By Cassie McGrath | BizJournals
Hershey kisses dancing to Christmas tunes. Peanut butter cups shaped like Easter eggs. And now, THC-infused Halloween candy.
For the second year, Wareham-based Coast Cannabis Co. dropped it’s “Cookies ‘n Scream” candy bars just in time for Spooky-season. But the owners say that in an industry as heavily regulated as cannabis, it’s not easy to make seasonal products.
The bar is a take on the company’s traditional cookies and cream bar, which has all organic white chocolate and organic chocolate crumbled cookies.
“But to really spook-ify this bar, we used all natural red dye cocoa butter,” Angela Brown, co-owner of Coast said. “So it looks like a murder scene on the top of your bar — which is so appetizing.”
Coast always planned on making seasonal products since before it launched in 2020. It released the Cookies ‘n Scream bars last year, but they sold out in the first week of October. This year, they tripled the batch as they search for the sweet spot in the market.
Launching seasonal products in any industry is a balancing act of trying to make enough products to meet customer demand, while also making sure there aren’t too many. But whereas in other industries, post-holiday discounts can unload seasonal products, in cannabis, discounts aren’t allowed.
“You really only have 31 days to sell something that’s blood splatter,” Brown said.
Months ahead of October
Seasonal products also take extensive planning. In order to have the Cookies ‘n Scream bars ready for this October, Coast shipped the products out for testing in the first week of August. Products need to be tested before heading out to a dispensary, so Coast had to get on this early to have time to package and distribute them.
“It definitely makes it more challenging to do these one-off products,” Brown said. “We can’t just throw something together and put it out. There’s all these minor things that maybe an average business can get around or maybe don’t have to worry about that impacts cannabis.”
Yet another complication is that there are a lot of restrictions in advertising cannabis products. Social media is often not very friendly to cannabis posts as well, Brown said.
“This is not just for seasonal, but obviously, the fact that you only have X amount of days to sell seasonal, that means every day matters. We have a lot of restrictions on marketing, whereas the average product that might be seasonal, you might see a commercial on TV or radio. I think back to the Hershey Kisses for the Christmas holiday season,” she said. “We can’t do that, we’re really limited.”
Coast sells products in more than 150 Massachusetts stores, but the Cookies ‘n Scream bar product is only in about 20 of them right now because the batch is limited.
Brown says she’s seeking more data as she continues to scale up the product. As more dispensaries come online, buying trends are constantly changing, and she wants to be extra-cautious. Still, she hopes that these fun products can draw more customers into Coast.
“It allows the customers who consume cannabis to have those adult candy moments,” Brown said. “Why can’t I have fun holiday treats if everyone else has fun holiday treats?”
‘What do we want as consumers?’
Coast launched in June of 2020 with products are made of organic, all-natural, Fair Trade and ethically sourced ingredients. Brown runs the company with her husband and her father-in-law. Both Brown and her husband used medical marijuana and, like “true entrepreneurs,” founded Coast in response to their own frustrations about the quality of products on the market.
“We were medical patients,” she said. “We felt extremely let-down by the quality that you saw the medical market putting a focus on. You’d read these ingredients, and you couldn’t believe a medical patient would want to put these ingredients into their body, especially when you think about people who are dealing with cancer or other diseases, they really have to be 100% in tune with what’s in their body.”
Brown said before she started using medical cannabis, she believed the stigma about it. But after taking medications that didn’t work for her, she eventually tried cannabis at the encouragement of her husband.
“My life changed, I mean, overnight,” she said. Brown and her husband then quit their jobs in 2017 and founded T. Bear Inc., the corporation, and Coast Cannabis, the brand.
Coast focuses on using minor cannabinoids in their products to help people looking for support with issues with sleep or nausea, understanding the power of cannabis to fight it.
“It really comes from that desire for ourselves first, like what do we want as consumers?” Brown said.
H/T: www.bizjournals.com
