With a tagline featuring a founding year “Since before we could tell,” Sunset Connect alludes to the fluctuating legal status of the world’s most favored flower. When I visit the manufacturing space in San Francisco—a former lambskin condom factory and, later, a photography studio—the bright white walls are a welcome break from the dark gray day outside. It’s the last day of January 2024, and we’re in the middle of an atmospheric river called a “Pineapple Express,” but from founder Ali Jamalian’s upstairs office that oversees the space, I can only hear taps of the rain outside. Jamalian’s broad smile and kind eyes are the type that light up a room. Coupled with that, he’s a great storyteller. Through personal trials and triumphs, Jamalian has grown into a voice that remembers the outlaws of pot’s past. And, with his brand Sunset Connect, he’s proudly repping the profound legacy that San Francisco represents in shaping the availability of cannabis around the world.

“You have to be an activist,” Jamalian says of operating a cannabis company in the City by the Bay. “You have to advocate for the industry.”

Locals will first notice that Sunset Connect’s logo and branding borrow inspiration from Muni, San Francisco’s public transportation system, including buses, trains, and cable cars. The script on “Sunset”is in the same curving worm-like font as the iconic 1975 Muni logo. And, with packaging showcasing the design of paper Muni bus transfer tickets that were retired in 2016, its brand identity stands as a sort of insider call back to an earlier time. Sunset Connect has evolved over the years but is now putting out hash-infused dogwalkers and trim pre-rolls. The pre-rolls retail at $5.

“I think what we really pride ourselves in is the separation, getting all the fan leaves and the sticks and stems out and really being left with sugar leaf and small buds,” Jamalian says as we walk the manufacturing floor. “My whole point was like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to be able to get something to people at a fair price that they can afford every day.’”

Jamalian believes the batch size, 100 grams, is critical to the salability of his 1-gram pre-rolls and says he’s selling about 25,000 each week. 

“We firmly believe that the success of our joints is that they’re hand-topped and twisted,” Jamalian says as I watch an employee complete packing the herb down and adding the wick-like twist of paper at the top. “I think that’s what gives you the good draw and the fact that we grind it in tiny batches of 100 grams.”

The Connect

Steered by hippies and activists who sold grass in the 1970s and provided cannabis to those in medical need in the 1990s, San Francisco stands as a significant touchpoint for the medical marijuana movement. Actions that took place there and in the greater San Francisco Bay Area led California to become the first state to approve medical marijuana in 1996.

The Sunset Connect brand was born in California’s medical marijuana era and was granted a state license as a manufacturing and distribution company in the adult-use cannabis marketplace in 2020. Based in the city’s Sunset District and known as The Sunset Connect, Jamalian and his best friends since freshman year at the University of San Francisco brought cuts of classic strains to medical marijuana dispensaries circa 2014. This included White Widow—an extremely popular strain in the late ’90s and early 2000s following its win at the 1995 Cannabis Cup—and a strain breeders Mr. Sherbinski and Jigga created in a Sunset District garage around 2010, Sunset Sherbert.

While the Sunset Connect team went official in 2014, they had been growing pot together for some time before that. Back in 1999, the feds charged Jamalian with possession and intent to distribute weed, and since he was a German-Iranian with a green card, he faced deportation. Spooked from the ordeal, he returned to Germany for a time and returned to the United States when his friends called him back into the game.

“At that point, the boys were already blowing up like 15 houses in the Sunset and around town and doing really well with it, vending to dispensaries, but mostly moving it black market,” Jamalian says. “So I came back… I started with one house on 47th [avenue] and about two to three years later about four to five houses and then between us we had like 30-35 homes.”

In 2018, when Jamalian started working to bring Sunset Connect into the adult-use cannabis marketplace, he began to get politically involved with organizations designed to advocate for the industry. But within those groups, such as the now-defunct California Growers Association, he says he often found business owners campaigning on behalf of their companies rather than the community.

“Everyone that I worked with was moving weight and risking their lives to move weight,” Jamalian says. “And most of them didn’t get to transition…The heads in the Sunset weren’t being considered because we didn’t have warehouses; we had homes. Because back then, the criminal liability of growing at home was a lot less than the criminal liability of a 90-light warehouse.”

His role as a public-facing cannabis grower took the next step when Jamalian connected with Jane Kim, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who was running against acting mayor London Breed in 2018.

“When I met Jane, I told her I was already trying to build this place up and go legal, and she’s like, ‘In this city, you have to become an activist,’” Jamalian says. “She really taught me the way around City Hall.”

In January 2020, Jamalian became a member of the San Francisco Cannabis Oversight Committee, a representative group of cannabis company leaders that advise the board of supervisors and the mayor regarding implementing and enforcing city laws and regulations relating to cannabis. Beyond his political work, he’s always looking to network inside the cannabis community and puts on a monthly gathering in a Sunset District bar for budtenders.

“I think building a community, not to sell your product, it gives people an emotional connection to your brand,” Jamalian says. “We were the underdog, and we still are, and I think people like to root for the underdog.”

Kim’s cousin, Sam Joo, now works for Jamalian, handling compliance and production. Upon meeting him, Joo is locked in deep on the computer, navigating a change in California policy that vastly reduced the number of labs authorized by the state to test cannabis. When we chat about the current scene, he uses a phrase that became a touchpoint in describing California cannabis before its adult-use stage, the Wild West.

“We don’t have a choice but to build our production around what the labs are capable of doing,” Joo says. “I guess the excuse is that it’s new. I don’t know if other industries have faced what the cannabis industry is facing, but it feels like the Wild West, you know, where nobody really knows what they’re doing.”

The fluctuating nature of the regulations in the state’s adult-use cannabis industry has compounded with other factors, such as a dip in wholesale prices, in driving many longtime weed companies out of the market. Cannabis cultivators in California are disappearing in droves, and San Francisco is no exception to those statistics. Reporting done by the Cannabis Business Times in March 2023 shows that the state has lost thousands of cultivation licenses in recent years.

Jamalian tells me he’s learned that surviving in the cannabis industry means you have to be willing to expand and contract. He is readying for his brand to grow and plans to cultivate and release flowers under the Sunset Connect brand again soon. With that anticipated launch, he’s bringing back Dosi-Pie, a Velvet Pie and Do-Si-Dos cross. It’s the strain he says the brand was most well-known for at dispensaries back in the day. Sunset Connect’s current version has a peppery spice on the nose and tastes how sandalwood incense smells.

Now in his second term on the oversight committee, Jamalian uses his decades of experience in the city’s cannabis scene to advocate for the weed industry that remains in San Francisco.

“The market is on a downward slope; there’s going to be 30% of brands who disappear,” he says. “People are looking for good flowers from San Francisco. Also, there’s not a lot of outfits here anymore producing really good flowers.

“So, while San Francisco contracted, I think similar to the AI boom, cannabis companies are about to bloom again. Because the few that are left, they have a foot in the market, they’re now established, and people are like, ‘Wait, San Francisco is where the best weed in the world all comes from.’”

This article was originally published in the May 2024 issue of High Times Magazine.

The post Sunset Connect Buys the Ticket, Takes the Ride first appeared on High Times.

The post Sunset Connect Buys the Ticket, Takes the Ride appeared first on Paradise Found.

When Abstrax started its recent research project, I doubt anyone could have imagined it would discover a whole new universe beneath our still-evolving knowledge of cannabis compounds. Now, they’ve released research suggesting how we understand how weed tastes or smells might just be the tip of the iceberg. Working with 710 Labs, SepSolve Analytical, and Markes International, the research team opened a portal into a world of rare and unseen flavor and aroma compounds in cannabis.

Founded in California in 2017, the Abstrax team calls themselves pioneers in botanical flavor technology. Its main business is to provide terpene-driven flavor solutions for industries such as cannabis, beverage, and fragrance. By studying the complete chemical makeup of a cultivar, Abstrax goes through a rigorous process to map out, select, analyze, refine, formulate, optimize, test, reformulate, test, and package before offering companies the truest strain-specific flavors they can produce. It does so through its three divisions: tech, which researches and creates terpene blends for various markets; labs, which conducts botanical testing and offers extraction/analytical technologies; and hops, providing research, products, and services to the brewing sector.

Using two-dimensional gas chromatography, a sophisticated separation technique that offers higher resolution than traditional chemical analysis, Abstrax was able to detect pockets of “hidden compounds,” which they believe have a significant impact on odor and can shape the course of how we classify or even shop for weed.

Abstrax researchers published the results of their findings in a white paper posted on their website and in the peer-reviewed journal ACS Omega. The research points out that one of the main driving factors regarding how consumers choose cannabis has to do with THC percentages. The battle over whether something is better because it’s stronger has caused more than a few amazing strains to become lost to time. However, another key factor in what someone purchases is and has always been how something smells. Despite restrictions across many states on cracking open a jar and letting someone take a whiff, this obsession with smell has led to terpenes, or terps, becoming the second most important factor that the study identifies when consumers decide which cannabis to buy. Now, packaging lists the most dominant terpenes on the label and uses them as a guide to tell consumers what they can expect.

Abstrax and the research team see this as a partial response to the modern pushback to the classic indica, sativa, and hybrid classification system we’ve leaned on up to this point. As the cannabis industry develops more modern ways of labeling and portraying the different varieties of cannabis, it’s looking for new terms to replace indica and sativa, and smell has emerged as a dowsing rod as competitions divide strains between candy, citrus, and gas. Much of the marketing focus on educating base-level consumers past sativa and indica has shifted toward trying to describe to shoppers what these aromatic compounds mean concerning the taste, smell, and psychoactive effects of a strain. It makes sense since, as the research points out, they appear in high amounts, making them a seemingly perfect identifier for classification.

Contrastingly, the research asserts that we might be trading one generalization for another in our use of terpenes, pointing to an additional study—“The phytochemical diversity of commercial cannabis in the United States,” published in PLOS One in May 2022—which concluded that in the United States, all cannabis falls into one of three terpene-dominant categories: terpinolene/ß-myrcene, D-(+)-limonene/ß-caryophyllene, or ß-myrcene/pinene.

The authors point out that through this system, strains with very different smells ended up in the same groups together. With its skunky, woody aroma, Dogwalker OG wound up next to Tropicana Cookies and Purple Punch, two cultivars with very contrasting smells. Meaning that you can’t always assume something will smell a certain way due to high percentages of certain terpenes.

“Taken together, these results strongly suggest that while aroma is a key property in differentiating cannabis varieties and user preferences, the importance of terpenes appears to be overstated,” researchers wrote.

The team concluded that terpenes had less of a correlation with the sought-after attributes of a lot of “exotic” cannabis strains and that it must be these alternate classes of compounds at work.

The study identified a wide variety of aroma classes, each with diverse functionality, that are responsible for some of the most desirable aromatic qualities found in modern cannabis. Two such classes include tropical volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs), which are responsible for the citrus notes in Tropicana Cookies or Tangie, and heterocyclic compounds like indole and skatole, which produce the rich, intense scent in strains like GMO. They also identified a class of chemicals called flavorants that includes alcohols, ketones, and esters, that go beyond terpenes in affecting the smells and tastes of cannabis. Though found in small amounts, they believe these compounds play a major role by combining to create many of the diverse tastes in modern “exotic” strains like Apple Fritter or Zkittlez.

“The discovery of these compounds will play a crucial role in validating cannabis’s authenticity and accurately classifying cannabis varieties in the future,” says Max Koby, CEO and co-founder of Abstrax.

Koby also said that utilizing these previously undiscovered cannabis compounds would allow Abstrax to create “the most flavorful and authentic cannabis flavors,” which will elevate the level of the terpene blends and isolate it sells, but also benefit everyone in the space. Consumers can finally have a better toolkit to identify what flavors and feelings they enjoy most. Cultivators, breeders, and brands could someday use this knowledge to better understand which plant components drive these sweet fruit flavors versus the savory ones.

“This research helps us better understand flavor in the cannabis experience, allowing us to better educate our customers and select phenos for our genetic library,” says research co-author Brad Melshenker, co-CEO of 710 Labs.

One of the more exciting benefits that Abstrax identified for this research was its ability to provide a jumping-off point for researchers and packagers to discover the best way of preserving these specific compounds and provide cannabis with a better shelf life.

With additional research planned, Abstrax has announced a partnership to create educational content that helps tell the story of the revelations brought about by its discoveries. Somebody reach out to Paul Rudd. Just like Antman explored and expanded upon the understanding of the microscopic quantum realm the technology employed here shows us there’s so much more happening inside the plant than we’ve ever imagined.

Abstrax believes “we stand at the dawn of a new era in cannabis understanding” and that the microcosm of additional compounds inside these plants is part of a secret roadmap researchers are just now learning to draw. This new research will allow us to look for and provide solutions to many of the problems that have arisen from the swift evolution of cannabis from evil weed to essential service. Maybe someday, in a galaxy far, far, away, an android will extend a glass jar to smell the nugs instead of watching an image spin on a budtender’s holopad.

This article was originally published in the February 2024 issue of High Times Magazine.

The post Brand Spotlight: Abstrax first appeared on High Times.

The post Brand Spotlight: Abstrax appeared first on Paradise Found.

A fruity yet spicy rendition of Permanent Marker from Pleasant Effects is boosting the profile of the Rhode Island-based grower across the East Coast, as is its eye-catching and artistic packaging including a nostalgic take on a Shel Silverstein classic. Sam, one of the co-founders behind the brand, gained non-cannabis know-how at a local hydroponics company that was designing large-scale hydroponic produce farms. There, he was a head grower, putting together hydroponic systems, but for edible plants.

“Growing cannabis is always what I’ve loved to grow the most. I’ve always been passionate about it,” Sam says. “We competed in the East Coast Zalympix in New York City last year, that was definitely one cool moment.”

Recently, Pleasant Effects executed a collaboration with The Book Club, which releases curated cannabis drops, all styled after books and designed by glass artist and illustrator Trevor Johns, aka Trevy Metal. The drop with Pleasant Effects was inspired by the whimsical collection of poems by Silverstein, specifically a play on his classic, Where the Sidewalk Ends. “Where the Sherbwalk Ends” is a collaboration with Pleasant Effects, based off of Sherbanger #22, and lists a fictional author, Sherb Silverstein.

“We’re pretty much showcasing the love for literature,” says Trevy Metal. “Every book that we chose has somewhat of a nostalgic factor to it. Like this one in particular, I was like a huge fan, as I was inspired by all illustrations from Shel Silverstein growing up.”

The homage is fitting given that Silverstein wrote a series of poems and songs about pot, quaaludes, and other drugs. These references can be found in his famous poem “The Smoke-Off” (1978) which describes smoking in San Rafael, California or the song “I Got Stoned and I Missed It” (1972).

This article was originally published in the April 2024 issue of High Times Magazine.

The post Where the Sherbwalk Ends first appeared on High Times.

The post Where the Sherbwalk Ends appeared first on Paradise Found.

Producing profoundly good concentrates that are promoted with fun, engaging branding is the telltale mark of having made it in the cannabis industry. But behind that forward-facing magic is another important component at play that needs to be considered: company culture. For 710 Labs, exceptional products and the best vibes go hand-in-hand.

“It’s important to us that we hire people that really want to be at 710 and know who we are and what we stand for,” said 710’s CEO and Founder Brad Melshenker. “I think that’s been our philosophy from the start; we want people that want to learn, want to grow with the company and want to be there and not just clock in for a paycheck. It takes time to build that culture and find those people.”

Coming into the company from humble beginnings, Melshenker was determined to do something with cannabis, even if he admittedly got off to a rocky start.

“I connected with cannabis at 16 years old and never looked back,” he explains. “Twenty-three years later, I still love this plant more and more each day. I sold my first eighth of what we called ‘Kind Bud’ when I was 16 years old, so that I could smoke for free. Fast-forward to 2005 when I moved out to LA to get into the fashion industry; that’s when I began to learn the ins and outs of the Prop. 215 model and the business side of the industry. I thought if I could take what I did for the previous eight years while in college and afterwards and do it legally, it would be a dream come true.

“I was acting as a broker between some of the top growers and the best dispensaries in the state, soaking in both worlds as much as I could. Once Obama took office, and Eric Holder announced he was going to leave it to the states to regulate, I knew it was a sign to leave the fashion industry and go all-in. I raised friends and family money in 2008 and built my first grow house in Encino, California. That was a total failure, with me using LEDs before LED technology was sufficient to grow cannabis indoors. But, like all mistakes that are really the path to success, that failure led to the next chapter of our moving to Colorado, where you could be a for-profit LLc as opposed to California, where you had to hide behind the non-profit model to be in compliance at the time.”

With headquarters in both Colorado and California, it’s important to Melshenker that each employee, no matter how recently hired, feels a personal connection to the brand and wants to grow with the company. In an industry that sometimes puts profits over people, this is huge.

“I want to make sure that I build a relationship with everybody in the company; that’s really important to me,” Melshenker said. “I want to get to know them; I want them to understand this is, in a sense, a family. I think it’s important to grow that way with people that you care about and are invested in the company and its success and each other.”

With an early interest in cannabis paired with an entrepreneurial spirit, Melshenker knew he was destined to work with cannabis, but he had aspirations beyond small-time selling and smoking. Once he realized that some states were going to start legalizing the plant, he got into growing and then extraction, and the rest is history.

“Our commitment is to only sell products that 1 would consume,” Melshenker said about the pride and care that goes into 710’s offerings. “Quality over everything is our ethos. Even over making money. And I know every company says that, but we live it. First-rate hash over self-interest is the formula. We throw batches out in the trash if they don’t meet the quality-control standards, literally. There is a lot of creative branding and packaging out there, a lot of mid-grade product, but I learned early in my career [that] high-quality product always sells the fastest and breeds loyalty. Our fans know they can count on us for consistency as well.”

Known for unique products like water hash and Noodle Doinks (a.k.a. hand-rolled joints), 710 Labs has set itself apart from others in the concentrates industry and stands out from the crowd due to the consistent quality of its offerings.

“Quality over everything is our ethos. Even over making money. And I know every company says that, but we live it.” —Brad Melshenker

“This is the product I am currently most proud of,” said Melshenker of 710 Labs’ pre-rolls. “There wasn’t a pre-roll on the market in either California or Colorado that I would want to go buy. I’m not the best joint-roller in the world, although it is meditative for me. I wanted to develop the ultimate joint with the highest-quality flower inside it. No smalls, no trim, no shake, no ground-up, powdery, dry nugs.

“I wanted to develop something that my weed-snob mind would buy. We cut off excess paper for the perfect bud-to-paper ratio. We added in the gluten-free rotini noodle as the crutch/ filter for airflow and stability, and boom, our Noodle Doinks arrived on the market, and we can’t keep them on shelves. Tensecond Tom, who runs this department and helped set up the process since it’s very laborious, is credited for making my vision become a reality in terms of producing these at scale.”

In addition to the company’s focus on creating some of the best products out there, the 710 crew also has an eye on social equity. Specifically, with a location in Oakland, they try to make sure that the underserved community has access to resources.

“We embrace social-equity programs, as we understand and empathize with the injustice that has occurred due to the government’s previous War on Drugs,” Melshenker said. “Specifically in the city of Oakland, where our California facility is, we have two social-equity partners in two of our cannabis licenses, and, in addition, our company also supports the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, which helps find jobs and offers community and support for formerly incarcerated individuals.”

710 Labs has also worked with a transitional program for foster youth to help them get real-world work experience. The company has interviewed and hired some folks from this program who have gone on to be huge assets to the team. Unlike other brands that only talk the talk, 710 Labs makes sure to walk the walk when it comes to actual inclusion.

In terms of what’s coming up next for the brand, Melshenker has lots of exciting plans in the works. “We have many announcements in terms of new product lines, like our Rosin Pods, which are dropping in a few months, as well as our Persy Doinks (three grams of flower, one gram of hash rosin),” he said. “Also, we are adding new flavors to our genetic library from the extensive pheno hunting we do for new cultivars.”

Finally, consumers can anticipate future collaborations that have leading creators partnering with 710 Labs. “We will continue to release limited-edition artist drops and collabs, similar to our notable ones with Richard Prince, Camp High and Joe Roberts (LSD World Peace),” Melshenker shared. “I’m very excited about our upcoming collabs with the Elder Statesman and our new line called itsPurpL with Jaleel White that was recently launched. Finally, our seed company, Green Beans, will hit the market in 2022. We are definitely in expansion mode on all fronts, including new states and markets.”

For more information, visit 710labs.com.

Read this story originally published in High Times August 2021 Issue in our archive.

The post Brand Spotlight: 710 LABS appeared first on High Times.

The post Brand Spotlight: 710 LABS appeared first on Paradise Found.