Yo, what's going on? Everybody? Welcome to a new episode of Mechanic
Cast. I'm Canon Dave and I'm in today's episode. We have a special
guest, Mark has, founder of the Best in Grass competition, and he's
joining us from LA today. How was it going to Mark? So good?
It's a beautiful day. Appreciate you guys having me on. Yeah.
No, So we've been hearing all about the Best in Grass and we saw
it and like, you know, just happened to, like you know,
fall into our labs for this interview. So it's awesome. This is exciting,
you know. Uh, definitely just want to say the website was badass
everything check out Best in Grass. I owe yep, But yeah, I
know, we just want to just want to get you out. We're excited.
Let's jump into a little back history of Mark. What got you into
cannabis and how do you prefer smoking? Do you like your day? I?
Do you like your flower? Maybe like edibles? Because I see the
competition has everything in carts, so maybe you like it all. I don't
know, So let's let's let's give us some insight. Yeah, let's dive
in. Let's dive in. Let's get to know each other. Excuse me,
So, I mean I've been into cannabis since I was like fifteen years
old. I grew up in Florida, moved to middle of nowhere, Ohio,
and then I grew up skateboarding, so I was always around my older
brother and his older friends. And then one day they allowed me to hang
out for the for the post skate SASH went back to the fun little barn
that my friend had and in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and they're like,
hey, we're smoking bowls over here. You know. They checked with my
older brother like can we give your little brother a hit? And I took
my first bull pit of some some whatever flower probably some beasters that we got
from Canada or whatever. You know, I just whatever, like whatever we
could get, Like cool, it's green, it's brown, I'll smoke it.
I took my first hit and I was like, all right, like,
you know, I'm feeling weird. What am I feeling? Feels kind
of good, smells good, and I don't I wouldn't even say that I
got really high then, but I knew I kind of enjoyed it and I
like the experience. And I had had, you know, alcohol from you
know, whatever high school you get under all of it. I was like,
Okay, I feel I don't feel like this is more at my alley,
and then dabbled here and there, and then really at the at the
end of high school, I you know, I never smoked before school.
I was always like, no, like, you know, I'm getting good
grades and I'm not going to smoke before school, which I'm still happy about.
But after school, game on. So I would always come back to
my spot, started learning how to roll joints. That was my main consumption
method of just priding myself on being able to take a paper, take some
weed, and just roll it. Didn't really care too much about pongs or
poles or anything because I don't know where I would have stored that without my
parents sing So I just kept it out of the house and you know,
would meet up with ends, and yes, I started just really enjoying weed.
It brought me close to a lot of different people. I got to
connect with different people from different cities, not just from like my own high
school. So both skateboarding and weed was like a really big conduit for me
to get into different circles, meet new people, and bond with different people
from different walks of life, and yeah, so joints has always been my
main thing. I went to college in New York City going apartment to apartments,
smoking dutches, smoking blunts. It was so much weed in my college
days. It was crazy. And then recently I actually got gifted a Karta
Focus V Karta. These things are amazing. I always were. It was
a little bit hesitant on dabbing, just because I was like, whatever,
I'm a joint guy. I love flower, Like just seeing flower, smelling
flower, it brings me joy. I completely figure off your head over here,
So I completely agree with you there, Mark, I rolled my own
joints. That's how I love to smoke his joints. Yeah, I see
you guys both. Oh look at that. I didn't even realize you're in
the same room. Ye. So many people are like, we've done that,
and they're like whoa. We're like yeah, yeah, kind of fun
Yeah, I know, it's totally funny. That's so funny. Yeah.
I made it up so we could show Yeah, we want dude, and
we want to showcase the bag. And you know, we actually were just
able to pick this up yesterday, so I was able to like actually dig
in and holy crap, like, yeah, wh it is, Yeah,
some some fat, some fat sacks of weed. A lot of good brands,
some some quality product. And what's great is, you know, there's
a lot of great deals in Michigan. Like everybody's trying to buy on the
cheap. I totally get that. But these brands believe that the best.
They're picking their top buds from the top of the crop and they're putting that
into this competition because they want the judges to see what the what what their
best is, and they want them to ideally, you know, figure out
what works best for them. You know, Okay, great, Yes,
I love bake pens, but I love ros and bate pens. I love
non rosin vate pens. What he's what even is a ros and bate pen
for a lot of these consumers who don't know the difference between distillate and live
resin and live rosin. So we are you know, I think we're probably
skipping around here. But since we're on that topic, it's it's about getting
a really good deal on weed. Maybe it's not the not the deal,
like getting an ounce for fifteen bucks of a bunch of shake of the same
strain, but it's a really good deal on a bunch of great product,
which these brands are putting their best foot forward to put it into the kids,
put it into the competition, and the people get to try it and
be a part of that judging process. So I love exciting for it.
I love competitions when you get all the brands bring in their top product in
like you put in it in like we I just entered. I don't know
if you ever heard of the hash Bash Cup here in Michigan. It goes
on when dash Bash is I actually entered in the sativa category myself and took
first place with a strain called Bangering. Hell yeah, congrats, thanks man
with the class. I appreciate that. And just being able to put your
product in and be able to have other people try it is like amazing because
you get that product in so many people's hands to get to try it,
and they might go, then my stuff's not in the stores. Mine's just
like homegrow, and then they for you, they can go back in the
store buy that product. You're giving them like thirty eight different brands right here.
It's a perfect way to sample. If you're like I know, I
love dabs, or I love carts, or like you said, like that's
a beautiful Now you can just go and you can find them all in one
like convenient, like little package. You know, that's what's nice, and
that's why I like, that's a great sample back. We're getting a ton
of good like emails and feedback from people who are like I thought I knew
all the top brands, but like, I just tried out this strain from
this brand. Never heard of it in my life, never seen it at
my local dispensary, but like, now this is one of my favorites.
I'm definitely gonna seek this out in dispensary. So it's good for the consumers
to try to identify new things, what might work for them. You know,
do they want to splurge on a nice rosin you know, non solve
and concentrate item in the future, although you know it's more costly to make,
so it's more costly to buy. But good for the consumers to identify
what works best for them and try out new stuff. Good for the brands
because they're getting their product into the hands of high value consumers who want to
learn more about new brands and new products. And now it's you know,
get you get your product in the hand of a new consumer that's going to
be ten times more likely to try to seek out your product and buy it.
Dude, that's absolutely the truth. I enjoy that, but valued customer
too, because that's that's that's a good point when people really want to try
these type of competitions because you want to know who the best it is.
You're not necessary, Yeah, you want Yeah, like you said, everyone
wants a deal, but like when you want to smoke good stuff, you
gotta know what's out there. So I don't like that. But also like
we did the High Times magazine, not the High Times magazine, the High
Times competition a couple of years ago, and honestly, we tried a brand
that's now one of our partners never heard of them before. We just opened
up a specific strain, smoked it and we fell in love. Like they're
shut out, is right here? Old fire Farms entered as well, so
we were like all pumped about that. Get partners. So being able to
try that, You're absolutely right on that. You never know what you're gonna
like when you pick out, when you get one of these bags, you
might have tried like five of the brands, right, but you might not
even have tried that brand's favorite strain that they're going to enter, and you're
entering your top quality product. So I think competition promotes that. It really
pushes you to want to like put your best stuff in there, put let
you best everything you have to offer, right, So it kind of forces
that I would agree, and I and I, Yeah, that's what I'm
saying. Everybody across not not even just Michigan, but all states. Everybody
thinks you're the best, right, Oh, I got the best flower,
I got the best rods. And what your money where your mouth is?
Put your where your mouth is entered in the competition. We don't even charge
people. We understand it's a substantial amount of products. It it cost them,
you know, their own costs over wow, but we're not charging them.
Yeah, we don't charge brands. We we just want to make sure
we get a robust competition with a lot of great brands. And we know
that there's gonna be huge brands that can afford a ton and small brands who
can't afford barely anything product. Yeah, because I already that cost money already,
right, And taken away from you line experience, small brand, but
a lot of competitions do have like an entry fee, so that that's like,
really, that's really awesome. I do want to I do want to
jump to this question. I we went into it, what got what led
you to launch Best in Grass competition before we continue going about it like well,
how did you come up with the idea to launch this? And then
also is it did you launch it in Cali first? No, Michigan was
our first one. We love Michigan. You know, I was working at
High Times for the past six years. So all the cannabis competitions that you
did over the past four years, that was me and my team. So
we didn't start the Cannabis Cup that started in Amsterdam in the eighties. There
you go. Yeah, I mean I got a closet full to ship you
guys something that's yeah, I gotta ship you guys that I used the bags.
One time we were at Cannacon and they're like, are you guys from
High Times? I was like, what I didn't, It's so funny.
Yeah, no, says you were saying Amsterdam. Yeah, I'm sorry.
So yeah, so Cannabis Cup, you know, High Times has been around
since the seventies, started the Cannabis Cup in the in the Amsterdam in the
in the eighties. So I'm definitely not going to take credit for creating the
Canis cup by any way, shape or form. But that was the former
model. It was homies of homies, you know, the Kyle Cushmans,
the French. You can always all getting together in a home and judging their
product. So it was good, it was respectful, and it was a
lot of good intelligent people who know how to talk about turpene profiles and curing
times and things of that nature. But we had thousands of people being like
yo, like, sorry, I'm not Danny Danko. Sorry I'm not Frenchy
Canoli, but like I want to have my voice heard. I have a
different palette. I come from a different walk of life. No, I'm
not an og head who's been growing since I was, you know, twenty
years old. But I'm at soccer mom who's sick of drinking wine at the
end of the night, and I want to try out a bunch of pre
roles and help vote for the best pre role because I have my opinions or
I'm a sixty five year old, retired, you know, veteran, and
I want to try out vait pens to see what works best for me in
my troop. So we heard that pandemic hit and then me and my team
started the Cannabis Cup People's Choice model, which democratize it, opened it up
to the public, and created what you guys participated in because you were allowed
to. You know, you guys were would not have been able to participate
in the former model. So we allowed more people to judge, and instead
of from two hundred hands select the judges, we now do two thousand and
three thousand hands select the judges. So I did that for High Times for
a while, and there was a lot of different things that I wanted to
change about it. And you know, I don't want this narrative to be
any any negative about the former company. I love High Times. It introduced
me to a lot of great people and taught me a lot. So by
all means, big big shout out to my legacy in my homies at High
Times. But I saw things a little differently. I wanted to have things
that were you know, maybe moving away from the super stoner culture. We
wanted to bring back events and we weren't able to get the approval to do
that, so we were continuing to do these silly online award shows, which
you know, got the job done, but there was a lot of people
who being like, what the hell we want to celebrate in person. We
want to bring the community together. So me and my counterpart we left.
We started investing GRASS and we are continuing to operate what we feel are the
most transparent, honest, democratic competitions across each state where the people get to
vote. Not just the industry insiders. We definitely respect them, we love
their opinion, but the real hard working people who are getting off their nine
to five job and they're spending their last fifty dollars to get you know,
whatever flower they can or whatever Vight pens they can. Those are the people
were keeping these brands afloat. Those are the brands we're spending money to keep
retailer. Those are like, that's your normal consumers. Those are like,
I don't want to say the real because then I digress there a little bit,
but like you know what I mean, Because there's people like who'sh love
cannabis through and through, but a lot of people use it for many different
reasons. So like, I like that You're you're really trying to go after
everybody, like equal equality amongst everyone, like like everyone like, let's talk
about this, let's vote, let's put it out there. And I really
dig that. So I just want to say that cool. Yeah, I
appreciate that. And that's that's what we want to do. We want to
get the the og heady boys who are like, hell, yeah, I
want this rosen kit, and I'm going to tell you everything I love and
hate and tell us everything you love and hate, because that's going to go
back to the brands anonymously and they're gonna be able to see what every person
thought, What did candidate think, what did groovy think? What did soccer
mom number seven think? What did veteran over hear think? And that's what
we want. And honestly, it's really like the negative feedback that really helps
these brands. It's not that oh I love the you know, great work.
It's the negative feedback that the the things that it's like, no,
I didn't like this about it. That's what people learn undred percent. I
mean, I got a question for you real quick. You were the negative
feedback. I love that because I was curious. I don't know if you
can ask. I don't know if you can answer this, but as did
High Times actually give feedback back to the brands that like submitted it, Yeah,
upon request? Yeah, that was my team's spearheading it. I was
just curious on that because that you're saying you're doing that for now. I
think that's huge for these brands because they enter, they give the their product,
they hear what the people have to say, and then they can make
changes on that and then they'll be able to make take more market share within
their companies. Well let's how you learn. People going oh, wow,
you're the best, You're the best is kind of what led us to this
point of like everyone thinking they're the best. And I'm not saying there's anything
wrong, but like, like you know, me entrepreneurs, I've heard like,
you don't learn from the success, you learn from the failures. You
know, you earn those you know, you earn that you know success through
those failures. So I just think that's, uh, you know, it's
very good for those brands to get that feedback. I think I think that
makes it different than other contests. Do you have any do you have any
other things that the Best in Grass competition does differently than and other competitions that
you've seen or been a part of. Yeah, so I think a we
do the highest volume of kits that I'm aware of, So we're getting this
out. In Michigan, we did twenty six hundred judge kits spread out across
twenty five dispensaries from the Upper Peninsula down to the Indiana and Ohio border.
So I think we have a lot a lot wider reach and we're having a
lot larger judging population. So you know, a lot of competitions people say,
oh it's rigged, and oh I had a bunch of friends judge.
So even in some of those competitions where there's only one hundred and two hundred
judge kits, having ten people vote one way, that's a big percentage of
skewing the results. Whereas with twenty six hundred juge kits, it's much harder
to try to get somebody to try to sway the results in any way.
So he size of the competition is much larger. Yeah, thats exactly all
your buddies to vote or whatever. Yeah, no, no, that's I
didn't Yeah, that's fair because I've definitely thought that thought before. That makes
sense. Yeah, so even doing this at large, you have all this
prethought, you know. I like that. Yeah, we've heard all we
have to. We always feedback from from consumers, from brands, from retailers,
how we can do this better in each state, And we have to
adjust per state because there's different regulations, there's different pricing, there's different brands,
whatever else. But I think the large sample size of judging and just
being able to spread it across the entire state is really important so that you
know, again, I know some competitions are like only kits available in Detroit,
so you're only getting those people. And if all the homies of this
one brand are in Detroit, that Detroit based brand has a leg up.
Whereas the brand that's in you know, Iron Mountain, you know, sending
product down to Detroit, nobody knows them. They're gonna be like, ah,
whatever, I don't know this brand. It's not my boy, I'm
not going to vote for them. So wide breach wide sample size, I
think that really helps we give judges an incentive to actually complete their judging.
We want to make sure that everybody is really judging all their product, so
if you judge your entire kit, you get twenty dollars off your next purchase
at the dispensary that you purchase from. So we're going to be tallling up
all the scores. At the end of May nineteenth, it is judging deadline
and we're going to say, oh, okay, great, groovy, candidave
you guys, completed one hundred percent. You're judging. Thanks for being an
awesome judge. Here's twenty dollars off your next purchase at the grove or puff
or Leaf and Butter wherever you buy your kit from. And we're doing a
live, real in person award show. It's going to be Austras of Cannabis,
high high you know, high standards. Probably you know, I'm gonna
ask people to do a little bit of cocktail attire, so instead of sweatpants
and hoodie, you show up with a little little swag bring separate the exactly
so it will be most of that is really you know, it's it's semi
private. The majority of it is free tickets to the brands, the cultivators,
the processors, and the retailers who submitted product. They're going to get
free tickets. And then we're going to be probably selling some tickets to judges.
We're also doing a raffle for the judges who complete their judging. So
again, groovy, full you fully judge, We're going to put you into
a raffle and we're probably going to give out probably one hundred to two hundred
tickets to any to certain judges that completed all their judges. Cool. So
finding ways to increase the percentage of people who are really submitting feedbacks, incentivizing
them to get their judging done and to give real detailed comments. And that's
actually really man, that's really smart because like I've never thought about that incentivizing
because sometimes even with these competitions, I you know, I'm not throwing anyone
in the bus, but we've heard judging being like okay, by like the
you know, the fiftieth whatever, you're just like, you know, it's
hard to judge. So that true a little bit of like kickback kind of
incentivized. It's like recycling, like with the cans here, right, they
charge you ten cents, but you bring them back so it's like I like
that yeah cool, Yeah, that's a big difference. A lot of no,
no, no, go go. I was just gonna ask where your
live event is going to be at. Oh oh yeah, Royal Music Theater
June eighteenth, be there. So we'll be sending a lot more information out
because oh right, it's a it's a candidate. Is like two days my
birthdays on Father's Day this year? Yeah, that's fun, it's funny.
Yeah, well yeah, no, we definitely want to get you guys some
tickets and come out and uh and see the winners, see who wins.
And it's going to be a lot of opportunities for brands front of retail buyers,
inventory managers, consumers, the whole gambit. You know, we want,
we want business deals to happen at this So okay, this brand won
how do I get that brand in my store? And then consumers being okay,
which stores are going to have this brand? Because I want to seek
out that award winning product and make sure that I get that into my hands
for for the summer ahead. They work. I love you run your company.
Yeah, I really enjoy that. Yeah, I'm enjoying this so far.
So going back to Michon, Michigan, is this is this your first
launch? Is this first launch or is that grand first launch? Oh?
Okay, Yeah, we're going to launch Michigan and the Mien the Great Lake
State. We love Michigan. We wanted to bring this to Michigan first because
you know, when when we announced that we were doing this, we got
a lot of love and support from people in Michigan being like, oh my
god, amazing. Like we've been we've been looking for a new brand that
is, you know, just doing things differently, a third party, non
bias, no no history of this, that and the other. So yeah,
we decided to do Michigan first and then and we're going to be expanding
into Oklahoma, Illinois, Arizona, Rhode Island, and New Mexico for this
year, and then we'll probably bring it over to Massachusetts, New York,
Montana, Missouri, California, Oregon, Colorado over the next couple of years.
It's very cool. You're bringing it to every state you can. That's
awesome. Thanks for launching it here in Michigan. Yeah, yeah, shut
up, yeah man, I mean yeah, Michigan loves cannabis and it's it's
great. You know, we kind of talked about this before, but like
so they we just I don' want to reiterate, like like what I love
about these kids is that they're not meant for one person. It seems like
they're meant for everyone, you know, And I really I really like that,
just that the whole like philosophy, that they're not your target art.
It seems to be everyone who really like uses cannabis, the real like the
soccer mom or the veteran or you're probably it's for a lot of people.
It's for a lot of people and for a wide rand of people's you know,
specificy you do. But it's not like just like, you know,
you only want the heady of the head because sometimes competitions are like that,
we're like, oh, you know, that's it, you know, which
is again different vibe. I really enjoy this because I feel like this is
so true to what the consumers feel, you know, not just exactly that's
all. That's what we want to obsess. Who it's not for is the
people who like boof and they want to buy ten dollars ounces of shake.
That's who It's like, God, you know, they see these like signs
and it's like sixty dollars ounces of fifty nine dollars a week. I'm like,
why is that a brag point? It's like, I don't disgusting.
We found this in the back dumpster and it's not on metric, but we're
selling it. You might as well just call that. Results are exactly remedia.
You are to deprecated the fire. I mean, we've done this in
someone in different states and it's like half the time, you know, we
have people being like, oh, this products for media, but like hopefully
it wins, and we're like, what are you doing? So, you
know, a ward to the brands. Make sure you guys are putting your
best stuff stuff for or because that's how you win. As grass, I
want to like on that bag it says, yeah, find your high,
find your why. Can you explain that a little bit asting grass? Find
you high and find your why. Look, there's a lot of people I
come from, you know, different industries outside of cannabis. So I used
to book musicians on tour and comedians on tour, and I worked at a
big talent agency and I was like one of the only real cannabis consumers at
my company. It was like, you know, I found my crew and
all the cool the cool dudes who I can smoke weed with. But a
lot of the people out at that company didn't know anything about weed. They
didn't know what indoca versus sativa was, They didn't know ros and versus dissolate.
So this is a good way for people who are outside of the industry
to dip their toes into this, find their high, find their why why
do they want to consume cannabis? Are they switching from alcohol? Are they
switching from opioids? Are they just like cool, I'm I'm switching from whatever,
or I'm not switching from anything, but I want to try cannabis,
And what types of cannabis? What categories worked for me? Am I a
pre roll guy? Am I a vaightpen guy? Am I a concentrat guy?
Am I a straight flower guy? And then within those categories, what
works best for me? Am I a rosin guy versus a dislay guy?
You know, I keep saying that, but it is about educating the consumers,
trying to get as many brands and different products and strains in front of
them so they could say, I didn't know what tativa versus nica was,
I got a sativa kit. I'm realizing that this is a little bit more
energizing than some of the weed that I've been buying. I'm realizing that,
you know, one person's cap junkie is different than another brand's cap Junkie.
I realizing that a cap junkie is totally different than in northern lights or a
super silver haze, like whatever that is. We want people to be able
to take this slow judge one product a day and go into this portal and
really focus on it. And it's like journaling, you know, your day.
We all go through life, we all have our thoughts, but when
you really write it down and you take a second to think, like,
how did this day go? Was I productive? Was I was I energetic?
Was I happy? Was I sad? Was I tired? Today?
Like not even related to cannabis, but now this is putting that into perspective
of the cannabis journey of being a judge and how you consume and what is
working best for you. Journal it right into the portal. Give us the
comments. We want to hear your entire story. I opened the jar,
I smelled lemony diese little roma, saw bright green fluffy buds with red hairs,
rolled it in a joint with my flour mill, you know, grinder,
and had a king sized raw paper fell asleep on the couch with my
dog, or took a hike, you know, around the Great Lakes with
my girlfriend. Like, what is the story? We want you to We
want them to understand it as themselves so they can internalize it exactly, and
then we want to be able to give that back as a story to the
brands, so they could see exactly what each person said, like a real
reflection rather than just like yeah, six exactly, yell exactly ten exactly what
for what reason? Like you know, even when we started doing our reviews,
we really dig in. We go through the packaging, We separate everything
because we think that you know, it matters, right. You can't just
like just because you have shiny packaging and a bunch of bass if there's no
information, no facts, and it's not quality. Like, there's so much
more to a review than just like does it hit like an experience? Cannabis
and most lucinogenics there, that's an experience, you know. I mean,
yeah, we get high and take a second. I think that be aware,
find your high, find your why. I like that. I like
it. You were naming some of the kids. Did we name? Did
you go through all the categories? I don't know if we went through every
category that you have. We have not yet, but that is a great,
great question, A wide variety's let's go through some yeah, wide variety.
We got thirteen different categories, so we got indica flower, sativa flower,
hybrid flower, which you know, to the educated consumers, those nomenclatures
will likely go away over the next couple of years because everything nowadays is essentially
a hybrid. Question. That's how consumer shop, that's how retail, you
know, displays are, So we're keeping in those categories for now. Then
we have a non infuse pre role category, so just straight flower pre rolls.
We have a solvent infused perroal category, so things that might be infused
with just solvent based concentrates. We have a non solvent infuse category, so
a lot of rosin fuse and donuts, things of that nature. We have
a infused flower or moon rocks category for all the crazy ones who love to
just get super faded off of one bowl hit. We got a non rosin
vate pen, so things like disolate live resin things of that nature. Rosin
vate pens for the ones who really you know, uh, you know,
it's like shopping at whole exactly, love in those solventlests vight pens, but
recently they've been really good. Hey man, I love me something so good.
So like, yeah, Rosin's so good. I smoke a ton of
rosin now with my with my focus of my carta, so rosin vapes.
And then we go down to h solvent concentrates, so a lot of sugars,
batters, things like that, solvent based concentrates, and then non solvent
based contentrats. So again back to rosins, but instead of in a vake
pen form, straight up dabbables. And then gummies, so edible gummies,
edible non gummies, where we see a lot of beverages, chocolates, muffin
mixes, drink mixes, things of that nature. Really yeah, now bakeing
home, have fun, get the family together, Father's Day, let's go.
We're making muffins. Surprise. I think that's all yeah, and I
think that is all thirteen if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I got the
flowers, the moon rocks, the pre rolls, the bake pens, the
concentrates in the edibles. So sometime for everybody, yeah, exactly, And
that's what I was gonna say, is like say, you know, everyone
has their own you know, things that they love the most to themselves,
you know, so it's cool. Yeah, yeah, that's that's awesome.
That's awesome. Yeah. So where can these consumers access to kids? Yeah,
so all details aren't best in grass dot ioh. That's where they'll see
the main page. Then they'll click over to Michigan. We have like Oklahoma
listed and a few other states that are coming online soon. But that's gonna
be where they'll see all the categories, all the kit pricing showing you how
many items are within each category, what that market value is, so how
much it's really worth, and then with the actual prices before taxes, and
then all the twenty five dispensaries. So we got Leaf and Bud, we
got the Grove, we got Puff, we got North Coast Provisions, Rise,
the Bloomery, we got too many in a name, but everything.
As you're talking about it, I'm trying to scroll through them. But there's
there's a lot. There's a lot. So if you just go to the
website, and I have the website I have, you can see and then
shout out the Grove because you know that's where we went. Yeah, I
didn't even know they were open. And they've been open for two years.
Wow in Centerland, I know, it's like you've been open for like,
oh two years. I'm like, oh really, I live pretty close and
shots. And this is why the retailer's benefit too, because it's like there's
so many dispensaries in Michigan. So when we get when when they get chosen
to be a dispensary, it's like, oh, I'm getting new traffic that
might be right in my neighborhood or they might be an hour away. I
mean, we get people driving hours to get these kids and waiting in line,
and it's it's amazing to see. So we're verative definitely. My Instagram
stories were like lighting up that day. It was like boom, got the
kiss, got this kid, got this? Cows like, oh damn,
so that must have dropped, kid, that must have dropped. Something's happening.
You know this sounds like a lot of them were going pretty fast too,
So I mean like the ros pre rolls were gone, the hybrids were
gone, we got the Sativa like it was bags were going something that that
mar launch it special collectors kids. So most of the kids are all coming
in this, So this is where the product is in a compliant exit bag.
But then we put this inside of certain exit bags, which are these
beautiful smell proof, water resistant, already backpacks. They're thick, they're hefty,
they're beautiful. Uh two hundred across the entire state, and these got
scoop up pretty quickly as well. I think there's some available in some dispensaries,
but these are a force to be reckoned with. I like that yea
bags embroidery on there. Let me pull that up in Oh yeah next year,
next year, Yeah, for sure, we'll we get we'll be I
think the week that uh, you're the pr lady reached out to us,
we had such a busy week. We were doing a live stream at event.
It was Hashbash weekend. It with the email just like went through some
emails. I bet you if we would have actually got on time, or
you know, if we would have saw it right in time, we probably
would have probably would have got the bag, the bag of the rosins we
had, and you were so stressed going into the cup. He was like,
you know, it was just busy, Yeah, the Hashbash Cup and
it was opening day in Detroit too. That Friday, and it was a
lot, a lot of distractions and I'm bummed didn't get to go to Hashbash
because we love Hashbash. We've gone for the past like three years. We'll
fly and we'll fly from l A in Vegas. And when now we go
to Hashbash, we know, like Adam and the whole gang and uh you
know, rest in peace, John, Yeah, and uh yeah, it's
all It has been fun. Willy J. Pacea is one of our homies,
so we always go and support Willie J when he's doing his sat out
there and just yeah, seeing the whole all the old friends because we come
to Michigan and I've been going to Michigan for cannabis events for the past six
years every year. Yea, that makes sense and yeah exactly. You know,
being involved with High Times, I'm sure you around the states. Were
you involved in the off topic? Were you involved in the first Detroit one
that's six years ago, right, the first one that went rack? Yeah,
that was a good one. We got someone was on a golf cart
through his case of water. Remember, well that was just because we were
a line. That line was great. That first one was insane. Everyone
was like, you're telling me we can smoke weed somewhere and buy it,
and they were like, yeah, let's go. Like back then, that
was because it was always at Clio, because we always went to Clio.
Yeah, and then then you guys had in Detroit and that was Sick at
the Russell Tho. Clio ones popped though, yeah they did, they popped.
Those ones are fun. I missed those days, all those damns.
Yeah, I missed the big fat So those are those are some glory days.
I love music and festivals in that whole world. So you're I love
events, So I love that you do. That's why I really enjoy that
you were like doing this but also bringing the event and doing that little different
trying. Yeah, because because there's two different enjoyment parts, right, Like
it's like, okay, think about it, if you would have entered that
cup, the Hashbash cup and like just the emailed you like you one mix
sick like right right, but like being there and actually like hey and seeing
that. And that's a huge networking opportunity for a lot of these brands to
to collab because I mean, how many times do you see these brands collab
nowadays? This person with this person, this person, this person. So
you know, do you guys, do you guys want to be the first
media outlet to see the trophy, the first prototype of the trophy. Yeah,
yeah, let's do it. Let's see busting and out. Look at
this thing. It is beautiful. It is hafty. This thing is like
it's got some weight and some happy That does look like it's I like the
amount of time. How it looks like just like how like the the first
time I was going to take a grinder. It looks like a grinder,
the grinder. Yeah, that's what it is. Nice. So we have
everybody's name right on there, Michigan twenty twenty four, with a category,
brand and the product there right there. Come up on stage, you get
your trophy. We're doing seven repeat photos. Everybody's going to get the highlight.
You get a quick little winter speech and yeah, we'll be celebrating and
then look, I'm not gonna We're not gonna over promise another deliver. That's
what I will always pride myself on. We're going to tell you what it's
going to be like, and we're not going to say, oh, it's
gonna be so some crazy thing. It's not going to be a huge Music
festival. We're probably not even going to book any big name artists because you
know, we're a small company, we're just starting out. All I know
is that we want us to be focused on the awards. We want the
winners to come together. We don't want everybody to be focused on Oh I'm
going to show up late when Wu Tang Clan comes on. And I love
Wu Tang. I grew up on Wu Tang. But a lot of people
at a lot of you know, the former events, they're either over at
the vendor booze, or they're outside smoking, or they're waiting, you know,
until nine p m. Till music comes on, and people are not
there to really give the full attention to the people who are winning, who
put their pride and soul uh into into these these competitions, into this product.
So we wanted to be like, all right, you guys are coming
in, We're starting the show at this time. Everybody better be in the
room, no vendor distractions, no music. Later, it's gonna be DJ.
We'll obviously have music. It's gonna be fun, it's gonna be exciting.
It's gonna be a great networking and fun event. But yeah, I'm
not gonna try to say it's gonna be some big music festival. No,
but the thing but you're going for an award show. You're not going for
like just like you know, a party, you know what I mean.
So, I mean it's a celebration, you know, so it is kind
of a party. But yeah, really like that trophy. Yeah, I'm
so excited. I mean, we we spent a lot of time on it.
We went through a lot of design rounds. We we you know,
went to the factory, picked out our materials. It's I'm just happy that
this is the heaviest and heftiest trophy that I've ever felt in any Legit looks
like you can knock knock right out that I drop this from here, like,
oh god, yeah, it's it's beautiful, very solid too. It's
very this is a solid thing. So even if it did fall over,
the only thing that's gonna break is the other thing. Yes, exactly,
exactly, that's right, And you have what you guys want to know.
Oh oh, so we're going to say what when when is the judging period?
In like, yeah, when does the judging period end? And then
when winter on the June eighteenth or was there is that when it's announced June
eighteenth. Okay, when's the judging period? So like, if anyone wants
to get a kid the remaining kits, how long do they have to how
fast do they have to review it? So everything is due by May nineteen,
So judge kits are still available. There's like limited quantity different dispensaries.
If anybody has any questions and they need us to help find them a kit
for a certain category in a certain area, email us support at best in
grass dot Io. We will look at our inventory reports from dispensaries and say,
all right, puff Unicas these stores left puff Bay City, as these
the Grove as these, so on and so forth. Every kit come complete
with a judging card. Do not lose This is the only way to get
your special access code into the kit. So make sure you guys got that
groovy and Cannon Dave, he just dumped on the fuel. If you need
another code, email us and we get you guys one boob there we go.
So keep that keep that code right there, secret. Don't let anybody
know that code is that specifically your exact kit. I may last. I'm
gonna hold on to it. I got it. He knows how fast hearts
out of the bag. Yeah, we're good. They're gonna log in,
they're going to see their whole list. Here's everything in the Sativa flower kit.
You click it, you say, great, how does it look?
How does a taste has a smell? How does it make you feel?
What kind of flavor profiles, what kind of a roman profiles, what kind
of effect profiles that you're seeing comment section, and then you're submitting it.
You can see what you've judged. You can see what you still have you
have to judge. You can go back and edit a response if you're like,
you know what, I gave this strain a ten out of ten,
but now I smoke this one and this one's a ten out of town and
this one's a nine out of ten. So you can adjust that huge and
going back and be able to save it because we I remember, I don't
remember what it was. You had to like go do it all at once
or something, and it was very tough, and it's like that can be
very you know if everyone's not prepared, like get your own convenience just helps,
you know, So it's a nightmaracter to do everything at once. I
mean, you know, like twenty to thirty eight strings. You can't do
that, and then people try to write it in a notebook, and then
they try to go and do it all at the same time. Do it
one at a top time entry the big responses you can always go back.
We want people to just be right there on their computer and ideally computer over
phone. Just because you know you have your whole keyboard, You're gonna able
to type out more things and just be more focused on it. But in
any case, May nineteenth is the deadline. That's where were going to look
at all scores. We're going to tally at the winners. We will keep
that very private until everybody is there on the award show June eighteenth to listen
to the winners the first time it's announced, and I will publicize it on
all of our channels, spread into the world and let everybody know who the
best in Michigan is per category. Al Yeah, you really, you really
thought of everything for this competition here, Mark, I applaud you on it,
from having the feedback going back to the companies being able to for us
to be able to judge it and then write in our entries, save it
go to another one right in our entry, like the next day or two.
The competition you have it spread out all out throughout the all throughout Michigan
with places where you can go pick up a kit, and you have pretty
much every category that Michigan has to offer. Like, I think you've thought
of everything and it comes with your experience. But I'm excited. I'm excited
to see this competition grow through every state that you start entering, and I'm
excited to see how it is next year as well too. And we're just
just started this year. So like, congrats, man, it's awesome.
It's a really really good job. I think your background definitely shows because I
was like, for a first year competition, I thought of very enthus It
makes sense that you've been doing this on for a long time. So doing
it for a long time, is there anyone you'd like to give a shout
out to that's helped or throughout any of your Yeah, for sure. I
mean we couldn't have done this without True Centa. They were our main intake
partner. So when we go to a state, you know, we're not
best in grass is not a license entity in Michigan, so we need to
find a really good partner that has great compliance knowledge. They have a great
facility with space and staff for us to be able to come in there.
You know, we me and my team before we fly out there and we're
on site for three three weeks total, NonStop every day in that facility,
receiving the product from the cultivators and processors, making sure it's fully compliant,
fully tested, healthy and ready to go for for retailers to receive it and
for consumers to judge it. So Trucenta was a really big help with that.
We have a few silent partners that wish to remain unnamed, but we're
very helpful. So shout out, shout out the no face, no case.
And then yeah, some of our some of our main sponsors like Leaf
and Bud, amazing, amazing group that you see bill Wards, Oliver Michigan.
I'm sure, but they got a lot of great dispensary, has a
lot of great product, and they actually decided to not submit product just for
the sake of biasness. They didn't want to say, oh, Leaf and
Buds the Prezilian sponsor, and now they won an award, so well,
of course they won because and that and the other so we had a nice
little separation of church and state, so Puff, you don't everybody just you
know, ego, they just left there. You go get the best of
them. Shout out to the Puff Stores. That's one of our featured retailer
sponsors as well as the Grove which you guys visited, so really great partnerships
with them. And then Heavyweight Heads is going to be one of our on
site event activation teams there, so you'll be seeing some of the team there
like Jen and you know, maybe we'll get an appearance from Trick Trick in
the gang and then we'll have more more activations to announce soon. But we
actually kicked it with some of their team out in Vegas. We're just had
this random consumption loans at a party and just wrapping to run into like their
team heav you aehead and like shout out, I I can blanking on his
name right now, but you hope us up with that Trick trick o g
And let me tell you some of that desert weed is so dry, so
like to get some like buds. I was like, oh yeah, where
was this uh? When we were in Vegas, we just we ran into
like the Heavyweight Heads and we were at that Jack carreer cu up after m
J. Biscoon and literally just having a run. You were there, that's
so I was there. Probably you were probably right there. I know we
were. Yeah, we were up in the in the inside smoking because it
was cold. You know, so we're probably he probably ran in the er
and and he probably handed you like a heavyweight heads little tube it is now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's the man. He's the man.
We were at the exact same location. Huh. We were in the same
boat there right there? Were you kicking it with us at all? We
were. We had like a whole Michigan table at the point where like everyone
was from Michigan. They were just sitting down. But I was so lick
because he had a he had a performance that night. Yeah you can go.
You were getting lit. I was. We were just so lit.
Yeah, my buddy Honeycomb like he does like uh, he had like an
improv type of thing, so he invited me out to like play a couple
of songs on the sacks and the stuff. So I was like, I
was kind of anxious to David. Yeah, dude, he kills it on
the sacks. He produces and perform I tried, but I appreciate it.
But no, No, that's just so funny because I feel like it's we've
been in similar places for a long time, Mark, and it's so funny
having this interview because I feel like like, oh you were there, Oh
yeah, I threw that whole thing. Were just like, yeah, cool
man, it's cool. Now we're finally coming together. The universe finally brings
us together. Yeah that's all I said. That's cool man. Well,
no, this has been a great interview man, thanks for thanks for doing
it. I mean, do you let's do we do our fun one right?
Do we have one last question that we've been doing kind of like since
the beginning, and it's it's just kind of like a for this. Oh
yeah, it's a perfect that's actually perfect. Anytime we special question, Yeah,
it time we have a special guest, we got to ask it.
It's a fun question because it usually the whole interview we're just talking about everything
else for the interview. This is something outside of it. So now that
you're dabbing, so imagine you open up your rosin container and a godja Genie
pops out right and he's like, I'll grant you one wish to change anything
within the cannabis industry, what would you wish for? But you can't ask
for more wishes. I gotta say that because we've had people ask for like
recently, everyone's like, got more wishes. I feel like that's like an
unhidden real You should just like, no, you can't get more wishes.
That's like the genie thing. I would say, remove the restrictions on two
A to taxes so that brands who are putting so much expenses into creating these
products can actually write them off like a regular business. So many brands are
hurting and they're going out of business because they're spending one hundred dollars on something
and selling it for one hundred and two dollars and they can't write off one
hundred dollars and only making two dollars and are struggling to stay alive because of
exactly think that there's money in cannabis, because there is, like there is
money and weed, but there's so much that overhead that's caused by unnecessary things,
and it's like that that would get rid of that. And I like
that answer because you're creating a lot of these good mom and pop brands to
fall underneath where some of these other brands can take off because they have capital
behind them, not necessarily because they're quality or whatever. Right, So I
like that, cool, thank you. It's that. And purchase limits.
Removing purchase limits. I mean all of us can go buy as much alcohol
as we want, and we can go back into the store and buy twenty
handles, come back then a minute later by twenty handles. Why do we
have to be limited? And I mean luckily Michigan, you guys have a
little bit more lax rules. Your purchase limits are higher than most states,
and you can kind of you know, Michigan's nice. We do a few
transactions, but like you know, certain states, I can only buy five
hundred milligrams of edibles or five grams of concentrates, so like our kits can
only be five different rosin grams. And it's like, that's not a real
competition. And we want to be able to have thirty brands, all the
brands that want to go in. So we have to tell brands, sorry,
you can't compete because we're already at the max purchase limit for this category.
Wow. I didn't even think about that type of compliance and no.
See, that's the thing that's really cool about your competition, do is you
kind of you have to go between states so you can kind of see which
ones are doing things right, which ones are wrong. We're clearly like not
to say Michigan's doing it better, but that's at least enough to have us
like a d this is like a decent competition. Five grams of rosine and
it's like a that's not I don't know, you'd have to do zero point
two fives and just like you have to sell don't know, that's crazy.
No, that's that's very well. I didn't even know that. Yeah,
no, that's my genies. That's my request to the genie. Those are
those are good. I can't like that. I appreciate you joining us today.
Mark, this has been a great fun interview. I don't know if
you have anything else you'd like to say, or any other shoutouts or anything
before we wrap it up. But I don't know if you want to say
anything else. But yeah, I mean, look, I I'm humbled and
grateful to be on here. It's it's always an amazing opportunity to just be
able to introduce myself and spread the gospel. You know, I think there's
a lot of people who think, oh, competitions, they're just money grabs
and I'm giving my free product away and then they decide on their friends to
win. I want people to know who I am and what our mission is,
and it's it's about really hosting, really transparent, honest competitions with integrity.
We're never gonna let I don't care who my friends are, I don't
care who pays to be a sponsor. We're never going to let scores be
adjusted by anybody except for the judges. With the judges submit, that's who
that that's the scores of we tally, that's who wins. And we want
to do our best, best best job. We're we have a lot to
learn, we have a lot of you know, a lot of work to
do to get to the point to where we are, you know, the
most well known and amazing competition in the world. And I hope to get
to that point because you know, I want to be in this industry,
in this in this a lot of business for the rest of my life,
hopefully, so anybody. Yeah, and I just you know, there's a
lot of naysayers, there's a lot of people who are like will literally hang
up on us and be like, you know, fuck you guys, like
we don't know who you are, you don't you know, you don't have
this or that, or you're just another competition. We don't care. We
have bad experience with this competition, and I get that, and I'm and
I'm respectful of that. But if anybody has questions or or naysayers, give
me an opportunity to take five minutes of your time to just properly introduce myself
and our company and how we do it. We're very transparent with our process,
and yes, we are a for profit business, so we're going to
make money off of these things, but we are certainly making less money than
than than other competitions, and we're giving back to the people. We're paying
for people to be judges, we're spending money on events, we're spending money
on marketing. We want to do this the right way, and we want
to bring new people into the into the industry who aren't currently spending money on
weed, to finally spend money on weed and help lift this industry because if
if we can all help rise the tide, all of the ships will rise
with it and we can all same business. I like that word. I'm
schediting now else mid the trophy, don't. Yeah, but follow us Best
in Grass dot io on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on website. If anybody
cares to follow me. You'll see some skateboarding, You'll see some weed,
you'll see some food, some family at mayor underscore, Mark and yeah,
follow on the journey. We're always open to say hello and meeting new people
and taking any feedback that anybody has across across the states. Oh yeah,
no, I'm I'm glad we made your queens and this has been really fun.
It's been really fun. Yeah, thank you for taking time out of
your day to join us on our episode here today. I'm excited for the
Best and Grass competition, excited to judge it, and we'll talk here soon.
Mark and as always, as always Gre here to advocate, educate and
inspire to next time. Y'all. Peace,