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: Two voicemails, one take | $1,000 still on the table | A small Pride drop
The Dealers Desk
Hey Dealers,
When we put Nick's actual cell phone number on the back of every Halara package, the bet was small. A few people would call. Most wouldn't. The number existed so that anyone who had something to say (good, bad, weird) had a direct line to a co-founder instead of a support ticket.
What's happened over the last couple of months is something we did not plan for, and it's starting to look like the most useful thing we did all year.
People call. They keep calling. Some of them are buyers, some are budtenders, most are customers, and a surprising number of them are calling to say something nice. That part is lovely on its own (Nick takes the calls in his truck), but the part that's actually interesting is what we're learning from them. Most brands find out what's happening with their product by reading Leafly reviews two months after the fact. We're finding out the same week, from the person holding the cart, sometimes within an hour of them taking it off the shelf.
A few weeks ago a guy named Dan in Boulder Creek left this:
Voicemail transcript: customer named Dan calling Nick to say his Halara cart didn't clog and the flavor lasted the whole way through.
Dan did not need to leave that voicemail. There was nothing in it for him. But he had a cart in his hand that did the thing we said it would do, and he picked up the phone to tell the person whose number was on the bag. That's not a marketing channel. That's a customer service feedback loop that most brands in this industry would pay a software vendor six figures to set up, and we got it for the cost of printing eleven extra digits on a package.
The deeper point, and the one I've been chewing on this week, is that "clean" and "anti-clog" and "94% THC" are all things we can claim in marketing copy and nobody has to believe us. A voicemail from Dan in Boulder Creek is a different category of proof, and so are the King Fatso text we ran two weeks ago and the mystery-strain "compliments to the chef" note from last week. Every one of those is somebody who took the product home, used it, and felt strongly enough to find a way to tell us. That stack is the thing the brand actually rests on.
If you've had a cart on hand and never called, the number's on the back. Nick wants the good, the bad, and the weird. He answers.
Onwards and upwards,
-Malcolm
What We're Seeing
The cannabis-LGBTQ history is one of those things the industry forgets every June and then re-remembers. Dennis Peron opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club in 1992, specifically to serve AIDS patients in the Castro, and that store is a big part of why California passed Prop 215 in 1996. Every legal cannabis dollar in this state runs through a door that a queer activist propped open during a health crisis nobody else wanted to touch. We wrote the longer version of this story on the blog this week. Pride and Pot: how the Castro's AIDS crisis built California's cannabis industry.
Strain Spotlight
This week (small intro, deep dive next): Lychee Goji Berry Tea
The acronym is LGBT. June is Pride. We did not engineer that on purpose, but once we noticed it we leaned in.
Lychee Goji Berry Tea is a hybrid AIO at 92% THC, lychee and goji on the front, jasmine tea underneath, a creamy tropical fade on the finish. Limonene-led, uplifted and relaxed in roughly equal measure. It's the kind of profile that does well in the afternoon when you still need to be a functional human. 10% of profits on this one go to LYRIC, the San Francisco center for LGBTQ youth, which is the part we actually care about.
Nick will do the proper deep dive next week. For now, it's on shelves in California. Find a shop here.
Quick Hits
Mystery hint #4, still unclaimed, still $1,000: “Northern California used to be big on this before grapes. The QR code on the bag insert is the only way to enter entries won’t count unless put through there. Find it on Weedmaps.
The DEA rescheduling hearing starts June 29. This is the actual hearing that decides whether the broader rescheduling (not just FDA-approved or state-medical products, which already moved) goes through. Participants are locked, the prohibition crowd is in the room, the record from this hearing will shape what cannabis operators can expect on 280E, banking, and research access for years. Marijuana Moment has the rolling coverage.
The hemp THC off-ramp is closing. House Rules Committee blocked the amendments that would have prevented the November federal hemp ban from taking effect, and Minnesota's hemp-to-cannabis bridge bill is starting to look like the template other states will have to copy. If you're an operator who's been watching the hemp-derived gray market eat your cart margin, the cliff is real and it's six months out. Marijuana Moment.
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Halara · Emerald Triangle, CA
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