Cannabis Edibles and Drink Review had the pleasure of speaking with Rachel King, Chief Development Officer at Kaneh CO. Kaneh is a gourmet edibles baking company, based in San Diego, CA.
CEDR: Could you please share some details about your background and your path to cannabis baking?
Rachel King: I’m born and raised in San Diego. I went to San Diego State and was going to be an attorney. However, I went to law school for a year and hated it, so I went to cooking school instead. I started out lucky enough to get a spot in some fine dining restaurants in San Diego as a pastry cook. I worked my way up to different restaurants. A lot of times I was working two jobs just to gain experience and the restaurant industry is not exactly the highest paying industry. I ended up getting my first pastry chef job at Searsucker, which was amazing, but it was also really hard because the restaurant blew up right away and I wasn’t quite ready for it. However, I made myself ready for it and I ended up becoming the corporate pastry chef for the whole group. The group opened five new restaurants, and I formed my own separate commissary bakery while I was with them.
From there I went back to a restaurant that I had worked at as a pastry cook, but I went back as the pastry chef with the whole property. It was a hotel that we were in. Then I was ready for a change not to work nights, weekends, and holidays.
I was given this opportunity. At first, I was very hesitant just because it was the grey market at the time, and I didn’t really know what would come out of it. I kind of went back and forth for like six months, and then we decided to form the company five years ago. It was me and one other person in the kitchen and we had like three or four other employees at that time, and since then, we’ve grown exponentially.
CEDR: Share with me a little bit about the distribution of the products today.
Rachel King: Our products can be found all throughout California. They are very concentrated down here in Southern California because that’s our home base, but we can be found all the way up to the tip of California. We recently licensed in Oklahoma, which just got started about two months ago.
CEDR: How difficult is it to make products in another state and maintain consistency?
Rachel King: With our licensing and just our growth, we have had to really hone down processes, so everything is very detail oriented. We went out to personally train them and we’ll be going back every few months just to make sure that the quality is what we would like.
CEDR: What makes your products unique and special?
Rachel King: With my background, it was kind of a hard transition for me in some ways, because I know it’s on our packaging: this is not a food product. People are eating it generally for the THC, but for me, it’s first and foremost a food product. Technically, again, it’s not. We’re using the same quality ingredients and methods that I would when I worked in restaurants. A great thing is that we have a ton of people that I’ve worked with at past restaurants who have come over here to work with me. Other people have come from bakeries or just want a lifestyle change, and this is a new and emerging industry.
We have a really professional kitchen staff. They are attracted to the cooking aspect, not just the cannabis factor. I think one of the great things about our company is that we have the capacity to make a large variety of different products that are of high quality versus just a cookie or a brownie. It’s just because of our collective backgrounds, we have the capacity to make almost anything.
CEDR: Can you give a sense of how many folks are in your kitchen and what that operation is like?
Rachel King: We have about 60 employees total, but that includes sales reps, office staff, and packaging staff. The kitchen staff has ranged from eight to twelve people depending on the season.
CEDR: Are there any products that surprised you due to being better sellers than others?
Rachel King: Well, the market is quite saturated here in California, especially with gummies and chocolates. Those do so well for us, and I think they’re different than other products on the market. But for us, our best sellers are far and away brownies. People love them and they’re good.
CEDR: Can you share a little bit of the relationship between eating an edible on an empty stomach versus a full stomach and how that impacts what you feel?
Rachel King: Everybody’s going to process it differently, whether it’s the strength or just how long it takes them to feel anything. There are many factors that go into it, but I do think that you’re going to feel it quicker on an empty stomach and potentially a little bit more. Personally, I don’t eat edibles in a high enough dosage to really tell a huge difference, as I’m very much on the low dosing.
CEDR: Do you see a time when things continue to progress, particularly at the federal level, where you’ll have a mail order component to the business?
Rachel King: That be lovely, but I don’t know when that will happen. With the way the laws are now, I am just looking forward to possibly expanding to other states.
CEDR: Anything you can share about other products coming down the pike or maybe outside your typical wheelhouse?
Rachel King: We might be coming out with new flavors of jellies in the future, which is in our wheelhouse. I would also be interested in exploring more savory items, but we’re not quite there yet. We’re definitely pursuing more white-label business, so developing new products for different customers to expand their cannabis brands with the edibles.
CEDR: Thanks for the great insights!
