Kenny Morrison launched his marijuana edibles company, Venice Cookie Co., in 2008, at the height of the preregulation medical marijuana industry boom in Southern California. A dozen years later, after watching new state regulations strangle much of the industry with red tape, Morrison decided to focus instead on a single niche to build into a multistate brand: THC-infused beverages, which he dubbed Cannabis Quenchers.
Kenny Morrison, founder, Venice Cookie Co.
Over the past year, Morrison has branched out even further, expanding into hemp-derived THC intoxicating drinks, a sector he says is growing by leaps and bounds nationally. Currently, he is focused on trying to land $1 million in financing to bolster manufacturing and distribution with his company, also known as VCC Brands.
Green Market Report spoke with Morrison recently about the evolution of his company and changes he’s seen in the national cannabis market.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where do things stand right now for Venice Cookie Co.?
Morrison: Today we’re in five dispensary states: California, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois and Michigan. We’re also launching in Ohio and New Mexico. The goal is to do at least five new states this year – and Canada as well.
We ran an eight-month test of selling our hemp products on a very small scale, and that was very successful with zero advertising. So now we’re raising money to expand and do the hemp opportunity at scale. Probably 90% of it’ll be towards expansion into hemp. We really just need money to throw gas on the fire for the hemp opportunity.
Why did you decide to make such a drastic change?
Morrison: This is still the same company. We just pivoted from baked goods, which are the category of the past, and we’re focusing on the category of the future, drinks.
In a nutshell, the space has matured. It’s allowed for the more complex infrastructure needed for beverages. There really would’ve been no way to do drinks at scale in 2008. We bought our first bottling line in 2012, but it took a lot of labor because the equipment itself was really simple, and now there’s a lot more automation available to us.
What you guys have seen with hemp drinks so far?
Morrison: The reorder rates gives us a lot of confidence that we have the right product that can succeed in the mainstream alcohol channel.
We’re selling it in a couple restaurants. Like super fine dining establishments that are winning Best of L.A. are still selling our drinks, but they’re not supposed to be. When you have restaurants putting in thousand dollars orders for your drinks, you’re doing something right.
For some restaurants, the drinks were so successful before the (state banned them) that they just kept it on the menu. They figure they’ll just continue to sell it until someone tells them they’re not allowed to.
Has the shift to beverages proven to be a good decision?
Morrison: It’s only in the last two years, in 2023 and 2024, that beverage really finally came out of the woodwork and established itself as a solid product category. So it’s definitely been challenging: pivoting and pivoting, doubling down on beverages, and then growing the business back.
When we sacrificed all those other categories, in a lot of ways we were starting over. It’s taken a while to build our revenue back up.
What do you make of just the landscape nationally in terms of cannabis versus hemp in terms of business opportunities?
Morrison: I just saw it as a smart move, a smart diversification strategy. No one has a crystal ball. No one knows how this movie ends other than the fact that cannabis use is going to continue to increase. How it’s sold and where it’s sold, that remains a mystery to everybody. So diversifying seemed to make a lot of sense.
Do you expect demand is going to be more tilted toward one or the other?
Morrison: Our goal and mission has always been to normalize and mainstream cannabis. If (that’s the goal), you can’t deny the fact that hemp is really the side of the business that’s doing the most work towards normalization.
It’s not overly regulated. It’s not subjected to the same ridiculous set of rules. You can’t normalize something with an abnormal set of regulations.
What are the major hurdles you’ve been focused on recently?
Morrison: On the marijuana side, everything’s pretty darn predictable at this point. The dust has settled on all of the regulatory change, and it’s not as patchwork. Pretty much all of our core products can exist in any dispensary state.
On the hemp side of things, it feels like 2014 again.
All these different states are making different regulations for hemp. It’s Groundhog Day, literally. If you look at the hemp warnings on a lot of drink brands, including ours, we’re stitching together the required fine print from multiple states into long, tedious, redundant government warning statements. We’ll say the same thing three times, “Keep out of reach of children, keep out of reach of children and pets.”
Back in 2013-2015, the expectation in California was that the regulations that were being attached to (legal marijuana companies) was that they would change weekly. There’s no longer that expectation, but they’re sure that expectation is very much still alive in hemp. The regulations are changing weekly.
[[{“value”:”Kenny Morrison opted to stop selling edibles to focus entirely on building a multistate infused beverage brand.
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