Hi there, and welcome to The Dealers Diary - my musings on the cannabis industry, California, and building Halara.
If you missed past emails, I recommend checking out the Dealers page where you can see the past emails I sent.
In today's entry: Why We're Spending Two Weeks on Rosin | Revelry Next Week | Strain Spotlight | Dealers Choice | Mystery Hint #1 | Quick Hits
The Dealers Desk
I bribed Nick to drop the first mystery strain hint just for the Dealers Diary crew. It's hiding in the Quick Hits at the bottom. Worth the scroll.
Nick with a jar of live rosin
Hey Dealers,
A day late this week. Wednesdays are sacred around here, so apologies for the slip. Back on schedule next week.
For the next two issues, I want to spend some real time on rosin. Not a teaser, not a quick mention buried in a section. Two full weeks. Here's why.
When Nick and I started Halara, the easiest version of this company would have been distillate-only. Distillate is cheap, it's stable, it travels well, and you can make it taste like anything. Most of the cart market is built on it. But distillate strips the plant down to the molecule and then dresses the molecule back up with terpenes from somewhere else. It works. It just isn't the same thing as actually tasting the flower.
Rosin is the other end of the spectrum. No solvents. No re-engineering. You take frozen flower, press it, and what comes out is what was already in the plant. The terpenes are the original ones. The flavor is the original flavor. And the trade-off is that it's harder to make, harder to fill into a cart, harder to keep stable, and more expensive in every dimension. Nick has been putting in stupid hours on our solventless line and I think most of you don't fully know what's there yet.
So the next two issues are about rosin. This week is the why. Next week is the actual product, what's in stock, and where to start. If you've never had a real rosin cart, you're going to want to read next week.
If you want the deeper version of all of this, we put the long-form guide on the blog this week. What Is Live Rosin? The Top of the Solventless Pyramid.
Onwards and upwards,
-Malcolm
What We're Seeing
Revelry Upstate is next week. May 13th, Basilica Hudson, noon to 6pm. If you're in New York cannabis and you've been meaning to actually meet us, this is the room. Nick, Travis, and I are all going to be there, which is rare. We have a first-order promotion we're holding back exclusively for new accounts we meet at the show. Reply if you want the details ahead of time.
The "vapes overtook flower" headline is starting to look permanent. Three months ago I would have called it a 420 spike. Headset's latest data has vapes still leading the category in California well after the holiday traffic settled. The shift isn't seasonal. It's structural. Worth thinking about for any of you on the retail side planning Q3 buys.
Strain Spotlight
This week: Sour Gummiez (Solventless Rosin AIO)
Sour Gummiez solventless rosin AIO
Sour Gummiez is the first sativa we put through the solventless line, and right now it's the one I keep reaching for when I need to actually get something done.
Tart fruit candy on the front end, sharp diesel on the back, exactly what you'd hope for from the name. 79% THC, no solvents anywhere in the process. Uplifting in the way that gets you moving without scrambling you (the sour diesel did that). Limonene-forward, with myrcene and caryophyllene rounding it out.
Taste the flower. Don't just smoke it.
Where to find it: California dispensaries. Find a shop here.
— Nick
Dealers Choice
A friend sent this to me this week and I've been thinking about it ever since.
Image: @obviousplant — How To Smoke Weed Out Of Anything by Skint Rippler.
Credit: @obviousplant on Instagram. He's the guy who plants fake books, board games, and toys in real stores. If you don't follow him already, fix that.
There's a whole genre of cannabis content built on this premise, that smoking weed is something you improvise with whatever's near you at 2am. Apples (hello highschool!). Soda cans. The cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels. And honestly, that universe is part of what makes weed culture fun. Resourcefulness is a love language.
But it's also a pretty good argument for the opposite. Most of what we do at Halara is the boring work of making sure you don't have to do this if you don’t want to.
Quick Hits
California just marked 10 years of legal cannabis. Per the Governor's office, the state has cleared 215,000+ cannabis convictions and disrupted $1.2B in illicit activity in that window. We forget how recent all of this is. A decade ago every cart on a shelf in this state was technically illegal. The full announcement.
The 2026 Farm Bill passed last week with the intoxicating-hemp ban still intact. Translation: Delta-8, THCA carts, and the rest of the hemp-derived gray market that's been quietly competing with licensed cannabis on convenience-store shelves are about to have a much harder time. Good for clean cannabis. Good for anyone who's tired of mystery oil at the gas station. Cannabis Business Times has the breakdown.
Mystery strain, still unclaimed. $1,000 still on the table. Nick said he'd start dropping hints. Hint number one: Coachella Valley. The QR code on the bag is the only way to enter. Find it on Weedmaps.
Refer a Friend
Know a budtender who'd dig this? Forward it. They subscribe, you get a Dealers hat.
Already got 1 referral? You've got a hat coming. DM me your address if you haven't yet.
Halara · Emerald Triangle, CA
P.S - My Weekly Bops
P.S. Picked up two Latin earworms in a bar last weekend that I have not been able to shake. Sharing so they can live in your head too.
