Photo by Seth Kubersky
Sunburn Cannabis released piattella bubble hash, the newest type of cannabis concentrate available in Orlando, just in time for "Dab Day" on July 10.
Why is piattella special?
In concentrates, you have the old-school hash — Moroccan hockey puck-style hash, temple ball hash — and this is a variation that was done in Spain. … We're pretty sure we're the only legal dispensary in the United States that has this product available.
We actually vacuum-seal it and age it for a period of time, and it provides a very unique flavor profile. ... By aging it you're allowing all the cannabinoids to interact with each other and to oxygenate, and ultimately create a much more robust flavor.
It's a very unique, high-end experience, [and] it's something that may not be every day for somebody. But it's definitely something worth trying, and it's definitely something that's a completely different experience than anything else that's on the market.
It's not going to be as high of a high; live rosin is probably about as high as you can get from a euphoria standpoint, given the purity. But ultimately, I like the [piattella] hash because it's more mellow; you're gonna be a little bit more sedated, but the taste profile is just unbelievable. It is so flavorful because of that aging process.
What does the “90u (micron)” label on live rosin mean?
It's the top shelf. The very interesting thing about about solventless concentrates is, it is the ultimate indicator and marker of the underlying flower quality. It's good in/good out or bad in/bad out.
Ninety microns speaks to the size of the filter bags that are used to remove the cannabinoids. You're basically taking flower that has been harvested carefully (if you're doing it right) to preserve the trichome heads and not beat it up. Then you're freezing it and ultimately mixing it in these filter bags, [and] that entire process does not involve any chemical solvents whatsoever. It's ice water, so you can't hide. So if a consumer is looking for kind of the best of the best, you're looking for that 90u rosin.
How are you addressing the environmental impact of your disposable live rosin vapes?
I'm a huge outdoors guy, I'm a big surfer [and] boater. I hate seeing plastic in the water [so] we're going to be launching a full recycling campaign to get all those batteries [and] we're going to accept plastic packaging from any of our competitors as well, and give consumers a 10% discount for bringing that into us.
We recognize disposables create waste, and we've come up with a way to to address it and get it recycled. We found a company that will actually recycle both the batteries and the plastic. Unfortunately, it took a little longer for us to launch because literally we had to get permission from the DEA, because the recycling facility that would do it was located in Georgia. We would have to truck the waste that's collected on a weekly basis at our stores across state lines, which would violate federal law. We ultimately got approval, and in about a week we're gonna launch it.
Why do Florida’s dispensaries offer deep daily discounts rather than lowering prices?
Florida has one grocer, Publix, that has had a 70% share of the market for a long time, and that, because they have that dominance, can command pricing power and promo power with all the different distributors and manufacturers. That's why you walk into Publix and every different aisle has something on sale on any given day or BOGO. ... The Florida consumer has kind of been conditioned to shop on price and promos.
Premium flower on the illicit market is still in that $45 to $55 range.
We benchmark our pricing off that, because it's still a much larger market than our 800,000-patient (plus or minus) market. ... We're not running that “bulk” strategy because we don't have a million square feet of cultivation and 120-something stores like Trulieve; they've got to move the product, otherwise they're gonna choke on it.
What else is new with Sunburn’s Central Florida operations?
The Winter Garden grow facility is fully online from a cultivation standpoint, the full canopy is available [and] we have launched full solventless extraction there. So we have probably our nicest solventless facility that we've had in our collected time in the Florida market. ... What I'm most excited about is the flower quality that we're getting out of Winter Garden is at or better than anything we ever did at One Plant.
Our Orlando store continues to be one of our best stores as we kinda get out and get involved in the community ... so it's been a busy seven months. We are at 10 stores right now; we're hoping to open number 11 here in the middle of July.
How do you personally maintain quality control?
I'm one of the few CEOs in the sector that actually participates and loves the category. I have been since I was probably 14-15 years old. (Sorry, mom.) We do have an internal QC program; it's probably my favorite part of the job if I'm being completely honest. So I get to the farm pretty regularly and they'll pull samples of stuff to try. We've got a good group of taste-makers within the company, and we all weigh in, it's just a matter of finding the time to do it. If I've got four or five strains to test and review, I'll spread it out over four or five days. It'll be my evening; go do a little testing, a little R&D.
Outside of Ben Kovler, a good friend who's CEO of GTI [Green Thumb Industries], there's not a lot of other CEOs at a national level that actually consume [and] that's always been a really bizarre thing to me in cannabis. Because if you look at a parallel industry like alcohol, they all drink. If you're in the wine business, you can walk into the barrel room, pull a Cab [and] a Pinot Noir, and be able to tell the difference, tell the flavor profile, and know your business. Same with bourbon, same with vodka. And to see in cannabis you have people that wouldn't even know how to roll a joint, it's baffling to me. But you know, I think you can see on the other end, the quality of their product is a signal of the fact that they don't know what they're putting out.
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