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Jenny Argie is confident that her company’s edibles and vapes will become a go-to product for health-conscious weed consumers.
The CEO and founder of Adult-Use Conditional Processing company Jenny’s Baked at Home, LLC – who also runs a Jenny’s Baked at Home CBD shop in Brooklyn – said she is in talks with multiple dispensaries, and expects to have her products on shelves by early August.
“I’m very confident about my rollout,” Argie said. “Right now, I’m kind of deciding: am I going to be in every dispensary, or am I going to choose 20 of the dispensaries that I think would do well, and highlight my product?”
Jenny’s vapes and edibles are aimed squarely at the cannabis wellness niche. The company, which currently employs four people – uses a cured resin extraction method for its vapes and edibles, a solventless process Argie said is healthier than methods that use solvents.
All of the company’s gummies, caramels and chocolates are sugar-free, zero-glycemic, vegan, kosher and organic, Argie said. Some of the edible products Jenny’s will sell include the “Go Go Gummy,” which has ginseng for energy, the “ZZ” gummy, which contains melatonin for sleep, and the “Roasted and Toasted” chocolate, which contains roasted quinoa.
“I have a very unique product,” Argie said. “It’s the healthy version of a vape, it’s the healthy version of an edible.”
While Argie said she’s confident that Jenny’s products will sell well, she’s less so about the prospect of licensed processors competing with vapes and edibles that illegal smoke shops sell. Jenny’s will sell niche health-focused products that aren’t typically found at unlicensed cannabis stores, but competing with the unregulated market is going to be a huge challenge for most licensed processors, she said.
Argie said she gives a lot of credit to the Office of Cannabis Management for the steps it has taken so far to roll out the state’s legal weed market, but thinks shutting down illegal stores – which, unlike licensed growers and processors, are not beholden to the THC potency tax– is necessary for legal businesses to succeed.
“Our prices are going to be driven down from illegal smoke shops selling, and our taxes are going to be higher than what we’re making, so it’s not going to make sense for us to be in business anymore,” Argie said. “There’s a lot at play here, and I don’t think it’s a blame game, but I think going forward the rollout is going to be a lot more successful if they shut these stores down.”
One mistake Argie hopes New York avoids is issuing too many cannabis business licenses in an effort to expand supply to meet demand. As a veteran of the CBD industry, Argie saw the hemp/CBD market flood and crash, and she fears something similar could happen in the legal weed market if regulators aren’t careful.
“It’s going to be the same situation, if they start to think they can fix it by just throwing licenses at it,” Argie said. “It might work for a year or two, it might look good in the papers, but the industry is going to be decimated just like California.”
For now, Argie is focused on the final stages of getting Jenny’s products in stores. The company will do its first round of packaging products in the middle of this month, and will continue talks with dispensaries with the goal of having Jenny’s edibles and vapes available for purchase next month.
In the big picture, Argie wants her company to play a role in bringing more women into the cannabis industry – especially in senior roles. Argie is one of a handful of AUCP CEOs in New York, and just about 1% of cannabis CEOs are women, she said. In order to change that, Argie wants to establish incubators and other resources that help women join the cannabis industry and thrive, she said.
“I’d like the opportunity to set up work programs to get women educated and skilled in the cannabis industry in New York,” Argie said. “I think if we put our energy towards building the industry that way – with education – … it would be a much more powerful way than just throwing money or handing out licenses.”