risk. They do the hard work and when I cry, they try not to act too embarrassed. When I when I am upset by the rules they try to help me figure out how to fix them. You know, it's it really - I know a lot of companies talking about family but we mean it here we, this is our culture. Like I said Hov and I don't have kids. This company is our kid, and these employees are our family members. And when we are gone from this, you know, like I said, we're in our 50s, I don't want to do this for another 30 years, I certainly want to have some retirement in my life, I want to have some downtime. When I walk out of here, if I hand the key to Gretchen Palmer, I will know that she will have everybody in place that she wants to have work for her. And that's why we also put equity into her because you put the people in place that you know, will put more people in place, also to keep this getting bigger and better.
Wayne: Yeah, yeah, those are such good points. And I really appreciate - I'm glad we hit on that because I think for listeners, either just getting into the industry or thinking about it, those are the points that often aren't discussed at all. And it's, you know, it's easy to look at this with rose colored glasses and be so excited. But there's a lot of trade-offs, and it's still very early. So those points are so important to discuss.
Elbe: This is hard work. This is a brand new industry. And so yeah, anybody who's listening to this is thinking about getting into it, I always tell people this. If you really want to open a cannabis business, if you really want to work in cannabis, go work for a cannabis business, go meet the employers, go meet the owners, meet the investors, see the people that you're working with because a lot of people went into this industry all at the same time, from all different backgrounds. So there will be somebody in this industry that you are suited for. It might not be me, maybe you don't want to eat lunch with a crew at lunchtime and put down your phone and talk. Maybe you're more comfortable with your earbuds in and not - and being a little more antisocial. This is not the company for you. But there are companies in this industry for you. For sure. Maybe you like being on the road, then you need to be working for a company that's like has you on the road all the time - that it is a brand new industry that is loaded with opportunities. The opportunity that you need to not think about though is finance, cash. You know if you are getting into cannabis to make a lot of money, you need to wait. You know, listen, I have a - I have a young man in my life that's part of this part of our family like he's 18 years old. And you know, he's watching us go through this journey. And he's just like, he's always like, he goes, like, I can't wait until I'm 21. And I'm going to start a cannabis business, and I'm going to make so much money. And I just, I just think, yeah, that is great. It's so great that somebody young can think about that and think about this as a new industry to get into. That is so exciting to me. And the other part of that is yes, maybe by the time he gets into this industry, he can make a livable wage. Yeah, but we're not there yet.
Wayne: Yeah. Yeah, we're on the journey. Thank you so much, Elbe for the time. I really appreciate it. This was a really great conversation definitely went down some other areas that don't think we have in the past. So I think listeners will like this one. And then I always end on two questions. Just where can people find you if it's a website, social media, and is there anything you want to let listeners know about specifically?
Elbe: Ok, well the first part is you can - I think we're in about 160 stores around the state. So if you go to www.elbesedibles.com there is a location map on that. So if we're not in your neighborhood or not in your area, you can send us an email and we'll try to get to you because that's important to us. We I think we're on Instagram and Facebook. I alluded to earlier that I'm not very good with the social media you can find us there. If you are interested in working for Elbe's you can send a resume and a cover letter to jobs@elbesedibles.com. You should probably tell me why you like Canna-butter in edibles to even have a resume looked at -if your cover letter doesn't talk about canna-butter or edibles I'm probably not going to read it. (Laughter) Cuz you know, we're not a dispensary and we're not farmer. So if you are good at trimming, you're probably not looking to work at a bakery. Yeah, yeah. Another thing I wanted to talk about real quick is we have some exciting things coming up this year that I want you all to look for. We like I said, we have our 10 year anniversary, we are going to have a surprise edible coming out for that 10 year anniversary to celebrate that, it will be 50 milligrams of fun. So look for that. And as we get closer, we'll announce the flavor of that yummy item. And our topical line should be out in a couple months hopefully. We have some more candy coming out or - the next thing coming down the chute is some candy bits, which is basically our candy that we're already making just broken down into five milligram serving size that you can pour into your coffee or on your ice cream. That's the next thing coming down and then our lotion line will be out and then some surprises in the summer and fall.
Wayne: Awesome. Thank you Elbe. That's great. Go check those out. And yeah, appreciate the time and the insights and this will be helpful for a lot of listeners. So thank you so much.
Elbe: Thank you Wayne. And the last thing I'd like to say to your listeners is - canna-butter is different and it's better. Please try it, please try Wayne's products, please try mine - tell your friends and family Canna-butter's the way to go.
Wayne: Yeah and I'd say try them side by side - try a distillate edible, try canna-butter edible and compare.
Elbe: It's my favorite thing to do is to test different cannabis products. I love it.
Wayne: Definitely. Awesome Elbe, well thank you so much!
Elbe: Thanks, Wayne!