CEDR: Could share a bit of your background and how you ended up in the cannabis space and particularly in the THC pizza, THC sauces, and THC soups.
Adam Osborne: Unfortunately, I was in the restaurant industry for quite some time and shaved off many years of my life, and so I had some background about restaurants, and I had a lot of friends in the industry. Right around the same time edibles were coming to the forefront of Canada.
I had two very bad shoulders and some sleep problems, and a friend said, “Hey you should try edibles.” I tried it and it really helped the pain in my shoulders and helped me sleep through the night. It was great, actually. Right at the same time, I had another friend who actually had a frozen food line that was doing quite well in some major grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada. And he said, “I think we could do something”. I don’t smoke and I don’t really need sweets all the time.
CEDR: When is this taking place?
Adam Osborne: 2015 and 2016. At that point, we started playing around with frozen THC pizzas and we were making some THC sauces, butter chickens, curries, and marinara. Then we wanted to do THC soups and bone broths, so I had relatives that started asking for the meals too. They were like, “Wow, this helps my arthritis.” I had my aunt who went from not working in her garden to being able to clutch the pliers to cut up her bushes. I had another friend who has Crohn’s disease. We made the bone marrow broth with THC and CBD. All of a sudden, anybody that I knew that had ailments was saying, “Hey, I heard you’re making this!” We started growing and we did a lot of R&D on the strengths because everybody has a different tolerance and pain threshold of what they’re dealing with. We wanted to create a healthier food line that people could consume in their office. Bad arthritis in their hands and all day on the computer. Yet, they couldn’t eat something without the stigma or potentially getting fired due to smelling like smoke.
It really caught on. People were like “this is awesome. We love it. We’ll take it.”
We did everything in a health code permitted facility because of health code regulations. But two to three weeks after we launched, Canada sent a letter to every dispensary saying that if you carry any edibles, we’re going to shut you down, so that set us back exponentially.
At that point we decided to shut down and redirect our focus to the U.S. because there are a number of states where it is statewide legal. And now, that’s where we’re focusing our energy!
CEDR: Are you changing the focus of the menu switching from Canada to U.S?
Adam Osborne: I really think that a lot of things are alike in the U.S. and Canada. Sometimes. We’re very health oriented. We’ll definitely focus in on the healthier stuff in certain areas and it’s a new industry, so trial by fire. We’ll try and layer all the products. I like to cook and I think all of our THC sauces are great. Our THC soups are made with the highest quality ingredients. In our THC pizza we don’t use organic because we don’t want to hit that price point yet with our customers. However, we do use all-natural chicken, which separates us from the average frozen pizza containing chicken that has 26 additives. We use real cream. We’re trying to use natural herbs and spices in what amounts to a healthy rate.
CEDR: Please tell me about the dosing in the different products.
Adam Osborne: We used to have low, medium and high dosages, but nobody ever bought the low and everybody who bought the high dosages wanted higher dosages, so we are getting all the meals to 40 milligrams. If there is a demand for us to go higher or lower, we are open to doing it.
Our soups will actually match the CBD & THC content one for one, so it will be 40 milligrams of THC and 40 milligrams of THC distillate. We may not do CBD in the pizza because we think it might be more of a recreational food rather than medicine. So far, I haven’t had anybody that’s dealing with Crohn’s or cancer or any diseases like that say, “I like the pizza.” They’re concentrated on the soup and bone marrow broth and they like the THC sauces so they can make their own meals.
CEDR: Anything else interesting coming down the pike new product-wise that you want to share?
Adam Osborne: Yes. We’re actually working on a lot right now. We want people to have everything from breakfast to dinner, so we actually have salad dressings and a variety of jams. We have a chipotle condiment and a spicy ketchup. We might not do THC for all those, but those will be CBD. So again, anybody that has that extra amount of pain just kind of needs to have CBD in their food because it is so good for you. We’ve barely scratched the surface of what our product lines are going to be.
CEDR: With that in mind, can you shine a little light on your kitchen and your team and the R&D side of things?
Adam Osborne: Yes, so I’ve been super lucky! I’m working with two groups; one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast. For the one on the West Coast, they’re life-long producers of a frozen food line with traditional Indian recipes as well. And then on the East Coast, the group is an award-winning company doing silent, behind the scenes CBD R&D. They already have all those lines in different brand names, but we’re just going to rebrand them and team up with them and we’re really excited.
Again, you can wake up in the morning and put jam on toast and have CBD right in there. You can have your lunches and THC soups. I’m a big smoker guy, so on the weekend I can make some butter chicken, potatoes or cured onion and four hours later have an absolute dynamite, healthy meal.
CEDR: Great insights. We appreciate the time!
