Few California cannabis companies have beaten the challenges of legalization as well as Connected Cannabis Co., we sat down with founders Luke Coleman and Caleb Counts to get their take on the adventure.

As California cannabis saw its ups and downs in recent years, some companies maintained through the storm at the top of the power rankings. Random investor-back operations came and went, thinking it would be an easy cash grab following the birth of the legal market in California, but Connected’s knowhow from the legacy era when it came to producing solid herb and getting it to market proved a lot more commercially viable than a lot of what flew around in the flood of cannabis recent years had to offer. 

But a lot of the Connected tale was in the bricks put down before the company was even a thing. Coleman and Counts had both transitioned to cannabis at the tail end of the 2000s. Counts spent five years in the corporate housing development scene in Sacramento while Coleman sold mortgages before realizing the opportunities legal cannabis had to offer. 

Coleman said he’d first heard of Counts through the reputation of his Sacramento dispensary Fruitridge Health and Wellness Center. 

“I visited a store that was really nice, and I always had ugly dispensaries,” Coleman told L.A. Weekly. “They were hideous-looking. So I was like god damn, this guy does something nice.”

At the time, he felt like the only other people who had put as much effort into their build as Harborside Health Center in Oakland. Coleman would end up part of a cultivation group where everything went pretty sideways. A friend told him he should talk to Counts about helping fix his grow; Coleman figured since Counts was better at building out shops than him, he likely was better at building out grows, too. 

When Coleman hit up Counts, he was informed that things were about to get wild in Sacramento. Instead, the feds sent letters to everyone’s landlords. This put the pair’s separate Sacramento adventures on hold for a bit. 

Coleman brought in Counts to help run his grow but had greater ambitions for the future given Counts excelled at government relations, something he saw as a weak point in his own game. Separately, Counts knew Coleman had an excellent eye for elite cannabis and understood what people were excited about at the moment then transitioned that excitement into sales.

“And then, as Obama came back out and said, Hey, I was playing, I wasn’t gonna put you guys in jail. Oh, sorry for those fed letters,” Coleman said, “That was when I said, Hey Caleb, let me reopen the Sacramento store.” 

Counts was hesitant but agreed, pending he could jump back in the mix, too, as soon as he felt comfortable. It would take another six months to get the doors back open in the fall of 2013, three weeks later Counts was back in the mix.

At the time, the dispensary was called Collective Efforts. But a meeting with Berner at the San Bernardino Cannabis Cup in early 2014 would change everything. 

The trio would kick off their collaborative efforts that lasted years. 

“So we didn’t put Cookies on the outside, but it became the main, the first store. The first store, Berner started shouting it out and saying this is the only place you can get cookies,” Counts said, before Coleman added they called it Cookies916 on Instagram and the social media platform was a massive part of driving the hype. 

While working with the Cookie Fam after connecting with Berner, Coleman got word of a new strain that was in the pipeline — Gelato. Coleman had already put down $72,000 to license the strain after convincing Sherbinski before the famous tasting went down in 2014.

Coleman noted that Gelato #41, which would become a big part of their stable, was chosen by Kenny Powers of Powerzzzup. 

“Kenny has the meaning of the group, I believe he does,” Coleman said. And as for the modern era of Cookies, “I believe his strains are the best ones coming in and looking, for sure.”

Coleman would pick two other phenos on top of the #41, the #25 and #33, then they tossed in the #45 for him. They would get their hands on the clones in the spring of 2014. 

While the Cookie Fam was figuring things out, Counts and Coleman spent the next few years paying Berner to promote their product. While the relationship wasn’t always perfect, everyone was getting cash, and at one point, Connected was responsible for all the Cookies branded cannabis. 

As the group grew apart further, Coleman and Counts would start branding products as Connected. The business the trio did together took a few years off, but Coleman and Counts noted they were happy to see the retail entity that Berner ended up building in the years after. They’re now on shelves at many of them, under the Connected banner. 

As all this is happening, the legal market is kicking off. Connected came out the gate right at the top of the pack as far as people with actual industry experience.

“It was cool, but it was incredibly stressful to do,” Counts said. 

Counts said a lot of the reason they were able to come out the gate so strong was because of the work that had been started in Sacramento a decade earlier, as dispensary owners started to organize for the first time. While the Sacramento Alliance of Collectives did not last, the goals of the group were maintained. 

“I was 29 or 30. And next thing you know, I’m getting elected President of the Sacramento Alliance of Collectives. I worked with the city to help develop that ordinance. And then later, on the back of that work and the credibility that we built in Sacramento, I worked with the city of Sacramento to develop the cultivation ordinance. I played a pretty big role in working with the city. And so we were always trying to be ahead of the curve in terms of what is the city going to want to look like, what is the government going to want it to look like? Who are they going to want to talk to?”

When 2018 came around, they felt they were as ready as anyone could be because they had always tried to be an example to the city. And so now they were ready to be the example to the state. 

When it came to why the duo was able to pull off growing high-end products and the government hoops, they were quick to point to each other filling the gaps in their skill sets. 

“I had an eye for quality but not the quality that was not the eye that Luke did. So my eye and focus was always on that forward-facing, how are we going to look the best for the customer, look the best to the politicians and the best for potential future business partners,” Counts said. 

The pair said it was hard to point to a period where Connected got the winds in its sails it carries to this day, a major factor was getting on the shelves at Greenwolf. Many Los Angeles connoisseurs consider Greenwolf the best legal cannabis sold locally to this day. That connoisseur was more than happy to pay the high ticket price, the highest in California sometimes, for the quality of work Connected was putting out. 

They started working with someone else in L.A. and Migos would buy all the product. 

“We’re like, no shit. The Calvin Harris song came out that said Gelato in it and then Migos tour bus got busted in like one of those southern states and TMZ picked it up,” Counts said. “It had our bag and a cookies bag on their drug display table of the massive quote, unquote, busts that they did. And then that really helped push us to the next step. And more and more shops kept picking us up. I mean, it’s hard to pinpoint a time exactly, like by date, but it was more by like event association with those two moments for us.”

Coleman was quick to give credit to other artists like Young Thug and Gunner who have memorialized their strains in songs. He argues over the last seven years they’ve had a stranglehold on mainstream hip-hop with more people rapping about their weed than anyone else’s.

While the Gelato they scooped got its time in the spotlight, a lot of the recent accolades came from their in-house breeding projects. The most notable arguably being Biscotti; to this day the pairing of Gelato #25 and South Florida OG is some of the best pot in the world. Counts said Biscotti, alongside Gelato, was the driving force in their cultivation expansion over the years. Some of the other in-house efforts would be in support of Alien Labs, which is grown and distributed by Connected.

As things were taking off, Connected started to hear more opportunities from out of state. Then one day an Arizona opportunity that made sense came along. They were told the California price point wouldn’t work in Arizona and later Florida where they launched in late 2022. 

“You can’t bring California prices. This market is price sensitive and we proved everyone wrong. Initially in Arizona,  then we did Florida,” Counts said. “We’re actively looking at six more states right now.”

Connected Cannabis Co. is available at retailers all over California, Arizona and Florida. 

 

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.