MJ edibles sales are EXPLODING: Watch your children carefully
Inside incredibles, the Willy Wonka Company of Marijuana Edibles
420 Intel - Your Source for Global Marijuana Industry News!
June 24, 2016
Edibles sales are exploding. Legal cannabis sales hit $5.4 billion in 2015 according to ArcView Market Research, and dispensary owners say edibles sales might make up as much as half of that. In Colorado alone, the state's Department of Revenue said edibles sales jumped from more than 3.3 million infused edible units (sold from Jan-Sept of 2014) to more than 5.6 million over the same timeframe in 2015.
A big chunk of those sales came from incredibles. Yes, their brand is spelled in all lowercase letters (thanks, Pixar).
Along with big names such as Dixie Elixirs, BlueKudu, Cheeba Chews, and, of course, Leafs by Snoop (though there are countless others across Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and California), these businesses are rapidly expanding and angling for national exposure. If any companies are positioned to become the Hershey's and Nestlé of legal edibles, it's brands like incredibles. We caught up with Medically Correct LLC founder and President Bob Eschino (Medically Correct owns incredibles) at Cannabis World Congress (CWC). In the video above, he talks about scaling the operation nationwide while still taking care to churn out delicious, mouthwatering chocolates and confections.
The edibles market is a fascinating one to dissect. These big manufacturers need to mix, process, and ship assets on a massive scale, while maintaining strict control over THC levels and seed-to-sale compliance. The incredibles brand has deep market saturation in Colorado (see map below), with products sold in the lion's share of dispensaries across the state. The company has plans to expand its recreational edibles sales in Oregon, Washington, and hopefully California soon if this summer's key referendum passes. Though the key to building a brand on par with Wonka Chocolates is making great-tasting edibles that sell out of dispensaries, there are no golden tickets, but the company's foil packaging is tough to miss on shelves.
The incredibles brand is best known for its chocolate. In PCMag's special 4/20 Facebook live show featuring Flowhub, we even made a mock dispensary sale featuring incredibles products.
In the incredibles factory, you'd see the assembly line pumping out bars of Salted Cookies and Cream, Mile High Mint, Affogato, Boulder Bars, Black Cherry CBD, Strawberry Crunch, Blueberry Bliss, and Peanut Butter Buddha, and more.
Several of the edibles have won awards competitions, like the THC Championship, Munchie Cup, and High Times Cannabis Cup. The extra-special-chocolate maker also sells concentrates, vape pens, and cannabis-infused gummies called "gum-e's."
Since its founding in 2010 by Medically Correct, incredibles has become the leading edibles brand in Colorado, sold in more than 760 dispensaries for both medical and recreational use. As with all legal edibles, every product's cannabinoid levels is tested in state-certified labs. The company is also getting into recipes and education on safe edibles consumption.
The incredibles factory is a grow lab, a kitchen, and a production operation all in one. The facility currently pumps out between 5,000-7,000 per day. The kitchen and lab area of the factory operate out of an 8,000-square-foot building employing executive chefs experimenting with recipes. In the Class 1 Division 1 ETL-certified extraction lab, technicians are constantly tweaking purity levels and extraction techniques. The company employs 60 employees in Colorado, and plans to open kitchens in five other locations by the end of 2016.
As with all cannabis businesses, the company still currently faces significant hurdles when it comes to banking and capital access, or lack thereof, though there is a bill called the Marijuana Businesses Access to Banking Act sitting in congressional limbo. Until the banking quandary is sorted out on a federal level, incredibles is making the most of its space and keeping the focus on consistent product and the human touch.
"My partners have come from large-scale commercial kitchens that produced 20,000-30,000 items a day. We know how to perfect a recipe and duplicate it consistently all day long," Eschino told PCMag. "We are not in a position to fully automate some of our processes because of packaging and the quality control we have in place, thus, we are still handmade and manually checked throughout the process. We check and double-check, test and test again throughout manufacturing."
Medically Correct also applied for its grow license in 2014, and incredibles now maintains a hydroponic field of 100 flowering lights as well, with plans to build out 400 more in the Denver, Colorado facility by year's end. The capital restrictions have thus far kept all of the operations in one place, so imagine walking from room to room, building to building, through fields of marijuana plants, bustling kitchens full of bakers, labs of extraction scientists, and the edibles manufacturing facility itself.
Faced with a factory landscape strewn with infused chocolates and candies amidst fields of hydroponic plant grows and—we would all hope—a rich, creamy THC chocolate river, any self-respecting cannabis enthusiast might be apt to pull an Augustus Gloop.