By Ravon Williams

The cannabis industry is truly one to marvel over from an outside perspective. Just fifteen years ago, we were buying weed on “the streets” (cause “black market” sounds lame). You never really had a choice of what you were picking up unless your plug was really moving weight. You didn’t know a thing about THC percentages, or if the weed was sativa or indica, or what a terpene was. And if you did, my apologies, good on you. But for the bulk of us who didn’t know any better, buying weed was practically a blind experience where the buyer didn’t really have much control on what they were getting. You just had to hope you were going to get a good bag. 

And then recreational dispensaries made a splash in the state. The entire game changed. No more waiting in a sketchy parking lot for twenty minutes while you wait on your plug who said they were “five minutes away”, eleven minutes ago. Now you can walk into a store and buy weed whenever you want. It’s turned the entire buying process on its head as it puts a little bit of control in the hands of the buyer. It’s phenomenal.

However, this new convenience has led to a little bit of entitlement from some customers. In my early budtending days, I saw customers get really rude and argue about literally anything. Most of the time, it was over a minor issue that was out of the control of the employee. Like a strain being sold out, a low THC percentage, and even daily allotments. But the question is, why argue? There are a handful of factors of course, I mainly focus on education and understanding. When consumers don’t know the effort and complexity behind what they’re buying, it’s easy to take it for granted. So I can’t blame customers for being entitled, butI can try to help bring knowledge to the consumer, so here goes… 

Understanding “Seed To Sale”

In our industry, we have what is called a “Seed to sale” process. It’s exactly what it sounds like, but it’s much longer than one might think. 

We have over 100 cultivation facilities in the state that are popping seeds all the time. The seeds start out in a vegetation room where they do their first bit of growing until they’re strong enough to be transplanted into pots in a different room alongside hundreds of other plants. From there, the cultivation team tends to it as needed, making sure it gets enough nutrients, keeping the rooms clean, etc.

After around 9-10 weeks, the plant is ready for harvest. But this is only the beginning. The post-harvest process includes:

• Drying: Hanging the buds in a controlled environment for seven to fourteen days
• Bucking: Removing the buds from the main stems
• Trimming: Getting rid of the excess leaves, done by machine or hand. Hand trimming is a pain and something we should all appreciate!
• Curing: Keeping the buds in an airtight container for anywhere from two to eight weeks with occasional burping of the bag/container.

Then it has to go through testing and packaging to get bagged up for retail shelves. Some cultivators have the luxury of also owning a store that they can sell directly to their customers through. Some don’t, and sell all of what they grow on the wholesale market all over the state. (The wholesale process is its own beast, but I’ll cover that another time)

Appreciate the Process

When you understand the journey of your weed from seed to sale, you can better appreciate what you’re buying. It’s just like grocery shopping–fruits and vegetables go through planting, harvesting, and packaging before they end up on store shelves. Weed is no different. So the next time you get upset about a sold out strain or a low THC, remember the journey that the weed has taken to get to you. There is so much more to it than meets the eye!