336
8 min 58 sec

Cannabis Cookies Make a Sweet, Soothing Side Hustle

In a growing industry, this Oregon mom achieves high returns from licensed marijuana edibles.
Food Niche Ideas PG 13 Product Unique Ideas

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What It's About

High snacks lead to high profits!

Business Model
Product
Skills Required
Baking & Organization
Complexity
High
Profit Potential
High

Words of Wisdom

Remember—when new industries emerge there are also a lot of opportunities around the edges or margins of that industry. For instance, in Ep. 82 we take a look at a bartender who ends up capitalizing on the Colorado's legalization of marijuana by creating a guide all about it. When something like this develops, whether cannabis or something entirely different—bubble tea, fidget spinners, whatever—there’s more than one way to make money from it.

Fun Fact

Gobbling euphoric substances isn’t just a modern movement. Sweetening a drink with bhang, a ground cannabis paste blended with ghee and other delights made for a soothing sip in ancient India. Middle Eastern cultures have long known the pleasures of eating (as well as smoking) pot and its derivatives, like hashish. But chewers of Alice B. Toklas’ “haschich fudge” of the 1960s couldn’t have imagined the range of THC-laced edibles today, which include gummy candies, lip balm, chocolate, coffee, and soda. You can check out various cannabis cookbooks today and roll your own!

Notes from Chris

Episode 336

It may seem an unlikely journey to go from working in product development to a dog-walking business to selling homemade jewelry—and then to her latest hustle selling pot-laced consumables, but Jill Trinchero has taken practical cues from her entire career journey and integrated them into this latest endeavor.

That endeavor is her She Don't Know company, which makes premium, gluten-free cannabis edibles sold through Oregon’s legal medical-cannabis market. Jill’s initial foray into medical pot was prompted by the anxiety she suffered after the births of her daughters. She experimented with marijuana butter infusions and pot cookies to find a low dosage that was calming, yet allowed her to keep her wits about her.

Those experiments led to broader ambitions with her “get-baked” bakings: she moved from selling home-baked goods to medical dispensaries to a full state processing and sales license out of a commercial kitchen for the recreational market. We won’t get into this part here, but she also has a side-side hustle of subleasing the kitchen to five other tenants who also sell in the edibles market.

All of Jill’s products are handmade, weighed to ensure the proper dose of 5mg of THC, which the governing body, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) has determined to be the standard serving size. But proper measurements don’t mean she can’t have fun with her product names, which include Tokeless B. Coconut and Bernie’s Kind Biscuit.

These biscuits do have some costs: her start-up costs were around 30K for the edibles side, which includes licensing ($250 application fee and $4,750 for the license itself) and materials, and 75K for the commercial kitchen setup. She’s now making $7–10K a month from kitchen and edibles revenue and is looking to reinvest in some automation systems to increase efficiency.


MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • She Don't Know: Visit Jill's website to see where you can score some of her sweet, soothing munchies!
  • SquareSpace: The website building platform that Jill used to create She Don't Know
SEE ALSO:

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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Resources

CREATE YOUR ONLINE STORE

Create your online store with Shopify using an exclusive discount for Side Hustle School listeners. For a limited time, get a free 21-day trial and a 10% discount for a whole year.

Many Side Hustle School listeners are building sites using Shopify's easy-to-learn platform. Try it free today!

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GET YOUR FIRST 1,000 EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS

Social media is nice, but building an email list is still the single best way to get customers and clients for your hustle. It's not hard to get started—sign up for a 30-day trial and join the list-building challenge! You’ll be up and running in no time.


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Quote of the Day
"Heading out without a business plan and direction is probably the biggest mistake one can make. People get excited because it's cannabis and don't think the business through before they start. Much of the industry has been in it for a long time coming from the black-market side, where things were loose and clip art counted as branding."
—Jill Trinchero #SideHustleSchool

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To infinity and beyond,

Chris Guillebeau