Lindsey BartlettLast weekend, the world’s first CBD Saturday Farmers Market hosted by Green Entrepreneur and L.A. Weekly launched in Hollywood, California, welcoming over 3,000 West Coast CBD entrepreneurs and enthusiasts.
The event was a smorgasbord of CBD activity and featured a variety of top brands with stands offering hemp pre-rolls, massages, yummy food, yoga and even pet rescue puppies from the HIT Living Foundation up for adoption. Canna-curious and seasoned professionals came from all over to learn about the CBD business, the cannabinoid’s health benefits, and to just chill while enjoying a free hemp blunt on a Saturday afternoon.
If you missed it, fret not — the CBD Saturday Farmers Market will be back in the spring.
To give you a taste of the afternoon, here are five highlights from the first-ever CBD Saturday Farmers Market.
1. CBD Brands Everywhere
CBD business owners were wall-to-wall. If they didn’t have a setup to sell products, they were scouting brands for their stores. Such scouts included storefront owner Arianna Zadourian, proprietor of Pure CBD Boutique, which is opening its third location in West Hollywood this February. She says safety, testing, and client trust is crucial when running a CBD-brand store. Zadourian curates every item in Pure CBD and speaks of the high bar percentile of perfection. Brands seeking to sell in this industry must have, “a very small room for error. It has got to be less than 5 percent,” she says.
Arianna Zadourian, right, founder of Pure CBD Boutique at the CBD Saturday Farmers Market. (Lindsey Bartlett/Green Entrepreneur)
“If you want to get into this market and if you want to do something beneficial for people, make sure that you really care about the products that you’re making,” Zadourian told Green Entrepreneur at the CBD Saturday Farmers Market. “That’s my advice for someone who wants to get into this industry; to really have a passion for the direction they want to go in. Otherwise, you’re just adding something into the industry that’s going to be stagnant.”
As she looks to the opening of Pure CBD’s third location, Zadourian says education is crucial. “Every person who comes into our store needs to be educated on cannabinoids and not just CBD. There’s THC, CBN, CBG, CBD-A, all of these different cannabinoid compounds. There is also how they work topically, how they work internally in your body. These are things people need to know before you sell them something.”
“At the end of the day, we’re all in it together,” Zadourian said. “You want the industry to grow into something beautiful, not this competitive industry that loses its meaning. You want it to be something that is going to help people.” Zadourian imparts more advice for prospective entrepreneurs on the live taping of Green Entrepreneur podcast with Jonathan Small.
2. Cuisine For The Canna-curious
As sweet scents filled the air, they mixed with burning hemp from the outdoor CBD smoking lounge.
Chef Matt prepared chicken and cheese as well as spinach and mushroom waffles for patrons all day. Chef Matthew Stockard has been in the culinary world for over two decades, beginning as a restaurateur in Oklahoma before moving to Long Beach. Chef Matt is well-known for his “cannatails”, cannabis-infused cocktails that reinvented drinkable social cannabis use.
Other items at the CBD Saturday Farmers Market included vegan tacos from Es Todo Vegan. Super, super spicy, and sorely needed, I chased them down with water and a CBD joint. Foodies also flocked to the green tea and coffee perks. Hakuna Supply Co. sold cups of hot green matcha tea, peppermint, as well as turmeric and ginger tea. The latter gave me life. With 90 milligrams of CBD per box, they are a nice introductory cannabidiol edible for newcomers. Hakuna also offered whole bags of CBD coffee beans, plus ginger gummies that were a tart and sweet accompaniment.
Waffles from Chef Matt at the CBD Saturday Farmers Market. (Lindsey Bartlett/Green Entrepreneur)
3. Pre-rolls Without The High
Lowell’s CBD prerolling station drew a huge crowd. The company offered two strains of hemp as well as pre-rolled CBD joint packs. Purple, frosty hemp nugs as beautiful as outdoor cannabis was pulled throughout the day from massive jars. Some patrons asked if they were sure it was without THC. Yes, we are sure.
Lowell brought two strains for Farmers Market patrons to roll up: Sour Space Candy and Special Sauce. “So I would say, going off of nose, I love the Special Sauce. It has more of a pungent terpene profile, but the Sour Space Candy across the board is such a nice strain. It’s actually our premiere CBD strain,” AJ Fay, Lowell’s Director of Brand Expansion, told Green Entrepreneur over a freshly rolled joint.
AJ Fay, Director of Brand Expansion at Lowell Herb Co., smokes CBD at the CBD Saturday Farmers Market. (Lindsey Bartlett/Green Entrepreneur)
Fay explained the CBD hemp the crowd was clamoring for today is grown by their cultivation partner RDSP Farms out of Oregon. “They are two brothers who really love and care about the plant.”
“People don’t always realize that hemp is so broad,” said Fay. “You can have industrial hemp, which is meant for textiles, food, extracts. And then you can have a smokable CBD, which is what we have here today.”
How does smoking CBD make you feel? “There are typical things people say they feel about CBD: sleep, pain relief, those medicinal properties. To me, I always explain it like, a subtle, relaxed effect. It’s not something super noticeable, it is something you may not notice,” said Fay. “But if you’re paying attention, you get a subtle, calming relaxation with a clear head. There is no psychoactive effect, you’re not getting high. You still get a little bit of that flavor profile from the flower. Not as strong as cannabis, but it tastes like flower. This is really fresh.”
Buddha teas from Hakuna Supply Co. at the CBD Saturday Farmers Market. (Lindsey Bartlett/Green Entrepreneur)
4. Blunt Talks
Cannabis networking and education host Blunt Talks held a fascinating industry conversation on the upper level of the market space at Academy LA. Insightful speakers included Kimberly K. Dillon, founder of Plant and Prosper, Michelle Clemmens, founder of Soji Health, as well as Case Mandel, co-founder and CEO of Cannadips. Speaker Mary Connolly, the creator and owner of Mary’s Jane skincare line, also graced the stage.
“Whether you put CBD on your skin, or whether you put it in a hot bath and soak it into your system, ultimately you’re allowing these compounds to come in and create homeostasis,” Connolly said.
5. CBD-Infused Wellness
All roads point to wellness. Skincare from companies Fifth & Root and Whispr spoke to the beauty consumers at the market. Even CBD designed for your pet’s wellness (in the form of CBD dog treats) from Blooming Culture was available.
CBD-infused massage companies were a big hit. Patrons could sign up and return, waiting in line 10 to 20 minutes tops, for massage companies including the Canna Massage Movement. Found in the same space was the calm offering Stoned Yoga with The Wavvy Cloud. “This practice is a journey into the body and back out again,” the company told Green Entrepreneur before the market, “where on the other side we feel more connected to ourselves which allows us to be more compassionate to those around us.”
This article is published in partnership with Green Entrepreneur magazine.
Buddha teas from Hakuna Supply Co. at the CBD Saturday Farmers Market. (Lindsey Bartlett/Green Entrepreneur)
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