In this episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt is joined by Shea Coakley and Jarrod Jordan of Green Street Beverages, a Massachusetts-based brand exploring the emerging THC beverage space. Coakley, a seasoned food and wellness entrepreneur, and Jordan, a CPG marketing veteran, share how their personal journeys away from the alcohol industry shaped their mission to normalize low-dose, social THC consumption. The conversation covers the evolving regulatory landscape, growing national demand for cannabis-infused drinks, and what it will take for THC beverages to go truly mainstream—from sports arenas to grocery store shelves.

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TG Branfalt:

Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. I am joined today by Shea Coakley, co-founder and CEO and Jarrod Jordan, chief marketing officer of Massachusetts based Green Street Beverages. Coley also serves as the Massachusetts chapter founder of the Cannabis Beverage Association, and Jordan in his role leads Green Street Beverages brand strategy and growth. How you doing this afternoon, guys?

Shea Coakley:

Great, thanks for having us on. Doing well.

TG Branfalt:

So before we get into it, I do want to just sort of note that cannabis beverages, I think are one of my favorite products that’s legalization has taken hold. It’s kind of an open secret that I have replaced cannabis beverages with alcohol consumption in social settings and just my sort of day-to-day life. And so I think that there’s a lot that we’re going to cover here today. I’m a big fan of cannabis beverages in general.

Shea Coakley:

That’s great.

TG Branfalt:

So before we get into it, tell me about yourselves, guys, your backgrounds and how you ended up in the cannabis space.

Shea Coakley:

And it’s a perfect tee up. We’ll get into a little bit of background, but before we even do that, I just want to agree with what you said. The beverage space for cannabis is so interesting. Beverage is where we do things socially, right? It’s like we’re used to getting together for a cup of coffee or a beer or a glass of wine or cigars and scotch. This is just what we’ve done socially forever and the fact that THC as a functional ingredient in beverage is becoming more widespread. I personally, and I’ll get into it, but I personally couldn’t be any more happy. I’ll give you a little bit of my background. Jared can do the same. And we’ll dig into all things THC beverage. So I’ve been an entrepreneur in the food, beverage and health and wellness space for the last 16 plus years. Always been.

I guess the common thread throughout my entrepreneurship is just these services or products that make people’s lives a little bit better. So I haven’t cured cancer yet and I haven’t solved world hunger, but I think I have put a lot of smiles on people’s faces, which is really what gets me up in the morning. And so I had a business that was in the cold brew coffee space in the early days of that. I had a convention business that was for wellness plays in the office, and the main business I ran was called Lean Box, which was a healthy sort of technology based spending machine. But all of this background led me to what I think is the perfect opportunity, and I will speak to what you said earlier. I personally replaced alcohol in my life. It was like when I was about 30, the risk reward, the benefit, just the equation started becoming an imbalance for me.

TG Branfalt:

The hangovers

Shea Coakley:

And the hangovers and just, I don’t know, it just wasn’t doing for me what it used to do for a number of different reasons. And this is around the time where THC started becoming legal and I had had my fair share of brownies or joints passed to me in high school and college, but it wasn’t really my thing per se.

TG Branfalt:

Interesting.

Shea Coakley:

And when I reengaged in this world, I just realized I’ve become such an advocate for the plant and what it can do for people and what it can replace that’s not great for people in certain occasions. So I’m sure we’ll get into this in great detail, but I will say that this is 100% a business that is directly in line with a personal passion of mine. And the idea of consuming these things socially at low doses, I think can open up a whole world for people like it did for me. Before I kick it over to Jared, I mean, I’ll just tell this quick story. I’ll never forget. Years and years ago I was experimenting with the idea. I had just stopped drinking alcohol completely, and I went to my first big social event I would call it, which was a Snoop Dogg concert. So it was appropriate.

And I remember instead of imbibing in alcohol, I had had some THC drinks and I had what I equated to be one of the best, most fun nights energetic, laughing, enjoying the music. Everything about the experience was amazing. And I woke up at six 30 in the morning and I went and worked out. And I remember coming back from the workout being like, have I just cracked a code? Have I just figured out how to do this? So I think a lot of people are going to have that similar experience. So anyway, Jared, do you want to give a little bit of your background?

Jarrod Jordan:

Yeah, for sure. Jared, Jordan, I spent most of my life in consumer goods, mostly in the food and beverage and supplement space. A lot of work in globalizing brands for that. So when I was working for my previous company, had opportunity to connect with Shay through a mutual friend, kind of discussing what they were up to in a similar trajectory that Shay had had, although I haven’t really necessarily replaced completely alcohol, but I was a one to three drinker a day that was kind of like when I came home, had myself a scotch and a couple of beers, and that was generally what I did. And the cheat code thing happened the same way. I had a couple of THC beverages and the next morning woke up, put my feet down on the ground. I was like, I feel great. This is quite amazing. I found that cheat code.

And so it just became a huge advocate for it and leveraging the background I had of moving products, particularly through either regulated channels or through locked channels, meaning you had to sell it in a specialty store or in a liquor store or something along those lines. And with some of the changes that have occurred in the THC space of well-equipped to really look at how we make those stores hum, how we can get people excited to try our products, hopefully find them, find that they love them, and then become a longtime lifetime user of ours. And so luckily Shea had built a delicious beverage that I actually myself now consume two to three of a day and enjoy them quite regularly and so does everybody else that comes over to my house now. But yeah, it’s been a real fun journey so far and we’re just getting started. So I think this category is going to be where it’s at. People want to consume these types of beverages once they try ’em and they get it. And I think the sky’s kind of the limit for the next few years.

TG Branfalt:

So I do want to touch on something that you had mentioned. Cha is the low dose, the low dose THD. And I think that the metered dose products are really one of the most important things to really kind of normalize cannabis consumption. Tell me about why you think that the low dose products, and both of you can answer this question obviously, but why do you think the low dose products have become really kind of a staple and among the most popular in the industry?

Shea Coakley:

Yeah, I mean to me this is, I think aside from beverages as a category, what you’re honing in on the micro dose or low dose or whatever you want to call it, becomes such a big component of this. I think really when it comes down to it, it’s two separate things that this proliferation of low dose products is doing. One, it’s predictable and it’s tested, it’s everything in this category of what you’re getting. And I’ll move on to the second one, but I will say on that first category, I think everybody that we all know either directly or indirectly had the experience where someone’s cousin made brownies and dose them, right? It’s like a common story you hear about, and this is experimentation with edibles 15, 20 years ago. And it’s like you have this heavy experience. People often talk about it like they were taking mushrooms.

And a lot of people, particularly if you’re new to this, that scares them. So I think one of the things this low dose category does is it makes it very predictable exactly what you’re getting. And the way that these products are made, ours and other brands in the space, it is down to a science. You know what you’re getting in that edible, that drink that whatever. So it’s the predictability I think is one important thing. And the other is just simply the low dose portion of it. And where I think that comes into play is, here’s my metaphor for it. The early days of cannabis were the equivalent of drinking an entire bottle of Jack Daniels and now the products are Bud Lights, glasses of wine, a corona of one martini. And this is where I think mass market is going to start really loving this because what I don’t want to do, or at least I don’t want to do all the time, what I don’t want to do is take so much T-H-T-H-C that I’m basically couch locked.

I can’t make appropriate sentences and my brain’s not working the right way. But what I do want is a nice light, airy feeling where I’m out and the music’s good and the colors are great and conversations are interesting. And I think this proliferation of low dose is showing that THC can be something other than what we used to think it as. Is this couch lock substance? I think the way I could summarize it as quickly as possible is to say that THC, just like alcohol is a social substance with the right dosage and that is what this is unlocking. And it is different for everybody. Two milligrams to one person, maybe it’s 10 milligrams to another person, maybe it’s 50 to another, and there are some groupings of how you can determine that dosing. But nonetheless, this idea of having what is for you, a microdose can be a totally different experience than what we traditionally think of as THC.

Jarrod Jordan:

Yeah, I mean I could just add a slight bit to that, is that the social setting of low dose allows you to really be engaged in the conversation. So we all know when we have too much, we just kind of want to sit there and we’re in our own head. And I think that is the antithesis of what being out at a happy hour with your friends is like. And so as a result, the low dose makes it to where people want to consume it. We were in Charleston just a couple of weeks ago and they serve them in bars, they’re on tap. It’s very normalized. Every bar and restaurant has it. And as you walk around a restaurant, you’re in Carolina, so you got to go to a barbecue shop as you’re walking around a place to serve barbecue, you look around the room and about 25% of the people are holding a THC beverage and they’re having these fun, engaging conversations.

So the intent of that microdose is in practicality, in those environments works especially well. You can still go out and drive. You’re not not feeling inappropriate just like you might after a beer or two. And the same idea on the dosage. By having those numbers there and very visible, it’s like when you grab an IPA that’s really strong or a bud light that’s really light, you kind of have some predictability about what that outcome will be. I know if I have a few of these IPAs how I’m going to feel, whereas I might be able to cross 12 Bud Lights and still be just the same. So being able to just pick and choose the level of experience based on those numbers just I think makes that predictability as Shea said. And that’s for me, that’s extremely key understanding what I’m getting into every time.

TG Branfalt:

Well, you mentioned you’re in South Carolina and they’re serving it at bars. I mean in many legal states this is not allowed, right? In New York for example, you cannot serve alcohol in the same place as you would survey a THC beverage. So how are companies like yours dealing with these sort of disparities in how you’re marketing this in states and that sort of thing?

Shea Coakley:

Well, I think the first thing you have to do is break it up into two different markets, distinct markets. There’s one market that is what I would call the regulated cannabis space. So those are what you think of when you think of dispensaries. For people on a national level, they would think of California and Colorado, some of the early folks now here in Massachusetts, I mean there are a lot of states that have dispensaries that you can go in, whether they be medical or recreational. And that is what I would call the regulated market. And that’s where a lot of these beverages started. There is a second market that, and by the way, that only makes up about one to 2% ish of total sales in the regulated market is in beverage. But then you have this other market, which is really what’s been taking off over the last two years.

And as a little bit of background, I mean your listeners can do some more reading. I won’t get into extensive detail, but the 2018 Farm bill, which regulates cannabis and marijuana on a federal level, allowed for up to a certain amount of THC to be in an ingestible product in traditional retail. And that’s a federal rule. So when that first came out, I think everybody looked at it and was like, is this maybe a mistake? Did they do something wrong here? And then some brave souls started testing the waters and putting it onto shelves, often at smoke shops or things like that. And it started growing. And over the last two years, this has been the way in which the market is going, which is deriving your THC from hemp. It’s basically the same plant, but with more CBD than THC, you’re still extracting the raw ingredient of THC, all of this to say when the dust settles in a ton of states right now, many of which we’re operating in, it’s like you got New Jersey that’s coming online soon.

You got Minnesota, which has been the hotbed of this activity. They were really the first ones to take it on fully South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee. I mean, I could go down a list and in these states it’s going through the three tier system basically. So you would see it at a liquor store or like Jared was saying, at a local restaurant, or you can ship these beverages direct to consumer. I will say to get a little bit more nitty gritty that it is federally legal to do this, but each one of the states at their own pace is sort of figuring out how they’re going to do it individually. New York is actually a great example of that that you referenced where there was this battle back and forth, they were on the shelves and they got pulled while they were trying to figure out who was going to regulate it.

Massachusetts is going through a similar thing, and it’s often a delay just based on the state figuring out like, okay, who’s going to regulate this? Who’s the board that sits over it? Is it cannabis? Is it THC? But I will say that where we stand today on May 19th, 2025, there are a lot of states that have already gone through those growing pains and are in full force out in the market. So you take Minnesota like we talked about, and if you go into a total wine in Minnesota, you’re going to see a TH C-section. You’re going to see consumers coming in droves buying those. If you go to a restaurant, they’re going to give you a menu that has non ALK and THC in a lot of their spots. So this is the way it seems to be going. And the reason we love it is its exposure to a lot of people that otherwise might not go into a dispensary.

Jarrod Jordan:

The shopping experience of going into a total wamo, our bottles in these states, which ironically do seem to over index early on with states that didn’t have as developed of a regulated dispensary market. So maybe that could be part of the issue because you walk into a dispensary, you’ve got a pretty good tax you have to put on a product, whereas that same tax does not apply to an alcoholic beverage. And if the alcoholic beverage companies are distributing these products into alcohol and wine stores, they’re tax at normal sales rates. So I think that that one part is kind of interesting that some of those states that were not necessarily early adopters of the dispensary model are a little bit faster to get these in for regular consumption of folks at wine and beverage stores. I should also comment, when you walk into these stores, this section of THC isn’t small. It is bigger than the craft beer section. I’m 20 foot aisles. You walk down, it’s four by eight in sections all set up with THC beverages. You have a cooler over in the cold section, you’ve got end caps with it on there. It is bigger in many cases where this states have this in the one in liquor stores. That section is sometimes the biggest section, but it’s definitely bigger in almost everyone I went into than your craft beer section, which I thought was fascinating. Yeah.

TG Branfalt:

In your company, do you guys consider the craft beer industry as your biggest competition? Is that what you view yourselves competing against?

Shea Coakley:

It’s a great question. I mean, one thing I’ll say is actually the advent of THC beverages has been great for aspects of the craft brewing business, particularly the backend creation of these things. So a lot of the co-packers and manufacturing facilities in the space to adopt these kind of beverages have been craft brewing houses and has been an amazing revenue add for them. But I will say it’s interesting. It’s like your question really is, I think as a broader way to look at the question would be like, are we competing directly with alcohol and craft beer being a sub-sector of that? And I think there’s some truth to that, but I think the reality is consumers going to break down into a handful of different buckets. Bucket one might be a subset like myself, I decided a number of years ago to completely stop drinking alcohol and THC beverages have been a better fit for me.

So there’s going to be some portion of folks that lean heavily into that. Then there’s going to be probably a larger set of people that may end up actually sort of dabbling in a little bit of both, sometimes on the same night, but more often than not, they’ll go out and they’ll say, all right, you know what? I don’t really want to drink alcohol tonight, but I’d love a THC experience. So I think it is going to take a little bit from the alcohol space for sure, but there is some early data that’s interesting that we’ve heard about coming out of, for example, Minnesota, which is pretty, I would say a pretty mature market in this space relative to others. And when you see stores looking at 17, 18% of their total sales going towards THC beverages, one of the interesting things about those stats is they’re showing that that’s mainly all additive revenue. I mean, there might be about two or 3% of that that’s borrowed from either wine or craft beer, but at least at the store level, we’re showing that it’s additive. So it’s interesting. I do think when you play the tape all the way out, there is going to be some borrowing from craft beer from the wine at the end of the day or the wine at the end of the day or cocktails, but it can also just be additive as well.

Jarrod Jordan:

Yeah, I tend to think of it more along the lines as it’s the spirit of choice for that moment. Sometimes you want to have a whiskey, sometimes you want to have a beer or wine. Sometimes you want jager bombs, right? So you’re just kind of picking your poison on that night for that type of event or how you want it to go down. So I think there’s going to be people who are California sober like Shay, and there’s going to be people who look like me. It just depends on what the vibe is that night, and that’s what I’m going with. And that’s choice.

Shea Coakley:

Someone made an interesting point to me that I hadn’t really thought about before, but it is kind of related to this. They were talking to me, this is a friend of mine that uses, still consumes alcohol and also does the THC beverages. And this past winter, they were talking to me about this, what do they call it? The Bermuda Triangle. It was like Thanksgiving, Christmas and new.

And they were talking about this idea that from Thanksgiving until January 1st, there’s always an excuse to do something and go out and drinks seem to be flowing everywhere. And this guy was telling me at some point he was like, I just do not want to drink anymore. I’m not interested in going out and having alcohol. It’s happening too often, whatever. So this guy would sort of infuse THC beverages socially in that instance. So I think there’s going to be all different kinds of consumers in some ways. There is a direct competition to do you want to consume THC or alcohol? And then I think there’s going to be borrowing from it as well.

TG Branfalt:

So you had mentioned earlier too that the THC beverage market is currently only about 2% of the total marketplace. What do you guys think that, why do you think that is? First of all, because I find that number just, and I’ve seen these same sort of reports. I find that crazy low. It boggles my mind when I read that because I know the role that these beverages, these products play in my life, my wife’s life, that they’re available at convenience stores around here, they’re available at dispensaries depending on sort of the inputs. But that sort of stuff, I’m sure you’re aware. Why do you think that the numbers are what they are and what do you think? How long do you think it may sort of take a even 10 to 10 to 15% market share, which still is very, very small in my opinion.

Shea Coakley:

So let me clarify. This is where it’ll get really interesting, and I think there are reasons that we could pretty clearly articulate as to why this is the case. After I break it down, this goes into that split I talked about earlier. So it’s one to 2% of total revenue in the regulated dispensary market. When you go over to the areas that you were talking about, C stores, grocery, liquor stores, bars, those numbers are significantly, significantly higher, astronomically higher, I would even say. So like I was talking about earlier, you’re seeing at stores in Minnesota who’s the most mature market, about 16 17% of their total revenue is now THC beverages. Now it does beg the question, why in the dispensary market is it only one to 2%? And I think there are a handful of different reasons for that. I think when beverages go through the dispensary channel, quite frankly, they’re a little bit more expensive than they should be given.

I’ll just call it marijuana tax, and it’s not just federal tax, or I should say state level tax. You get hit everywhere. It’s more expensive to produce, it’s whatever. I think that’s one of the reasons, one, the core reasons that we have heard again and again, which is a fascinating one to me, is that a lot of the target consumers that we’re going after simply do not want to go into dispensaries. Now, as someone who has been in a bunch of dispensaries, I find them to be very nice places. They’re helpful, they’re clean, they are run pretty well. So I actually don’t particularly get the negative sort of stereotype of going into a dispensary. I don’t understand that. But for whatever reason, the target consumers, let’s say the wine soccer mom that’s used to having her two glasses of cabernet, at the end of the day, a lot of these folks don’t want to go into dispensary.

A lot of dispensary sales are higher dose products, flour, et cetera. The last reason I’d say is the ecosystem that has been built within the regulated market is actually not great for beverages. When you think about even things as simple as the distribution of said products, these are sprinter vans that are used to carrying little tinctures or flour or beverages are big. They’re clunky. This is what Bev ALK is used to distributing big trucks and things like that. So it’s just that the market’s not great in terms of setup for beverages, even at the store level, putting in coolers, it’s just more of a challenge. So where you’re seeing all this volume go, and it makes total sense is meeting consumers at where they’re already going. So you’re meeting them at the grocery store, you’re meeting them at the C-store, the aisles that Jared was referring to earlier, I mean, a lot of the business that I would venture to guess in that we’ve heard directly they are capturing is someone that’s going into the liquor store on a Friday afternoon and they’re going to get their 12 pack of beer and they’re going to get their bottle of Cabernet and they walk by the THC section and they go, huh, that sounds interesting.

I’d like to try that. Go ahead, Jared, I see you speaking up.

Jarrod Jordan:

Also, just the shopping experience to be able to pick up a can, turn it around and look at it and then pick up a competitor’s can and pick it up and look at it. Because it pretty much, because it’s so new, it is pretty, I know the word confusing would be incorrect, but to a shopper as they’re walking by in she’s analogy like, oh, look at this. Lemme pick it up. They might pick up four or five brands and they’re kind of really judging a book by its cover because they don’t know, but you can’t really have that experience in the dispensaries. Obviously the ones here in Massachusetts, everything’s behind a glass wall, and so you’re never able to actually shop the different brands and flavors like you would in a grocery store. Like anything else, bananas or cereal, you do it that same way. So they get the opportunity to do that, and I think as a result, that gives them the permission to pick up that product and put it in their basket, whereas the other way around, they’re going to make a special trip, go to a store and then come out with that single product. It, it’s just easier and more convenient. And also the ability to interact with that product or brand for a few seconds in the aisle gives them the opportunity to purchase and then later consume. So yeah, I think that’s a big difference.

TG Branfalt:

Do you guys have a sort of idea handle an estimation on which demographics canna beverage are proving to be most popular?

Shea Coakley:

Jared,

Jarrod Jordan:

Do you want to take that first? Yeah, it is really interesting. I can pull it up here in a second. So it is different by region of the US and it’s also those different regions. I’ll look at who the top consumers are, have some gender differences and some income differences. So what you might see up in the rust ballot going up in the Minneapolis, you tend to see people who are earning income on the, I don’t want to say lower, but to low below the 50% point could have in that category really over indexes to males in that kind of grouping. Whereas then you get over into the Northeast, you see a lot more females buying it. You’re seeing people who are mid to high income earners, so you have a different type of player there. Similarly in the south and kind of those Charleston, sorry, the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, et cetera, you’re seeing middle income earners slightly more males, but gravitating a little bit more towards the urban settings in those states versus the suburban or rural.

And then out west, you see this really weird gap. You have kind of these Gen Z groups and then you have the greatest generations. You have these 80 year olds who are buying tons of it, and these 20 year olds who are buying tons of it and their incomes kind of all over the place. But it is kind of interesting, the ages there. I should also say that the other, in the northeast, it does seem to be millennials and Gen Z. In the Midwest, it does seem to be a little bit Gen X millennial in the south. It does seem to be, again, high gen Z, low gen X and heavy millennial in those areas.

Shea Coakley:

It is interesting to see how much more widespread, I’ll even just put it under the category of low dose products, but beverages in particular because people are used to the form factor of beverage. It’s interesting to see how wide the net can go. And I remember Jared knows the story, but when we were first developing the concept and looking to get into the space, I remember my mom hippie smoked garbage weed back in the day when she was younger and then stopped when she had kids and has now re-engaged with it. And I hope she’s not listening to this. Maybe she doesn’t like me calling her out on this, but I dunno, she loves it and has gotten back into it. I remember all this to say I was taking her and my dad to the airport and they were traveling with a friend and this friend’s name who I’ll leave out.

I remember I was driving to the NB airport and we were about 10 minutes away, and I saw the woman sort of looking around her bag and I was like, are you okay? Do you need anything? And this woman’s in her late seventies and she was like, I just have to make sure I have my gummies for the flight. And I was like, what kind of gummies? And she was like, my THC beverages, I need to fly with ’em. It helps me relax and whatever. And I just remember thinking, we’re in the right, this is now prolific everywhere. It’s like this can hit any age category. So I like that there’s the traditional, typical demo for someone who would use marijuana. What’s interesting about low dose and beverage is just the sort of wide net that it’s casting and you can get people of all shapes and sizes and ages that are enjoying this, and that’s like one of the coolest parts of it. What’s better than having five random demos in a room just like a little bit high? It’s a great, I love just even the thought of just bringing people together and connecting them to this vehicle of a functional beverage. It’s great. Yeah,

TG Branfalt:

This all kind of speaks to the socialization aspect of the cannabis beverages and even low dose THC and I lived in Detroit when legalization took over when it happened in Michigan and they didn’t sell cannabis at a Tigers game. I go to Toronto on a very regular basis where cannabis is federally legal and you cannot buy a cannabis beverage at a Blue Jays game or a Leafs game. And Major League Baseball does have a CBD sponsor. And so I just want to ask from your position, what are the barriers to having these beverages served at major sporting events?

Shea Coakley:

Yeah, sometimes it’s so interesting because some of them aren’t the obvious ones. So I’ll start with part of this is that this market is just getting going. If we’re in a baseball game, to use the metaphor in THC beverage, we’re an inning one, we’re at the top of the first, or maybe we’re in the second inning, I don’t know, whatever the metaphor still stands, there’s a lot more game left to play. So some of this is like, I think you will start seeing this summer and moving on into next spring. I think you’ll start seeing this being experimented with more onsite at locations. I will say that some of the things that are a little bit slower to act in this are back of house sort of weird things. Like for example, we know of a very large group that does things in the concert space, and the last thing that they have remaining to figure out before they put THC beverages on the menu at these concerts and festivals is insurance.

Insurance hasn’t been written for this. It’s been written for alcohol again and again. And you can kind of just match the same things, but it’s net new to these insurance companies. So they have to kind of re-look at the risk profiles. And so there’s that piece. The regulatory bodies are also catching up with in alcohol, we have things like tips courses, and we have people going around to make sure people are selling and distributing the right way. All of these things are starting to catch up. So I think you’ll start seeing now the way that THC beverages are going. I think you will start seeing comedy shows, sports games, concerts. I was just on the phone with a guy earlier today, about two hours ago who was talking to me about a big festival that’s going on in Minnesota, a music festival that will have THC beverages being served on site.

So I think we’re just at the beginning of this thing. I would say it’s been a lot more interesting in the way specifically your questions, professional sports leagues consider the regulated cannabis market, whereas now you’re dealing with a product that is actually federally legal, which makes it a lot easier to do. So I don’t know, I’d back up for a second to say the following, this is a new space. There’s going to be sort of fits and starts as to how things go, but ultimately, I think what you’re alluding to, it will happen. You’ll be sitting at a Mets game someday, or you’ll be at a Bruins hockey game and have the ability to consume A THC beverage. There is no doubt in my mind this podcast will be uploaded, recorded. Someone could fact check me on this, but it will happen.

Jarrod Jordan:

Well, the revenues there in the alcohol and beverage stores. So at the end of the day, if you are the organization that’s running the p and l for one of those sports stadiums, and you could sit there and say, we can get a 20% incremental revenue driver, they will do it. They just, yeah, to Shay’s point, get the insurance, have a good understanding of all the compliance issues that are necessary to make that happen and study the market. If there’s enough demand in my market, we’re going to have to do it. We saw this with bars in the, I’ll use Charleston for example. One of the bar owners said to us that they have to offer THC beverages at this point. Interesting, because imagine you’ve got a bachelor or bachelorette party bouncing through and it’s eight people, and one of those eight people is a THC beverage drinker. And you walk into that bar, everybody’s excited, and you say, oh, sorry, we don’t serve THC beverages. That party of eight jumps and goes right next door and starts ordering. So they just lost on the seven head count of alcohol sales plus the THC sales. So you have to do it. So I do think at a certain point, the stadiums, obviously concerts will do it fast. Professional sports always do things late. Remember how long it took them to get high-speed wifi at the stadiums? They just

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Jarrod Jordan:

A long time for them to get there. They will do it, but they’ll do it exclusively on the economics if it makes them money and they can make a 20% more money on their concessions that game, they will say yes.

Shea Coakley:

I mean, I thought about this just real quick. As a funny aside, I was thinking about this. We had a conversation recently and we were talking about this onsite consumption, and I was thinking from a revenue perspective, I’ll just take myself for example, back when I used to go out somewhere and I’d have a couple beers. If I went to a sports game, I might get a hot dog or something like that and a couple beers. If I have a few THC beverage, I’m hitting that snack stand, dude, I’m getting cracker jacks, I’m getting a pretzel.

Jarrod Jordan:

So maybe it’s more than 20%. They start to see a 40% increase. Wow, those cracker jacks are flying off the shelves.

Shea Coakley:

Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s right.

Jarrod Jordan:

That’s interesting. That’s another good argument. We should go and hit Aramark. Yeah. You guys want to boost sales in two categories. We got you 100%.

TG Branfalt:

So being as though that we are in the quote second inning of this industry, how are companies, your companies specifically, how are you keeping tabs on shifting regulations? Because every week it seems like I’m writing that X State has updated their law concerning specifically beverages or low THC products that are available outside of the dispensary system. So how are businesses like yours and other businesses ensuring that you’re not running a foul of new or even old rules?

Shea Coakley:

Yeah, it’s a state by state thing, and I would say one general comment I’d make across the board is the players that are our peers in the space and ourselves included in my opinion, really doing it the right way. So if you look at the folks that are doing this and really doing it on trying to do it on a national level, the testing is on point. The following of the regulatory guidelines is on point because I think we all collectively want to make sure that this music doesn’t stop, that we’re doing this the right way, that it’s rolling out the right way, the safe way, et cetera. So you’re even seeing people take it a step further than what is required of them by law, which is interesting. And it’s nice to see a space that everybody believes in the long-term future of this thing.

So we’re trying to play nice in the sandbox as much as possible. I would also say that they have sprung up, and it relates to your question on a broad level. They have sprung up groups within this space, hemp Beverage Alliance, cannabis Beverage Association, the hemp round table that are acting as sort of collections of these brands that can share information, Hey, here’s going on regulatory wise in this state, and we got to make sure we do this in this state, et cetera. So there’s a really nice community being built around THC beverages. Now we’re all competing with each other, but at the same time, we all know that all ships rise with the tide, so that information is becoming more readily available. And there’s also some really good in-between the brands and the state regulatory bodies to appropriately give feedback loops back and forth.

The last thing I’d say on this is as a whole, I’ll speak for my brothers and sisters in the THC beverage space, the more these things get, what I’ll use the term that’s being used codified, the more these things get codified, the better it adds. Just crystal clarity. So in Minnesota, in South Carolina, North Carolina, these states have gone through the regulatory hurdles. They’ve decided how they need to be regulated, where they’re going to be sold, what criteria they need to be sold at. There are some states that are lagging behind, and that’s a little bit more annoying because at a federal legal level, it’s legal, but you still need to know sort of the rules and regulations within a state. So the further they get along, the better. But when you look at states that aren’t that far along, you can just look towards these ones that have really been in the market for two, three years, and it will head in that direction eventually. But the more clarity, the better. But to answer your question more broadly, I mean it is, you’re talking every few months, things can get rearranged, but that variation of outcome is starting to thin. Three years ago, it was like, who knows? This state might be legal, this state might be not. Are we allowed to ship there? Are we allowed to not?

It is all sort of coming to a more standardized regulatory environment, I would say.

Jarrod Jordan:

Yeah. I also think it’s part and parcel due to the alcohol distributors and retailers stepping in. They’re kind of saying, Hey, we already understand regulation. We’re dealing with it. You can trust us. And I think that gives a lot of the governments a little bit of, oh, hey, they know how to handle obviously considerably more dangerous product, and so therefore they should be able to handle this. And so with alcohol sales relatively flat, those retail partners and those distributors need to find a way to make up for that growth that’s lacking. So they’re pushing hard to get it into more places. So I imagine that’s also giving comfort to a lot of the governmental bodies that are sitting there saying, okay, let’s let them manage it. The ta, TAF, sorry, let them kind of also focus on it. They know how to do it, and we’ll go from there.

TG Branfalt:

In your opinions, guys, what, to you personally or as a business or as the part of the Cannabis Beverage Association, what will mark the point in time that cannabis beverages have arrived and what benchmarks will have to be met?

Shea Coakley:

It’s so interesting because in some ways, depending on what market you go into, in some ways I can already say like, oh man, we’re here. I keep on referring to Minnesota, and I know it’s weird that I keep on referring back to the same state, but it just happens to be the one that’s been doing this for the longest. And it would be hard to spend a weekend in Minneapolis and not feel like THC beverages are here and here to stay. So on one side, I’d say in a lot of ways it does feel like it’s here to stay, but I do think there are some things that are going to come to fruition on a broader level, I would say one of those is every state needs to make their own distinct, understandable and clear regulatory environment within that state. So if there’s any ambiguity as to who’s going to sit over this where you have to get the licenses, where they’re allowed to be sold, that ambiguity needs to get closed.

And that’s happening at a very, very rapid rate. I mean, every month you hear about a new state and they’re coming up on their senator Congress coming together, and they’re clarifying what the rules are going to be on this. I would also say that the continuation of what goes on with the farm bill at a national level, they are further and further clarifying the guardrails with which the farm bill speaks to ingestible products. So I think there’s some there, but honestly, I’ll just go back to the original point where I know when I looked at this space two, three years ago, there were certain things that I said to myself, well, when this happens, we know this space has arrived and a lot of them have happened. So for example, someone like a Total Wine or a Benny’s or a specs, having THC beverages on the shelf, I mean, that’s pretty arrived. Having a large national distributor willing to take on THC beverages in their bev out portfolio, these are some of the signs of arrival. I think there’s still some to come, but I also think that a lot of them have come over the last year or two.

Jarrod Jordan:

Yeah, I would just take that one step further. I would say when the big box retailers, you walk into a target, walk into a Whole Foods and it’s there, that is when then there’s going to be no excuse for a stadium not to have it. There’s going to be no excuse for it not to be provided in most wet bars around the country. So I think when you’re walking into Target, you walk into, you can find it in some grocery stores, but those big, big box, Walmart, Costco, imagine in Costco you could go to anybody and say, what’s in Costco? So it must be okay.

Shea Coakley:

And maybe also lastly, I’d add that my dad, who had never touched marijuana in his entire life was like a tough Boston guy, was his beer and whiskey when he was young. The fact that at our launch party, he consumed three high tides was a pretty good indication that we had arrived.

Jarrod Jordan:

Yeah, my dad’s the same way, and he’s down with it. I was like, what? He said, yeah, you got in so much trouble when I was younger of this stuff. Oh, yeah.

TG Branfalt:

Well, when New York’s market launched, I actually, we didn’t have THC beverages at first. It was my older sister who came from Connecticut who actually brought me my first legal THC beverage, and I was blown away way. She’s Gen X in her fifties. And before that, when I was in Michigan, I actually, I was getting THC, we called it scissor illegally. It was made by some dude, and I would just go to bars and just pour it in my mixed drinks, my non-alcoholic mixed drinks, so I could have a good time with everybody else to see it. For me, I think it would be to see it in a bar in New York, which it is not. You cannot access this stuff in a bar in New York. And especially, I think it’s sports games because I go to a lot of sports games. I see a lot of the sort of rowdiness that occurs and just think, man, I would just love it if they just chilled out a little bit, man.

Shea Coakley:

I mean, the visual and auditory experience of a baseball game after a few THC beverages, it’s perfect. It’s so perfect.

TG Branfalt:

Well, they let you in Toronto, you can walk in with gummies. You can’t walk in with a beverage, but you can walk in with gummies, no problem.

Jarrod Jordan:

Right. Do you think the hooligans in L Games would not lose their reputation? Would it go away? Oh, man. Remember when it used to just get socked in the face for doing this? Now no one does that.

Shea Coakley:

That’d be great. They’re all hugging, just being like, I just hope we all have a good time, man. We’re just here to have fun.

TG Branfalt:

It’s about the friends you’ve made along the way.

Shea Coakley:

I am picturing, I was in college during what I would say was the most heated of Yankees, red Sox clashing. You’re talking like you would have two groups of fans just erupt in fistfights for no reason at all. And I am picturing if that was fueled with THC instead of alcohol, how that would’ve felt different, I think we all would’ve been like, Hey, you love baseball. I love baseball. And none of these guys are from the city that we’re cheering for anyway, so let’s just go have fun.

Jarrod Jordan:

So stadium can cut down a little bit on their security. So another revenue or saving category for ’em. They definitely need them. Exactly.

TG Branfalt:

So neither of you guys really came from the cannabis space, right? Your backgrounds in other industries. Is there anything that surprised you when you entered this space, just maybe culturally or maybe about the sort of business in general?

Shea Coakley:

There’s good and bad from my take, Jared. I’d be curious to hear your take on this, but I would say we spent the majority of the first year and a half of our venture in the regulated market. One thing I would say is there is a really, really cool community in the cannabis space. There is a lot of people, and I know this isn’t totally unique to cannabis, but there is a lot of people that really, really, really believe in what they’re doing. And that has bled off onto my passion for the space. I was passionate about it, and I also saw business opportunity. The longer I’ve been in the space, the more that passion for the plant and what it can do for people, it has really genuinely rubbed off on me. And so I think there’s this interesting community that reminds me of a community I swam in 15 years ago, which it was like a startup boom.

And it was all these tech crunch and Techstars and all these groups that would help each other out and lift each other up. So I thought that was cool and surprising at the same time. There is a downside to, it’s a lot of first time entrepreneurs. It’s a lot of venture funds that don’t really have as much money as traditional venture funds. There are some downsides to this new and emerging space. But I would say one of the things that surprised me is just being in, I’ve been in industries where people are passionate about what they do, but I don’t think I’ve quite seen it as passionate as this. And people that get up every day because they actually believe what they’re doing can help people. And that’s really refreshing. It’s not just moving dollars and cents around. It’s people who are trying to make people happier in their day-to-day. And I don’t know, I just love that.

Jarrod Jordan:

Yeah, I would augment that too. It was kind of surprising to see how many people were sitting there saying, well, I was trying to address a problem in my own life that I wanted to make better. So effectively, how do I feel when I’m in a social setting, but I don’t want to have alcohol? Or is there something I can do to make this work better for me in this way? And if so, can I then bottle that and see if other people find that experience there? So I do find that the approach to the challenge isn’t necessarily the same as some of the other beverage waves we’ve seen over the last little bit where energy or non-alcoholic beers or coconut waters, et cetera, we saw these big explosions where it was almost exclusively guys like me who are CPG veterans who were just going out there and they know how to run a business in that way and do it. I think a lot of the folks that I see here is that they’re trying to adjust a challenge and then go after that challenge and then want to find a way to commercialize it. So I found that to be really fun and interesting because the people are authentic, and I think that really speaks well to the brand play in the store. So I think

Shea Coakley:

One thing that I’m just remembering as Jared speaking, I relearned a lesson that you can never underestimate how much governmental bodies can misunderstand and screw things up too sometimes. Now, this isn’t always the case, and the way that things are going in THC beverage is very collaborative and nice, but being in the regulated market, some of the things I would see that weren’t even related to beverage that I would see about the rules that they would put into place that were clearly made by people that did not understand the space at all was actually kind of jaw dropping to me sometimes. Like nonsensical laws where I would just think, okay, if we just got five smart people that knew what they were talking about in the space in a room for two hours could get figured out really quick and just like, why isn’t that happening?

So that would be an interesting one. And it also bleeds into this last piece, which is, it goes back to my earlier point about becoming an advocate for the plant. When you see this done the right way, it actually gives me a feeling of frustration, which I’m sure will resonate with you and some of your audience. It’s fascinating to me that this plant that can be so helpful to people has been outlawed for as long as it has. And the things that are on the market that, and I’m not talking about alcohol. I’m talking about sometimes prescription medication, sometimes other things that it fascinates me that someone in the NFL can take Oxycontin but can’t take marijuana, for example. These things, they start to get a little bit frustrating to you. I’ve learned, I’ve been more and more educated on the racist roots of the beginnings of outlawing marijuana, and you just start to get a little angry actually, that it’s not more widespread. So some of that anger has pushed off on me. I know a lot of the guys that I know and have become dear friends that are OGs in the cannabis space have always felt that because they’ve been fighting an uphill battle. And I feel like I’m starting to feel that frustration. I’m like, you’re right. I can’t believe this has been illegal for as long as it has.

TG Branfalt:

Yeah. I think one of the craziest things to me is the terminology that’s used recreational versus adult use, whereas I think that the adult use connotation allows people who may have things that may have conditions or other sort of ticks that are helped by cannabis that they haven’t been allowed to try, or they had to get pushed in the medical market, which does have a potential for losing jobs or Second amendment rights and these sort of issues, these broader issues. And I think that is the most important thing to the adult use industry to me, is people who don’t have to sort of seek permission to access something that is helpful to them.

Shea Coakley:

Agreed.

And I don’t know. It’s one of the things that Jared and I and Josh, our other business partner, our whole team has talked about this a lot. It’s like, okay, you have specific medical conditions that can be helped by cannabis, and that’s been proven. It’s like you got migraine headaches or sleep problems, a whole list of things. But also, one of the things I think about now is, okay, what are the problems in our world right now? Not to get too grandiose, but it’s like people are unbelievably stressed. People are attached to tech in a way that is sometimes disturbing. There’s infighting. People are lonely. There’s a loneliness epidemic. People miss genuine human interaction, and you go down the list of the things that are going on in this world that really plague people. I got to be honest, marijuana could be a really good solve for a lot of those things. It’s like, what’s better for this world than a handful of people getting out by a fire in their backyard and consuming low doses of THC and having a genuine conversation? That should be a prescription that’s assault.

Jarrod Jordan:

You think Thanksgiving dinner with your politically opposing uncles won’t be so Exactly.

TG Branfalt:

You just got to get ’em to try it first, right? I mean, that’s

Jarrod Jordan:

The biggest barrier. Well, maybe you’re a little bit less hotheaded like, yeah, whatever. That’s cool. I guess you think that way, maybe you, yep,

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Yep.

TG Branfalt:

Oh, guys, this has been real fun. Where can people, I appreciate you coming on the show. It’s really, really interesting conversation. Where can people find out more about you as individuals and more about green?

Shea Coakley:

Yeah. Perfect. Best place to go for all the information is GS bevs.com, like greentree beverages, gs bevs.com. That’ll give you where you can find at the state level. You can order online, all that good stuff, and you can find our socials on there as well. Lots going on for us and our business and everything else moving very quickly, so you’ll see a lot of changes there over the next year as well.

TG Branfalt:

Thank you again so much for being on the show. That’s Shea Coakley, co-founder and CEO and Jarrod Jordan, chief Marketing Officer of Massachusetts based Green Street Beverages. Thank you so much for coming on the show, guys. Appreciate it.

Shea Coakley:

Thank you. Thank you.