Cannabis Edibles and Drink Review had the opportunity to sit down with Marin County CA based Nicole Skibola, co-founder of Cosmic View.
CEDR: Were edibles a part of your original planning when mapping out Cosmic View’s product range? Or were they added later? Why?
Nicole: Edibles were always something that we wanted to do, but it was really the change in consumption habits during the pandemic that made us take the plunge. We had initially envisioned a bean to bar chocolate but then as my dad’s beekeeping picked up on our family farm, we knew that we really wanted to use our honey. Our basic idea was to make something with real ingredients, that harkened back to the health food stores my mom (and now business partner, Dr. Christine Skibola) took me to in the 80s as a kid. We settled on a hard honey candy with companion herbs and regenerative flower rosin – it felt special and different and very complimentary to our existing product line of medicinals.
CEDR: Has the growth in the edibles sector of the industry had any impact on your product development?
Nicole: Definitely. At Cosmic View, we always strive to use our passion for food and my mom’s scientific background to make special products that no one else is making. We saw a gap in the market for hard candies and spent over 10 months R&D’ing our version of a hard candy during the pandemic. We knew we wanted to make something without “natural” (i.e., synthetic) flavors, corn syrup, glucose syrup and other icky stuff. Turns out, it’s very difficult. There are endless gummies on the market and endless unhealthy options, so we wanted to make what we call the hippie edible of our dreams. I think we succeeded.
CEDR: What makes your Honey Sweets and Lollies stand out from other edibles currently on the market?
Nicole: In addition to the quality and purity of the ingredients, our candies and lollies are made with strain specific flower rosin from regenerative, Sun + Earth certified farms. We often work with our farmers to come up with our limited edition flavors. For example, Tina Gordon from Moon Made farms showed me a togarashi that she puts on everything – that was the inspiration for the furikake that came from Dark Horse Organics for our Suns Lollies. Katie Jeane from Emerald Spirit Botanicals loves rose and flower essences, which inspired the flavor profile behind the Love Lollies made with their very special Pink Boost Goddess THCV flower. At the end of the day, we are focused on making edibles that taste like real foods and are very focused on effects. So we pick our cannabis flower accordingly and then compliment with companion herbs. We personally create every recipe myself and forage for (or source very locally) many of the ingredients such as rose, passionflower, Meyer lemon, yuzu, and other herbs. Having that personal of a touch is really important for us as major food people.
CEDR: Are you working on/recipe testing any other edibles that you can speak to at the moment?
Nicole: We have a collaboration with a local, West Marin farm from the town I live in that we are working on. I’d disclose more but the recipe is in the works and the town must remain nameless. IYKYK. 🙂
Most people that I speak to have an opinion on the viability of “effect” driven (I,S,H) edibles. Christine, with your scientific knowledge and knowing well the improvements in technology, how do you respond to concerns of efficacy? How are you tackling this challenge / opportunity?
Well, first of all, we actually use whole spectrum, strain specific flower. Most of the edibles on the market are using distillates or isolates and maybe re-introducing a terpene, likely not even from cannabis. With flower rosin, we actually retain the variety of cannabinoids, terpenes, and other botanicals that make a strain a strain. I actually don’t think it’s about technology at all. The further you move into refinement and processing, the further away you get from the essence of the plant and the nuances that plant offers in terms of effects. We begin with the source flower. How does it make us feel? What feedback has the farmer received on the effects of that flower? From there, we add additional herbs to compliment the mood state that we are after. It is something to help you wind down? How about some passionflower. Is it an aphrodisiac? How about Damiana and Shativari (part of our last release and formulated in collaboration with guest herbalist Gina Ross from Sentient Kin Apothecary). For us, it’s all about staying as close to every plant as possible.
CEDR: Thanks Nicole for the wonderful insights!
