Grassroots Marketing

Grassroots Marketing learns about Reepher and their Personal Liability Protection for Cannabis Consumers with their Founder and CEO Justin Kahn.

reepher is a new type of personal liability protection that provides its members with money to defend themselves when facing cannabis DUI charges.

Reepher provides criminal and DUI defense insurance for Cannabis consumers. If you’re charged with a cannabis misdemeanor, reepher will help cover the costs associated with defending yourself and navigating through the justice system. Plans are affordable and start at $15/month.

Forty-eight percent of Americans have less than $1,000 to spend on unexpected out-of-pocket expenses. With up to $15,000 in available benefits, a reepher membership means you have the money you need to defend yourself regardless of the balance in your savings account. A reepher membership offers up to the following coverage limits:

$ 8,000 for the legal defense team of your choice

$ 1,000 If your car is towed or impounded

$ 1,000 for alternative transportation

$ 1,000 for any pre-trial costs

$ 1,500 for your personal hardships

$ 1,000 For incidental expenses

$ 1,500 for the time you spend in court

https://reepher.com/

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Rachel Tatusko, is the owner of Aphrodite Consulting and holder of an equity manufacturing and production license in California. She has built multiple emerging edible brands into multi-million dollar companies. Now she's launching her own first product: Happy Trails pre-rolls.

Rachel Tatusko, founder of Aphrodite Distribution, is a lifelong cannabis enthusiast and advocate with roots in the U.S. traditional market. From budtender to business owner, she is also shaped by a background in corporate sales and the mental health non-profit sector. Her passion for helping people has led to creating products that are as approachable as they are safe for consumers. A sales dynamo, she has helped build multiple emerging edible brands into multi-million dollar companies. Now she's weeks away from launching her first product on the recreational market: Happy Trails.

Happy Trails pre-rolls will become available In the California Bay Area and Los Angeles recreational market the week after Valentine’s Day 2022.

Happy Trails will launch with bubble hash-infused pre-rolls and high quality pre-packaged flower. The accessible flower line includes a weed lover’s salad of strains dubbed “Trail Mix” which will be a melody of premium cultivars packaged together for consumers to enjoy.

Website in progress- IG handle is @happytrails_cannabis

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VMCC is committed to providing training and economic opportunities for individuals, especially those impacted by cannabis arrests, interested in pursuing a career in cannabis. Virginia Minority Cannabis Coalition recently launched a BootCamp program which recently finished with 6 graduates who are putting together business plans in preparation for the state going legal.

Advocates raise alarm about effort in Virginia to cut marijuana social equity fund
https://mjbizdaily.com/advocates-concerned-about-effort-to-cut-virginia-marijuana-social-equity-fund/

Minority-business advocates are concerned about a Republican-led bill in Virginia that would eliminate social equity funding for the state’s adult-use marijuana program.

Senate Bill 107, filed by state Sen. Thomas Norment Jr., would delete the line in last year’s adult-use legalization law that calls for 30% of the revenue to be funneled into a cannabis equity investment fund.

It’s uncertain whether the measure has a chance of passing in the Senate, where Democrats hold a narrow majority of 21-19.

But social equity advocates say the bill demonstrates an effort to dismantle provisions in the legalization bill, against the wishes of the public.

The legislation emphasized licensing opportunities for small and minority-owned local businesses.

“Having funding is essential to the success of an equity program, and eliminating that funding (would be) a slap in the face to those who have worked so hard to ensure Virginia has a healthy and equitable cannabis market,”

BIPOCANN, Virginia Minority Cannabis Coalition, Nolef Turns and Columbia Care Join Forces to Drive Social Equity Opportunities in Virginia Cannabis Industry https://www.yahoo.com/now/bipocann-virginia-minority-cannabis-coalition-143500332.html

"This type of social equity work is not just about getting a job, it’s about leveling up lives." "This is an opportunity for the Commonwealth to create a cannabis ecosystem that is built around economic inclusion. With this network of partners, we are accelerating work that I thought would take years and implementing it in just months."

vmccequity.org

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Grassroots Marketing talks about Life Enhancement Services and Fighting the Good Fight for Medical Cannabis with Hakeem Brown.

Hakeem Brown has been fighting the good fight in the medical cannabis industry for years. Despite facing racism and raids as a Black grower and dispensary owner, he continues to push forward and provide medicine through his company, Life Enhancement Services. With his company, Life Enhancement Services, he is providing medicine for his patients.


“I think early on, police were used to arresting Black and Brown men for cannabis, and just
because suddenly the state changed it, in their minds, nothing had changed,” Brown says.
“Cannabis is one of the only cases in the U.S. where you’re guilty until proven innocent, and that
gives law enforcement a lot of leeway to arrest you. I’ve been arrested multiple times, raided,
arrested with my son in the car. All they had to do was look at the paperwork and see we were
doing everything legally, but they couldn’t get that into their heads.”


This type of brutal prejudice would have soured most from the industry, but not Brown. He
keeps pushing for patient rights and advocating for cannabis and continues to do what he loves
and work in the industry.


“That’s the story of my life, being raided by officers who were overly eager, being treated like a
drug dealer instead of a real cannabis advocate. So, it was tough getting into legal cannabis,
because you have to have the money, and because of the assumptions people make. But I
want to keep fighting and keep pushing to show people that Black cannabis dispensary owners
aren’t just criminals.”


In 2011, the referendum to impose a business license tax rate of 10 percent on the sale of
medical cannabis products within the city was passed, thanks in part to Brown’s support.
Thanks to his efforts, Life Enhancement Services and Brown are able to serve the community
with legal cannabis. Cannabis activists with Re-Start Vallejo and Vallejo Patients Coalition
supported this move.

To support Brown, medical patients in Vallejo can patronize his store, Life Enhancement
Services. Others can follow along with his story and continue to support Black cannabis
entrepreneurs, criminal record expungement, and a final end to the racist war on drugs.

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ZIPPZ founder Scott Eagle has dealt with his own anxiousness and sleep issues over the past 20 years. He’s also served on the board of directors for two separate pharmaceutical companies over the course of his career marketing wellness products. He has brought the same approaches that these companies use to the development of CBD products with ZIPPZ. The team at ZIPPZ is made up of expert physicians and scientists who work to develop unique CBD formulations.


With these scientific formulations, ZIPPZ is providing effective relief for those who haven’t been able to find it anywhere else.


CBD is a widely touted wonder-medication, with countless individuals and organizations praising its diverse present and prospective applications. Unfortunately, the fact that CBD is derived from cannabis and the associated stigma have left the public without reliable information. People don’t know how CBD can help them or what dose to use. That’s because they can’t go to a doctor for a CBD-derived therapy from major pharmaceutical developers. These companies aren’t allowed to develop in this space, and that means patients aren’t getting the high-quality formulas they need.


Compound Formulas for the Best Possible Results: The reason that ZIPPZ sees such marked success in helping people with their sleep, stress, and anxiety is that they develop therapies using botanical ingredients that work with the sleep and stress receptors in our bodies. Rather than using just one or two ingredients, like most CBD companies, they’re making products that combine multiple botanical ingredients to achieve a specific and effective treatment.

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Grassroots Marketing talks to the folks at Eco Farm and Thrive Society, Devin Calloway and Danielle Dao.

With over 400 cannabis farmers and more than 200 retail buyers supported throughout California, Eco Farm is one of the largest California distribution companies flying under the radar – but not for long. The Company will be announcing after the holiday its significant expansion across the Golden State, positioning Eco Farm (serving its farming partners such as Thrive Society), as one of the largest, digitally connected upstream supply chains of legal cannabis in the world.

Eco Farm Holdings is the only plant-touching company with an in-house technology suite built to mirror every aspect of the physical operations through digital twinning, specifically for distribution and marketplace transactions. The company is vertically integrated with licensed cannabis operations across nursery, cultivation, processing, manufacturing, and distribution. In addition, the Eco Farm technology platform and Integrated Farm Program (IFP) for farmers will be licensed to cannabis operators in markets beyond California.


Thrive Society is a community of over 400 cultivators and 100 plus wholesale buyers across California. The company's B2B wholesale commodity marketplace and analytics platform showcases tens of thousands of pounds of high quality, fully compliant and tested bulk cannabis products. Thrive Society is a membership-based cannabis distribution platform that leverages underlying technology and a distribution license in the state to facilitate transactions between cannabis cultivators and end buyers. Already proven and adopted by Eco Farm’s network of farmers and cultivation operations through Thrive Society, the executive team can speak to its technology infrastructure that aims to disrupt the current distribution “handshake” model to position the industry on the frontlines of innovation and business acumen.

www.ecofarm.ag.  Digital marketplace at www.thrive-society.com.


Devin Calloway, Founder / co-CEO / CTO / President of Eco Farm Holdings PBC / Thrive Society
Devin Calloway is the co-CEO and President of Eco Farm Holdings PBC leading the company’s technology and supply chain functions. Calloway brings over 15 years of cannabis industry and advocacy experience as well as 20 years in web development, UI/UX and Info Architecture bringing a unique perspective to technology operations in the cannabis industry. Prior to founding Eco Farm, Calloway founded the first web and mobile cannabis locator app directing users to legal cannabis resources.
 
Danielle Dao, Founder / co-CEO of Eco Farm Holdings PBC / Thrive Society
As Founder and co-CEO of Eco Farm Holdings PBC and Thrive Society, Danielle Dao leverages over 20 years of experience in the cannabis industry to manage Eco Farm and Thrive Societies’ enterprise including: finance, operations, distribution, procurement and sales, cultivation, quality control and manufacturing. Dao is considered a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in cannabis, and brings over 10 years of expertise in supply chain relationships.

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Grassroots Marketing discusses Integration with Platforms and Brands with West Paschal, Co-founder, Chief Revenue Officer of Alpine IQ.

Alpine IQ, the leading data and marketing solutions provider for cannabis retailers. Today, Alpine IQ uses proprietary technology to service 2,000 dispensaries across the country to help them own their customers journey, and help dispensaries keep more money in their pockets.


Use data management, omni channel marketing, analytics and event tracking to protect, segment, promote, and sync all in-store and online operations. From custom apps to proprietary technology that seeks out the most effective way of getting promo messaging to guests, Alpine IQ has quickly become the nation’s leading tech advocate for the cannabis industry, with more than $5.5B in facilitated transactions.


Recently, High Tide tapped Alpine IQ to power its loyalty program, leveraging the company’s robust suite of tools to engage with customers, drive increased satisfaction, and ultimately, repeat visits. With legal cannabis sales in Canada expected to rise 68% to $5.4B in 2022, and with more consumers turning to online ordering, Alpine IQ empowers dispensaries to meet the demands of today’s consumer.

#We spoke to Raj Grover, CEO of High Tide in our 2021 MJBiz Coverage.


Listening to customers by reading what your data tells you about them. Retailers can better separate themselves from the competition? West talks about Data and leveraging that to drive loyalty.


Integration with other platforms and brands including Flowhub and Tattle, an innovator in the customer experience improvement (CXI) category which created an integration that enables mutually partnered cannabis dispensaries to elevate the on- and off-premises guest experience. Native Roots, with 20 cannabis dispensaries, is the first to take advantage of the partnership.
The integration combines Tattle’s ability to track customer feedback across all ordering channels, with Alpine IQ’s robust suite of tools to protect, segment, promote and sync the consumer experience in-store and online. The result is an unmatched guest experience, with actionable insights provided to a cannabis dispensaries’ leadership team, driving guest satisfaction and in turn, sales.

alpineIQ.com

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Discussion of the Benefits of CBDa Hemp with Inesa Ponomariovaite, a holistic health practitioner and an expert on hemp and CBD.

Inesa is a visionary on a mission to change the world by teaching people to harness the power of Nature, like she did, to restore their health and well-being.

She founded Nesa's Hemp, a dominant player in the CBDa hemp oil industry. Nesa's is the world’s first-ever full full-spectrum CBDa Hemp Oil. It is created through a unique process (developed by Inesa herself) to preserve all the healing compounds of the hemp plant, which bring optimal health and healing and restore the body to its natural state.

Leafly describes CBDa: CBGA converts to three major cannabinoid precursor compounds, depending on which plant enzymes are activated to direct the synthesis:

THCA (tetrahydrocannabinolic acid)
CBCA (cannabichromenic acid)
CBDA (cannabidiolic acid).

When decarboxylation occurs by exposing the cannabis plant to either heat or sunlight, CBDA converts to CBD. In other words, CBDA is the raw form or predecessor to CBD.

Why so many people are using CBDa to help improve their mental health during the pandemic and why it’s more effective than CBD?

As the impact of the pandemic drags on and the Omicron variant creates even more uncertainty, a growing number of people are reporting higher rates of anxiety, stress, loneliness and depression. 

In fact, since the beginning of the pandemic rates of depression have tripled, levels of loneliness have skyrocketed, and many people are reporting symptoms of distress, such as difficulty sleeping, overeating and increased alcohol consumption. Nowhere is this growing crisis more apparent than within the workplace, where rates of stress and burnout have gone through the roof, with 89 percent of employees reporting that their work life has been getting worse. 

With people’s mental health at a breaking point, many people are turning to CBDa products for relief from the pressures of work, family, finances and world events. CBDa is the parent compound to CBD and is made with living hemp, which helps sustain the plant’s natural molecular structure. This in turn ensures people who consume CBDa reap the benefits of the plant’s healthy fats, vitamins, and beneficial phytonutrients - resulting in restored cellular balance, restfulness, and rejuvenation.

You can learn more about Inesa, her journey, and Nesa’s Hemp by visiting https://www.nesashemp.com/.

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Grassroots Marketing talks about new in-house brand GoodGood with Jeffrey Garber, Founder and CEO of Yellow Dream Farm.

Recently launched the company’s first in-house brand, GoodGood. GoodGood is a suite of premium THC cannabis-branded products that captures the intersection of culture of cannabis, hailing from CEO and Founder Jeffrey Garber’s vision to bring craft, boutique grown cannabis to a larger audience at an affordable price. You recently had a soft launch of GoodGood at Hall of Flowers in Palm Springs, Calif.

From a recent press release, the cannabis industry’s generally long-held belief that premium cannabis can’t be grown affordably has been turned on its head with Yellow Dream Farm’s efficiencies and environmental and feeding automated processes, bringing craft cannabis to consumers looking for affordable options.

In less than one year of operation, Yellow Dream Farm’s team was able to purchase the 30,000 square foot facility with 22,000 square foot of canopy, and undergo build-out and licensing, as well as a full flowering cycle for each of their seven flower rooms. The family-owned and operated company has a strong leadership team and currently employs nearly 50 people in San Bernardino County.

Yellow Dream Farm is a family-owned cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and distribution company based in San Bernardino County, California, that has an established reputation for indoor sustainably-grown, superior wholesale cannabis. Yellow Dream Farm operates a fully automated state-of-the-art 60,000-square-foot indoor cultivation facility, positioning itself as one of California’s emerging suppliers of bulk ingredients. In 2021, the Company introduced GoodGood, its first in-house retail flower brand, setting the stage for the Company’s establishment of a house of prominent high-quality brands. GoodGood’s product line includes a 1.0 gram pre-roll, an 8 pack of 1 gram pre-rolls, 5 gram small mylar bags, and a 3.5 gram jar that are made with A grade buds from exotic and proprietary cultivars. For more information on Yellow Dream Farm, visit www.yellowdreamfarm.com.



Garber is a young entrepreneur bringing 5 years of hands-on management and C-suite experience to the cannabis industry in business development, operations, supply chain management, and marketing. Prior to founding Yellow Dream Farm, Garber co-founded the first medical cannabis licensee in Adelanto, developing and cultivating strong relationships with distributors, vendors and regulatory agencies that helped him succeed in building Yellow Dream Farm. Jeffrey holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management and Political Science from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Yellow Dream Farm website: https://www.yellowdreamfarm.com/
GoodGood website: https://smokegoodgood.com/

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Grassroots Marketing discusses Glass Blowing, Retail and the Cannabis Industry with Chris Piazza of CannaDevices.

CannaDevices now consistently supplies 10 publicly traded cannabis companies along with numerous other operators.  Throughout this growth Chris has never wavered from his dedication to support American artists and independent small businesses.  Even during the course of a global pandemic, Chris was dedicated to ensuring that each artist and team member of CannaDevices could count on the company with absolute certainty, despite the uncertain times. If artists needed a break to take care of their own health or family circumstances, they knew CannaDevices would be there for them when they were ready for another order. At any given time, CannaDevices provides full time work for 50 artisans and their businesses and plans to double that number by early 2022. Additionally, if a new partnered artist is hitting roadblocks in their production, Chris helps the artist by teaching the skill of glass blowing and production, while simultaneously providing a source of income.

Chris is also a founding member and Chairman of the non-profit Startup Syndicate, created to help new entrepreneurs get access to tools and capital for their businesses.  Chris has a high threshold for excellence and a natural ability to connect humbly with the people he serves. 

CannaDevices was founded by Robert Bank and Chris Piazza to serve the fast growing cannabis industry in the United States.  Both local glassblowers of the Chicago suburbs they have had a working partnership for over a decade supporting the local and national glass blowing industry and their communities. 

Experience of over thirty years in glass blowing, retail and the cannabis industry allows us to understand and meet your needs with precision.

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