Latest / Ready To Drink Podcast / Cannabis Secret Shopping Exposes Why Dispensaries Are Losing Customers | Tammy Puyear, TPP Services

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Cannabis Secret Shopping Exposes Why Dispensaries Are Losing Customers | Tammy Puyear, TPP Services · Ready To Drink Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Tammy P and I'm a part of the cannabis industry, most specifically in the Missouri market.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: My company is called TPP Services, LLC.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we do secret shopping for dispensaries and brands.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm also the co-host of a show on YouTube called The Tea with Tammy P and our channel is the Real Run THC.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: So excited to be here.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I love I love the uh the name as well.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's funny.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I it's I used to have a t-shirt company years ago.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I started in Phil in Philadelphia.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I had a uh it was a Run DMC esque shirt and where it said straight out of beer, and that was instead of straight out of Compton.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I put it online, and before I even sold a t-shirt, I got I got a cease and desist from the from their lawyer and everything like that.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, let's see, usually I ignore these until I sell anything.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, this one I'm not gonna ignore.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, we were really worried in the beginning, yeah, and we were just waiting for a C and D and it just never happened.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: But like you, we've we definitely, you know, duplicate it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh they jumped after mine because it was a I think a t-shirt or whatever.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think everything, yeah, whatever.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna go after the merch stuff first.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I also want to connect with you that I love the sheet sheet shopper aspect, and I did a lot of this in the uh craft beer world in 2010 to 2017.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we would do training programs for uh independent retailers as well as Buffalo Wild Wings and a few other places, and we would do this.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we went in a couple days prior to the training, and then every time I would like open, I would build the training off of my experiences inside of the place.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And every everything was custom.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's why when I was telling you earlier, it's like uh I'm not a very structured person, but the lack of structure is what brings the progress into what I'm doing because I I absorb and I sponge what's going on, and then I build from there based off my experiences.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so tell me a little bit about what you guys do, and then what types of businesses do you guys work with?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the dispensary channel and stuff like that, but are there any others that you kind of branch out with with this?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh, you know, what yeah, tell me a little bit more about it.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited to learn more.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: That makes me really happy because that means we're doing something right.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, we have two different paths that you can take with secret shopping.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: One of them is the retailer side.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's where, you know, um Nate Snugs has five stores, and Nate wants to know what his customers are experiencing.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we can all agree that if someone from the company is in a dispensary, their behavior is not going to be toward customers the same way it is in reality.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's also um sort of an unrealistic expectation that every time a leadership person goes into a store that they have time to look at things that are minor compliance infractions, but very important.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what those focus on.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: But one of the things that I found since we launched a couple months ago is that you know, people can also be very aware of their retail and its strengths, but they're still losing customers.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so they'll ask us to secret shop their competitors so that they can see what they're up against.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the other sort of side of that is for brands.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, here in Missouri, we have different license types.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: We have a cultivation license, we have a manufacturing license, retail testing lab, transportation.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but what we find happens is that usually the brand teams run pretty lean.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: They have a couple brand ambassadors, um, some some you know ancillary salespeople in the field, but they don't necessarily have the time, nor do they get a pure experience about how their brands are being sold.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: So if, you know, you know, brand number one is in let's say 60 of the stores here in Missouri and they've got 10 stores where they're just not seeing any movement of their stuff, they can hire us to go into a store with a customer persona, um, ask about a particular category and see if their brand comes up.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And if it doesn't, why?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if it does, are they sharing the right information about it?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: That goes also into are the images on the dispensary's menu accurate?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Or are they a placeholder?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Are they a stock photo?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Is the information that they have posted about our stuff, you know, publicly, is it correct?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that usually lets us get a little bit closer on root cause as far as why sales in a particular store for a brand might not be great.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is there ever, this is my biggest growing thing with dispensaries?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know the your market specifically.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've not physically shopped that in that market, but I'm gonna use Pennsylvania and Maryland as an example.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because there's a market in West Virginia, markets I shop.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and actually New Jersey too.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um is there ever a shift?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And also let me let me change this.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I understand why re the retail side of dispensaries is let's say minimalistic and barren, because obviously you don't want flour or product in the access of the consumer before they've purchased the product from a legal standpoint.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: What is the grand reason from the dispensary category?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this is my openly my ignorance of not having it being empty merchandise, but at least merchandised.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you so that you when you're in the place, like you know, obviously you're in there and it's like a menu on a board up above there, and there's not a lot of like some of these places, like they don't have the screens all over the place, and and they don't have the details and they don't have the descriptions.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then so you're literally like a good bit of New Jersey stuff, like you're just buying off a single byline off of a off a television screen that's above your above the register.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now other places have a website with all the different stuff and they're very robust.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Where is when is there a point where maybe the trend goes to where people can begin to touch uh touch the product packaging, let me say that, not the product itself.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: So for us in Missouri, as you know, as we know, there are differences in the regulatory framework in every state, in every country.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in Missouri, some of the regulatory things make it to where we we can't display live product.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: We can only display empty packaging, which is good and bad.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: On one hand, at least you can display something.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: On the other, empty packaging is not merchandising, it's just a visual so that they aren't surprised when they are handed something, right?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Where that comes in and gets a little bit clugy in Missouri at least, is one of the regulations says that you can't see cannabis from the door.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we have the waiting room where you show your ID and then you wait for a bud tender to come get to you, or they buzz the door and you go in.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think that we're still in a place, at least in this market, where people are coming in, they're immediately getting passed to a bug tender.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so they don't necessarily have time to stroll around and look at the merchandising elements unless they're waiting on an order, or while the person that they're talking to is fulfilling their order and they can stroll around.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that's that's something that we've got to get better at from a dispensary standpoint.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: We have to be able to showcase our stuff.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: The one exception that we have in Missouri is that you can have like sniff boxes, light boxes.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there's regulations about how those are handled from a regulatory standpoint in terms of switch outs and waste and things like that.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because uh like in Colorado, for example, that's that was that was like what that was as well.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like you could go in there and sniff that.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not that's not, I understand why that's something that they wouldn't want to be prevalently everywhere in every state.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I totally am not trying to poke holes in that.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm trying to understand from the CPG standpoint of things, you know, it seems like we go into this like robotic system when it's all display, display screens and stuff like that.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of like when when when craft beer was really popular, when the screen started coming up with that as well.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And people were just like come in, and there was like no tap handles with designs, there was no uniqueness to the brands, there was no story.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, I'll take the pilsner that's 9% and it's$6.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's and and I feel like that's where in certain markets, that's what I feel like I'm being processed through at the dispensary level.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder, here's my problem with it is like to expand our audience as a cannabis industry, I feel like we're pigeonholing ourselves by not enhancing the consumer experience at at the retail and at the dispensary.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: I agree with you.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, whether it makes me a zealot or an advocate, whatever you want to call it, I think we have a real responsibility as we think about the groups that are growing the fastest.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: My parents would die before they went into a dispensary because they're completely intimidated by it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: But they're big-time consumers.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: I just become their guy, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: My my parents are daily consumers on the of the gummies to go to sleep for legit medical reasons.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: They got off of various painkillers for surgeries.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously they spent my whole their whole life, you know, punishing and reprimanding and reefer madness and all that stuff.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: But now they're in a different place.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, after me working in the industry, it's normalized it and they've understood it from an education standpoint.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: But what's funny is exactly what you just said, and I just noticed it, was they they bulk by so they don't have to keep going back.
• 10:07
  unknown: Yeah.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the other day my mom was like, Well, I'm out, and uh, and she was like, I was like, all right, we'll go get more.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was like it was like she was nervous to like go back to restock, you know?
• 10:19
  unknown: Yeah.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: We um we've got to do a better job, especially since we sort of legalized on the backs of medical patients.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I still believe very strongly in our industry for that reason, even if everything else went to shed.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um but we have to do a better job of of communicating.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the things that inherently happens in every market at different times is that the the customer experience changes from consultative between a bud tender and a patient or a bud tender and a consumer, it changes to where it can be a transaction and not consultative at all.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I've noticed in Pennsylvania is medical still, so it's a consult consultation.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: New Jersey has become a transaction, Maryland has become a transaction.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: And don't you think that a lot of like the example that you were giving, don't you think that a lot of that is driven by consumers and what they say they want when they go in?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the problem as well, is I'm like, I feel like I'm on an island where I'm like, everybody wants this right now because it's still new.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: But in order for the industry to expand and be sustainable, there's no netting.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing bring, there's nothing netting outside of what you just said, is you're driving basically, it's like we're driving, we're building it, we're building retail based on the early adopters and the ones we don't have to convince to come in.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because exactly what we just talked about is if it was a more of an inviting consumer experience, we wouldn't have boomers being being stocking up like it's Sam's Club and they only have to go twice a year.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it takes all of their summoning of energy and head to go twice a year.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I, you know, I kind of think one of the things that goes hand in hand with that is the underutilization of data.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred percent.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for saying that.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I just I spoke, uh, I gave a speech about that at the normal pen conference in Kentucky this spring.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I that was exactly that is we're not data focused, we're we're passionate focused.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you know Steph Rona.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: No, she is a retention goddess, and I I'll be glad to connect you guys, but one of the things that you know she articulates better than anyone I know is how grossly we're underutilizing our data, mainly through loyalty.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: And again, I think that goes back to where the market is in its life cycle.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I am a member or get alerts from every loyalty program in my state.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: I have never purchased an edible in the state of Missouri.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: And yet I get an email alert and a text message that my local dispensary is really excited to tell me that they're doing a discount on edibles.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, don't care.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: Or they fall into the trap of a loyalty program means discounts, period, end of story.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then they complain about all the discounting.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, for me, a loyalty program that lets me meet Dave Groll rather than giving me ten dollars off a hundred, I'm gonna lean towards the day, right?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's unique experiences, you know, it's a stream drop that's only available to loyalty and it's using the data to tell people when something that they want that they've shown you through their history they want and will continue to want to drive them to come in.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: I just it's like a gaping hole of opportunity in my mind.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's the thing that excites me the most is, and I want anybody that's in this dispensary world to listen to this is advice and not a not a negative dig.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say that because sometimes on the show and my my writing, I can be polarizing because people read my writing as negative when really I'm a realist.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not afraid to, I don't sugarcoat anything and never have.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I've been doing this for a long time and I've been nearly bankrupt multiple times trying to run my business and stand up for people in an industry.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I fiercely and passionately defend it, and I don't waste time on sugarcoating optimism if it's not there.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the difference of an operator like yourself and myself versus somebody who works for a company, and that's not a dig on that either.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's the fact that I know what's in the bank account, I know what's where it's going.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: My biggest problem is, and you just nailed it, and I so thank you for saying it, because here's like the alcohol industry would kill to have keystroke data from a DTC website standpoint on Mary Jane or whatever one I'm signing up for.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that you can see, like, I can build a website today and I do it all the time, and I can watch how long people sit on certain products, and I can watch how long they're there, and I'm monitor that.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, regulate don't ruin NC is a thing we run uh for the state of North Carolina for hemp beverages.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's ours.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: We run that in partnership with Tryon, and then we run it through the website through our media side.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm every day on there watching how long people are on there.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: People come on that site because it's an education site, and an average person's visit is 11 minutes and 17 seconds.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is 11 minutes they're spending on that website, and I we're not even selling them anything.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's because we're they're reading and digesting everything.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the point of the website.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the second that it goes to 90 seconds on a visit, then I realize I need to change the website because I'm monitoring the data.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: On the flip side, you know, during COVID, I was uh I thought the best thing ever was to get e-commerce into the alcohol industry.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So have people go online and purchase their stuff online and then go to the liquor store and then they get it and then they minute diminish their time in the in the exposed to COVID or whatever scenario you want.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was going societally on that.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Where where it is is these uh alcohol industries would kill to have that kind of data.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that you're you're exactly right.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the the emails are just the general here's what we want to push out the door today.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what then happens is I'm speaking as a consumer now, not as any anything else.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I end up buying you know a vape that I get home and it's dark and it's oxidized or or whatever happened because it's it's old.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what they're doing is they're claiming it as specials and promotions, but in the alcohol world, we call these fire sales or close to codes.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and we're open and honest in the alcohol side, and we're not open and honest in the cannabis side.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And also take the flip side.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like, and I hate to say this, it works to the advantage that people don't want to frequent the store because when you go home, most of the time I'm the consumer as well, and I do this.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, I guess I'm just gonna finish it because I don't feel like going back.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't want to wait in line again.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to, because I even though I'm not averse to the societal norm and I don't want the stigma doesn't affect me.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: It also is just, it is sometimes you got to go there and you got to wait in line.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's like I'm at a place and there's 10 deep and we're on a highway, and I'm just standing in line outside, and I'm like, you know, it's not something I really want to spend my time doing.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I feel the same way about Starbucks or or the CVS.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'll go pick up a prescription.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: If there's nine people in line, I'll go the next day or or I'll find or I'll transfer my script to another CVS.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I fear, and I'm saying this as a place of support, is is I fear that we're we're we're complaining that there's no growth and there's no profitability, but we're not making the strategic efforts to expand the audience.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate that because I I I feel like I I f I uh I'm on an island with that sometimes, you know.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: Not even.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I think we've got to it's been really easy for people to sort of do this one size fits all or copy what happened in another market.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, don't do this because it failed there or do this because it succeeded there.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: There has to be more to it than that, and we have to be able to figure out operationally how we can make things run smoothly without alienating potential customers, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: But also listening to them, you know, if your person at reception checks in four people and those four people are waiting in the lobby and they're waiting 20 minutes, chances are they're just gonna leave.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: So does the store then look at that piece of data?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: How many people checked in versus how many people checked out?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean you look at anybody else, any other beverage brand, CPG brand is watching that on their website.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: If there's an abandoned cart in 24 hours, you better be sending them an email.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I would say, you know, there's even some metrics that that I personally don't believe should be metrics unless you have a performance issue, and that's transaction time.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I've shopped some stores where one of their KPIs is that their transaction time needs to be under X.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: I can understand that being an issue and being a focus.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: If you have a store where you've got a really chatty bug tender and they wind up spending 30 minutes with someone and there's 20 people waiting.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Transaction time makes total sense.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: But I think there's better ways to approach it so that they're having a quality conversation, no matter how long it takes.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you know, there's also the people who see it as a KPI and immediately want to strive to meet it, whatever that takes.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so their behavior completely changes.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: In stores where there's not typically a wait.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't see transaction time as a really valid metric on how successful your store is.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, foot traffic turnover, sure.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: But what's more important to you?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Foot traffic turnover or loyalty and a great experience and potentially a great review.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and segmenting it.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can tag the terminals, and I mean, I've got every terminal, everyone I've been into that is medical and recreational has different terminals for those processes.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll you're already separating the transactions.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when you get that data and net it, you can already separate the the transaction times.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And medical will it should take longer than recreational.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And let's all of a sudden you're gonna get a new customer in every once in a while that's gonna need educated on the process and understanding in the recreational side.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a good thing because that's the other thing.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's the other thing you're not tracking, is like it's like, oh, wait, how many new customers just signed up on the website?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then the thing that gets me though, too, is what you said in the beginning is the newsletters and the and the promotions.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if I had somebody on a liquor store site and they were cruising for tequila and ordering tequila, like you said, you never ordered a gummy before.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's the biggest thing I tell liquor stores is like you send out a tequila-only promotion or get get call your suppliers of tequila and say, I've got 75 tequila consumers that are purchasing every single week.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Come down and do a tasting, and I'll push out an email to these 75 people.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And every single brand in the world, if they could get 75 people for two hours or an hour to come and do a sampling, and that's a win for every single person in that ecosystem.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not what I know.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: We can't these tastings in dispensaries, that's not what I'm suggesting, but maybe it's a you know, it's a sticker, and you you know, come on in and you get a sticker with this or something simple that then begins to target.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then begin surgically looking and analyzing the data.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate this conversation because it the data, we're in a data-centric world, and it's completely ironic.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I say this on all industries in the CPG, they're not using data correctly in that sense.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say this is not picking on dispensaries or anything like that.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: But that is one of the biggest things that I want to get through to this because a lot of my writing and a lot of these episodes, people have interpreted that I'm bashing dispensaries.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to be clear that I am a consumer.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a consumer and it saved my life.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm coming up on four years sober, and I and that is what got me through.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, from alcohol and opiates.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's real, and I work in the alcohol industry still to this day.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I took a year off and then I came back because I missed the people and I missed the culture.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And now in the past five years, working in the cannabis and the hemp space, I've seen so many opportunities that are missed.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all missed opportunities because for whatever reason, I feel like I don't know if it's ego or it's like we're trying to carve our own path.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because I hear all the time, it's like, well, regulatory, we can't do that.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, well, what about all the these seven other things?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like sometimes it's like they're I feel like people are hiding behind the regulatory thing as opposed to like be a consumer experience for everyone.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and in the scenario that you described with the tequila, think about it from the 75 tequila people, from their perspective, when they get something that says, we know that you love tequila, and we're doing a very special event, and you're one of the people that's invited to it, it's an exclusive event.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: That makes me feel like Nate knows what I like exactly as a consumer.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to, we they they all have to, because let's also be really frank, the consumer is becoming obviously knowing that the the rise and the true leaves and things like that are not their local business.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like their local, their local community members are employed by those places, but they're not a local business.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and eventually what'll happen is it'll get to the point where it's like they realize that you know those businesses are not supporting, you know, the local beef and beers and the and the barbecues and the community fundraisers and things like that.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than building this island over here and perpetuating the stigma, because that's what's that's what it is.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of acclimating yourself into the flow, because the consume the consumer's gonna buy the same way in all of these stores.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's a dispensary, a liquor store, or a grocery store, we all know that they they're gonna buy the same way.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: A cons the psychology doesn't shift when they get buzzed in with their library slices.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: So the to not see that you're creating the friction, that is why you're not expanding your audience.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it unlike you, I just the amount of opportunity that's out there just boggles the mind and it can get really frustrating.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about your story as well.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know where your passion came in for this.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I you said you started this a couple years ago, and I don't want to get hung up on us critiquing for an hour of how we would run a dispensary, but I do think these are important conversations to have.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're not they're not being said because everybody's afraid to say it.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's afraid to say you're a big conglomerate and you're screwing it up.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I don't I don't know how many of your viewers sort of follow the industry nationally, but in Missouri, we've got a pretty pretty big showdown happening.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: We have um an operator who is being sued by some other operators for being a cartel in our market.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, you can certainly go and read about it and all of that, but essentially we have and the regulators have enabled one company under various LLCs to completely dominate and change our pricing, our sales, everything about us, because they own the highest percentage of licenses in the state.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, when you were talking about ego and things like that, that kind of political climate, for lack of a better term, has a serious impact.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: When you can go on Reddit, Lord knows we don't think that's the greatest source of information, but you can sometimes really get a feel for what a part of your population is about.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um so that's one thing that's really big for us, but it's definitely having an impact on sales because from the moment the lawsuit was started, every month when we see the headset report for for that month in this market, that brand slips even further down because consumers are pissed about it and they should be.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: So they're regular they're pushing their price, they're pushing their price out to all those licenses.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: They're requiring that if you want to be on the shelves in their store that you promise them a 70% margin.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can't do that, they're not interested.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: What is the most appalling about that, in my opinion, is that they're not taking that margin and passing on savings to the consumer.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_04: Right, you're just ripping everybody off.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: So when was the last time you knew a producer who had a 70% margin of their own when they're selling wholesale?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: Not even remotely.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: So walk through me through, let's go through that actually, real quick.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, like in in let's just keep going to alcohol as a comparison.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: You have manufacturer, distributor, retailer.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's grabbing 20, 30, 30, 30 throughout those tiers.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of how for anybody listening that's not in that industry, that's how it works.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: So your product is way cheaper when the manufacturer makes it, and then every every tier marks it up.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: People use that as a negative, but everybody has to make money.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: They all they all have things to do.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it's 30, 40% might be the worst I've ever seen.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: 30% on each tier.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: To hear a 70% for, and explain to me, because I'm ignorant of this.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do they own, do, do the, let's say the brands, do they own their own distribution of their brands to the dispensaries, or is there a tier of like gym's logistics that covers like has a warehouse of all the brands and then disseminates and distributes out to all the dispensaries?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, everybody controls their own distribution.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're grabbing all the tiers all the way through.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I did not realize they were vertically integrated.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: The larger groups that are critical and have a big footprint, some of them have set up distribution centers, but it's still we're controlling our end of it.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: So if Nate Snugs is producing big carts and they're going to be sold in one of these chains, um their responsibility is to ship to the distribution hub that that particular tailor maintains and they use their own transportation to get it out there.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they operate like a grocery store would with certain high-end brands have a central distribution.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 29:10
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: So wow.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that is uh that's some highway robber.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when they complain, so when they complain about the high price, when the consumers complain about the high prices, sometimes, let's not say all the time, but sometimes it's actually self-inflicted by the origin of the brand.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Without question.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing that that I think really traps me is that consumers, at least in this market, are not well versed in understanding that the dispensary sets the price.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: I can say what I want you to sell it at, a recommended MSRP, but you're gonna sell it for whatever you want.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's the same in alcohol.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's illegal, it's an illegal, it's illegal to uh sell into alcohol and tell the retailer what to sell it at.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can't even, at least in let me just speak of Pennsylvania, is you cannot even put an MSR like uh with the non-alcoholic and the food stuff that we've sold over the years, you can say, hey, look, a$9.99 is the MSRP for this product.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: In alcohol, you cannot dictate any, it's illegal to dictate that.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: At least if a law changed in the past few years, but that's been indoctrinated into me when I was younger and everything like that.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like you'll never on a product sheet see a uh suggested retail price or an MSRP.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it and it is indicative in the retail aspect because I've been kicked out of places many times because people will be like, you don't tell me what I charge.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and you can, if they ask you, you're allowed to be like, well, you know, the rest of the market's doing this.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because also when you get into that as a as a brand or as a wholesaler in the alcohol space, you begin to get in that price fixing illegality.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even in the in conferences, we're not allowed to talk about pricing.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're at a trade show, we're not allowed to talk about what prices are and different.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And literally, it's there's signs everywhere in alcohol conferences as you walk.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's signs that that remind you you will be exited from the conference if you speak about pricing.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're also not allowed in conferences in the past year or two, you're also not allowed to sell anything on the conference floor.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, unless you're an exhibitor or a booth, you're not allowed to talk business on the conference floor.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, like as a as somebody who goes and scouts at those things, I literally will like hand my card over and exchange information and talk about the concepts of what I do, but I cannot speak about what it costs to work with.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm guessing, just given that, and thanks for that education.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm guessing that it's probably similar in bev as it is on um cannabis, in that you can really impact a brand by how it's priced.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I worked for a manufacturer that was brand new to the market, completely new products, and one of the products when we first got into stores, we got into a store group of seven stores, and the brand was blowing out the doors.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: They loved the price, which was our MSRP.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: They loved the price, they loved the quality, they loved everything about it.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, or fortunately, it was outselling the house brands at the dispensary group that I'm referring to.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: So they took it upon themselves to jack up the MSRP by eight dollars in that particular product because their own house brand of that same category was underperforming.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: So they priced us higher so that they could try and get more of their house brand.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: In the beginning it was awesome because they were placing huge orders with us every week and our brand was getting out there.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: But as soon as they made that change, our brand dried up in those stores.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, eight dollars is significant.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's it is what do you think is the re what do you think is the reason?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you do you think it's just do you think it's the fact that it's still new and we're trying to find the market threshold?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you think it's really like let's see how much we can slip through?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think there are people that fall into both camps.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think the majority, it's just pure greed.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_04: That's what I'm thinking.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that's ugly and awful, and greed exists in every industry.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's not unique to us.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we have shrinkflation, and or that's what I call the shrink or uh, you know, uh planned obsoletions.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we deal with it in every industry, you know.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the part that's ironic, is because this industry has a responsibility because it was built and regulated and opened up to be focused on the consumer.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that they're so unique that they had that responsibility.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like it's slipping away.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I do believe it's a responsibility.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think if we fought this hard and jumped through all of the hoops that us and our predecessors did to get this into the hands of people that need it and want it because it's a plant.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um I feel like we're we're diminishing that.
• 34:14
  unknown: You know.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because who's to say someday that some congressman doesn't get a bug up their ass and want to start investigating it?
• 34:22
  unknown: Yeah.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, what did you just do?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: You just had all these paper trails, all these experiences that just expose the reason they didn't want you to be in the industry in the first place.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: So you know, what better time in our history to see that in action with the rescheduling?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's what I'm getting at.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what I'm getting at is like we are under a lot, we uh both cannabis hemp are all the same in my in my mind.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're just subcategories of a greater category.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe that that is that could potentially be the issue.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: What are there ever positive conversations?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do are there, let me ask this this way.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've not experienced this, and I think it's because of where I've been geographically.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Are there independent operators that are doing things the right way, like regular retail in a certain way, within their own regulations?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that way we can kind of let's let's kind of give them a platform too, yeah.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think, you know, um, one of the things that's a really good example in our market that I feel like really took on the industry as a leader and started in Missouri is Show Me Organics.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Their brands um are Vivid, which are in multiple states, and their dispensaries are Blue Sage Cannabis Deli.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: They did a media campaign in mainstream media, it's probably going on two years ago, where they basically pointed at drug manufacturers and said, Hey, take your own medicine, let's see how you do with it.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was to show the opiates and all of the things that prescription medication has done to our society and how we're trying to combat that with natural medicine.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: But it was and you'll be you'll easily find it, but the campaign was impeccable.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_04: That I'll have to I'll have to you have to send me a send me a link.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh Yeah, I would love to check out the uh everything that they did with that.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: You got it.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_04: What are um they're a group, you're good.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: They're a group that does a really nice job with their dispensaries.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: They have a medical focus um and they don't leave their people hanging when customers come in and have a question.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: If someone doesn't really know the right response, they're gonna make sure in the in those stores that they get that person an answer.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_04: What um where do you see this all going?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's say let's say the scheduling changes.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see this continuing or do you see that bringing a bit of relief to the industry that allows the dust to settle, that they can not work in survival mode in this attack, this kind of aggressive mode, or does it throw a gasoline on what's going on already?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I like I'm sure all of us have tried to figure out.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: I've looked at it six ways into Sunday, as my grandmother would say.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I think descheduling would be my preference so that it doesn't become um a bigger nightmare.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: Rescheduling will bring some relief, especially on the banking side.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the 280E retailers are gonna rejoice if that winds up, you know, coming to fruition and they can write off some of that stuff as expenses.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: But even with the paperwork that you had to fill out when the rescheduling started and you know, operators were encouraged to fill out the form.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: Just reading the questions on the form makes my stomach hurt.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because my view of it is you're asking me to put in writing that I've committed racketeering by virtue of your own definition.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: But you're presenting it to me as oh, this isn't punitive.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: We're not gonna we're not gonna use that for anything.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: This is so we can make you legal under rescheduling, and I don't buy that.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's it's the way the mechanics of it works definitely looks like entrapment.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_04: That terrifies me.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a lot of uh I've never like I've been in the alcohol business for a long time, and not until the past couple years, like I've never been like uh I got served uh papers and stuff like that for the hemp beverage stuff.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it was amazing the games that are played in the entrapment game because and I'm gonna call it out as it is.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: I get multi in Pennsylvania, there's multiple district attorneys that run obviously each county.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so when you're driving and doing sales for hemp beverages, it's legal to sell anywhere that is not selling or distributing or manufacturing alcohol.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's the one law.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it leads up tobacco shops, vape shops, and uh, and you know, coffee shops, things like that.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: As long as you don't have a liquor license, you can sell hemp beverages.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have a bill, House Bill 2309 coming, which is going to be to the bolt-on.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we build a bill.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, I listened to everybody, every industry, including the marijuana industry and dispensaries and medical, and they were like, Well, we want to have hemp beverages in our place.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want them in liquor stores.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there's another bill that they're trying to do that's only exclusively to their stuff.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Our bill is the opposing bill that allowed what basically what we did was we added a part in there where they could buy the hemp beverage permit as well.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we kind of took the wind out of their sales and said, okay, if you want to sell it, great.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: But also the liquor store down the street can, as long as they have a permit, the blah blah blah, all the way down, the brewery down the street also can produce it and sell it over there if they have a permit as well.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the funniest thing was that didn't go over as well as I thought it would, because in my mind, in my my centrist uh, you know, libertarian mind, I said, all right, well, everybody wins because everybody gets to compete.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, you know, I'm a capitalist.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an 18-year business owner.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that's a beautiful, that's a beautiful bill because it means that the person down the street, to my mind, this is how my ecosystem works and why this is.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't about ego, and it's not about opposing and political bullshit.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the fact that as a dispensary owner, you could have X brand, okay, of 10 milligram at your dispensary.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then somebody else down the street, Jim's Tavern, could have X brand over the bar.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: When somebody drinks X brand over the bar, that 10 milligram at Jim's Tavern, and then they say, Hey, Jim, where can I get a four-pack of this to take it home?
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Jim's going to point down to the dispensary.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then what happens is Susie, who's never been to a dispensary before, because she just experienced the product outside of the network.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the consumer journey for a reason.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's called, it's why CPG brands have been built themselves on it.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: For so, whatever reason, the cannabis industry does not click that they are a regular CPG now and they need to operate the same way in the psychology of the consumer.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is a net, it is a beginning of the customer journey to expand the dispensary network.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do I want everybody going to dispensaries?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if they want to, yeah, great.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, the fact that it is that we have come to this place now in the legislation and everything where it's like it's my basketball game, or I'm taking the ball home with me.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is the most immature philosophy.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that it is the leading philosophy is so disturbing to me.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I also think that we do a lot of glossing over on the mainstream media side.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's all about public safety and protecting our children.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as we have Welch's grape juice hard and uh Sonny B.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I guess I can get bleach in the grocery store and drink it in the aisle as a four-year-old.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: And nobody attacks Florax.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Or I can sit and eat an entire box of Captain Crunch.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody's gonna call General Mills.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was an argument I had with a congressman the other day, and uh let's just say debate, and it was about the the incidences of of kids being exposed to cannabis and hemp and all this stuff.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and I pointed out, I said, Do you know that 2,700 kids a year have alcohol instances and hospital ER visits and things like that?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, No, I didn't know that.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, the fact is you didn't look because that's it.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: What you just said is exactly it, is that we've normalized, and I'm I'm I'm one that represents breweries and wineries and distilleries, and they all are, I confidently can say this in public and on the record because they're not out trying to push five-gallon barrels of their stuff.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're not out trying to do this, they're trying to operate in a responsible, moderated manner because at the end of the day, they know that if you kill your consumer, you don't have a consumer anymore.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and with all of the attacks on hemp, and I it's an unpopular opinion in my state with with some folks, but I don't want everything that you think is a danger to children and public health, don't lump it all in one bucket.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: The reality is there are a lot of people making THC products and selling them, and they're above board on all of it.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: They have valid lab testing, they're not trying to be something they're not.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then you have all of the opportunist assholes who are creating things synthetically, HHC, all of those things, Delta Eight, those are the bad guys, not the C D D, not CDN, not these other cannabinoids.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: That can bring people a lifetime of quality versus misery.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I hate seeing it all lumped together because what they're selling in a gas station is not cannabis.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's some there, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna I'll add a caveat that there are some gas stations that carry stuff that is off board of Farm Bill and all that stuff, but at the most part is right.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: The most part is high octane, thousand milligram stuff that you don't need to be I don't even think anybody in the dispensary needs to be.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like I I was in New Jersey and uh and a couple months ago doing uh I surveyed a hundred retailers uh to try to assess the market of uh how much hemp beverages were affecting liquor stores in the off-premise.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: So and out of those hundred, the amount of times I found thousand milligram bottles on the shelf that I couldn't, I couldn't even like I asked all of them.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, do any does anybody buy these?
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, well, some people do, and I know exactly who it is.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same people that were outside the liquor store at 8 a.m., uh 7.45 standing in line waiting to for the liquor store to open.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: It the fact that we are the disturbing part is as somebody who is sober and got out of that, the fact that we're now building products to push those people down further into their into their place, that's where it personally, it personally angers me.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it angers me that that opportunist can say, well, there are people for it, and be right when he says that.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he is right.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: There are people that will stand outside a liquor store at 845.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was one of them.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, I'm not proud of who that person was.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I was not a productive person in society or in my personal life when I was consuming that level at that speed, at that kind, at that kind of routine.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me, it's not from a place of no, no, no, it's from a place of no, it's hard as hell to get sober, and it's hard as hell to kick those habits, and it's hard as hell when people are pushing you in front of you.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: And people like you that have become sober from two very, very dangerous things.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: You're the people that I want to fight for in places like Texas.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: I personally know someone who struggled with alcoholism for decades.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: But as soon as that person was able to use cannabis instead, they were all in.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, in Texas, that's not legal.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, they don't give anything they're medical, yes, they just gave out some new licenses, but it's not gonna be the next Colorado, it's not gonna be the next Delaware.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: They just want to keep outlying.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so my fear is for the people that are on your journey.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: They found an alternative, they're not doing the same damage to their body, and now you want to make it illegal.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_02: So, what do they do now?
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: Go back to booze.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the thing, is like I I I said that in a couple different I was in on uh Capitol Hill and I sat down with a couple different congressmen and their staff, and I told my story.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, like, I told them, and I actually broke down crying, and not not I should still speak, but I had tears coming where I said, I it scares me.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like it scares me.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm I'm here for me and I'm here for them, but I'm here for the other people like me because it does frighten me.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because like I am coming up on four years and I'm in the alcohol industry, and that doesn't bother me because I have these other things, I have these other tools, and I'm not a ritual drinker.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: I that was my big agreements myself, was no, I don't even some days I cut coffee out just because I'm like, well, I've been I've been too routine about it, and I'll just mess with myself.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not a habitual hemp beverage drinker, you know what I mean?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm not here advocating the industry, but I probably have a couple a month because I because of the way I have to live my life in a way of protecting my habits and my addictive personality.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact that they're there in one can or two cans at a barbecue doesn't send me on a bender for four days.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: The molecule's different.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: The molecule does its purpose, but it doesn't stay with me.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't inhibit cravings, it doesn't spend the, you know, send the hair on the back of my neck up.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like things like that.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas other things have.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it's funny because I don't know that all of the people that run bars quite understand that there's an opportunity for a market increase for them if they have had that.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: Because people like me and a couple of the people in my nearest circle, we don't drink.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: But very often our ilk and our you know, friend groups want to gather in a bar.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, as someone that doesn't drink, I can think of 25 anybody like what are we doing?
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: And because most bars you can't smoke in, and in some bars you can't smoke outside of without catching um a rash of shit.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um the fact that I can go to a bar with my friends and I can dump a ripple in my Kool-Aid that I'm drinking, or I can grab a hemp bez, means that I get to have a good time in those settings where normally I would avoid going altogether.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and you're exactly right.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why uh that's one of the main reasons why I I tell this about the bill in Pennsylvania, is so that bars and restaurants can carry this because I'll I'll do the snaps and bees and all that stuff, and the the one you can just snap inside and and pour it inside your drink.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: I carry those around with me if I'm out at bars, but it's illegal.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know what I mean?
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'll be honest.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like you see me at a bar, like uh, that's probably what I'm doing.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but at the same time, I my story is that my dream is to sit at a bar again, like I used to, to enjoy the social part of everything of that, and and be able to sit there and have a hemp beverage with with my friends.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: And because I love non-alcoholic beer, athletic, you know, all that stuff is great, but it's a different experience than a hemp beverage.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, non-alcoholic beer is not the same experience.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: It it it'll quell a little bit of it, but it doesn't do it.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: And my the the you know, I visualize this this picture is is where we're not going and and I'm not a I'm a one-man show, so I can only do so much from that standpoint.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: But just the simple photo of two people's backs, and there's there's a pilsner glass and you know, a M can next to it, and it's at the bar.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like that is all I need to walk in and say, this is the dream.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is where we need to go.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: And every bar owner, you're exactly right, and I'll give you the exact data.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had an info uh down in North Carolina, I did a bunch of interviews with retailers, and uh A B Tony at A B Bottle Shop came in here on Atlantic Beach on an episode 35% of his revenue.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's a bar on the beach in North Carolina, 35% of his revenue is hemp beverages.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's been in business and been in the alcohol industry for 20 or 30 years.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: He literally said if the ban comes through, he doesn't know if the bar will last.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the ripple that we are not talking about, that I'm talking about, that nobody else is, is the interviews that I do in here.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm do three, three to four of these a day, some that it gets published and some that don't.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: But what I also do is it's data collection.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm getting this information.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in Pennsylvania specifically, these guys, these brewers, these other places, North Carolina, even New Jersey, when I did that survey, 25 to 20, 30 percent of their revenue on the off-premise liquor stores was hemp beverages.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have to acknowledge as an alcohol industry that, and I just that was an article I wrote yesterday that I got a lot of flack from because people read it the wrong way.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was another one of those things was a real article about the alcohol industry and the cannabis industry being short-sighted and not seeing the fact that they should all be coming together because hemp beverages specifically, I'm not speaking about gummies and flour at this point.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not against it, I'm just not speaking about it in this moment.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hemp beverages are the beginning of the customer journey.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Both industries need to expand their audience.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's how you do it.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because an alcohol company is not gonna, if somebody doesn't drink alcohol and they're 45 years old or 40 years old, they're not gonna start today.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're not starting in 2026.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and if they're like me, where they drank like a profusely like a fish for their whole life and they were on untapped and now all of a sudden they have gut problems and they can't do any of that stuff, and they're like, I can't drink anymore, but I want to socialize.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's how you keep them in.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if you eventually have a Bacardi 10 milligram, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact is, don't kill the industry before you've had the opportunity to expand your lineup.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's where I don't get where the business side of things, you know, everybody wants to put their principles in and saving the kids.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like, if you wanted to save the kids, you would have killed the bill, you would have killed the industry months ago, you wouldn't have prolonged it, you wouldn't have given a one-month extension.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that argument's off the table now.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let's all admit that it's not about child safety, it's about capitalism and corruption and the corporate lobbying that goes on for these short-sighted CEOs that just think that are so linear and old school that they can't see that this is the next venture.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as you kill the next venture, how are you going to explain two years from now or a year from now when you're laying people off?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because let's also remember though, the little thing we don't want to talk about is GLP ones.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: GLP ones have a target of 10 to 20% of American population.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, guess what?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're not allowed to drink when you're on a GLP one.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: So 10 to 20% of the population is about to become sober if the GLP ones are successful.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: So a year or two from now, when you have to lay people off, you you can't blame hemp beverages.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: I completely agree.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll add a caveat too.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_02: The thing that really, really is something constant that defies logic in my mind is that all of this talk about protecting the children, the children are not going into dispensaries and getting legal products.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: The children, if they're getting into legal products at home, that is a parental responsibility.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you leave a bottle of bleach out and I think it looks interesting, I might try to drink it.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: But you don't bring down the bleach industry with it.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're a consumer and a parent, my belief is that you have a responsibility to secure things that you don't want to risk getting in your kid's hands.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it should be handled in households the same way it's handled with alcohol.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're exactly right.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh I'll close out with this one is uh is the the the data when you take the onions past the data, that's the differential.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at the ER visits and all this stuff, and it sounds anybody that wants to be opponents is gonna say, you guys are splitting hairs.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's data.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact is the data is one, you're grabbing surface level data to show ER visits.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: When you go to point of purchase to the origin of the ER visit, which is the questions the ERs are asking these people, it was consumed at home.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was misplaced improperly by the parents, and that is the problem.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is not it, and it even in gas stations, like stuff comes up locally here in the news, and I look it up, I'll call the gas station because I know these people, and I'll call them and be like, what happened there?
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he'll literally go, Mom bought it and left it out on the count in the kitchen table.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like the kid didn't come in here and buy it.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I don't want us to be the scapegoat for shitty parenting.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly it.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly it.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I Tammy, this was fantastic.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean it.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like this was a real conversation about real things that needed to really be said.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: And there, there people get so uncomfortable to have these conversations.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I really just respect and appreciate you taking the time and being so transparent and real with me on this conversation.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: I have enjoyed it.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably going to be the highlight of my week.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much for having me.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know that I owe you an introduction and that I owe you a campaign video, and I'll get both of them to you today.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Again, thank you so thank you so much for coming on.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: Real quick, uh, before we close out, um just kind of give everybody the website where to find you guys if they want to work with you and things like that.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, for secret shopping, it's Tammy-P dot com.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: And for our YouTube show, it's uh the real run to you to see on YouTube.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Pull that sticker up real quick so everybody can see it.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks again, Tammy, for coming on and having the courage with no questions, no prep.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: We've never met before.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want to remind everybody uh we are complete strangers, but now we are friends.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm I'm really looking anytime that within 60 minutes we can get this deep and this this kind of honest about something, I know that's a good person on the other end of the screen.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for that.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: And remind everybody in the audience that five minutes a week challenge of kindness to a stranger, 20 minutes a month.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: When you're walking down the street, put your phone in your pocket, look at the people while you're walking by, smile at the strangers, don't be creepy, just smile, put every put some good vibes out there.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: When you're at the gas station filling up your cup of coffee, look to the person to your left or your right, ask them how they're doing, shut your mouth and listen to their story.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the the world is a beautifully disruptive place.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: 2026 is a madhouse, but there's also a lot of great things going on.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: Your life might be full, but that doesn't mean everybody else's as well.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: That five minutes could change somebody's day, week, month, or God forbid they wanted to leave this earth.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: You might give them a second pause of that human connection to make them want to stick around and live a little bit longer with us.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, Tammy, thank you so much.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: And really, it's I don't mean to bring this into a downer, but it's a positive.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a positive thing because that's the power of what it is of the products that we sell.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: These products that we all sell and we promote and we and we advocate for, they are social bridges.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: They are the power of the human connection.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're not selling paper towels and napkins and ziploc bags.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're selling social connection.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for coming on and having the courage to come on today without any prep.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait until we talk again.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Tim, you have a good rest of your day.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: You too.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: Bye nate.