We’ve spoken to many entrepreneurs and business leaders in the cannabis industry, and we’ve noticed one overarching theme: everyone is very new and still figuring it out as they go. Even in the most mature markets, things are constantly changing, and new categories are emerging all the time.
Today’s guest, Bohb Blair, is relatively new to the industry but has a proven knack for reinvention. He’s the Chief Marketing Officer at Jones Soda–one of the very first craft soda brands to make a splash over two decades ago. These days, Jones is making a name for themselves with Mary Jones Cannabis, their new cannabis-infused beverage and edibles brand, and Bohb is their Chief Brand Officer.
Before joining Jones Soda, he spent over 20 years at marketing agencies, including Starcom, and he’s won countless awards for clients, including Pringles, Budweiser, and Airbnb–to name just a few.
In this conversation, Bohb shares how he’s launched new products and brands while reinventing himself along the way, what he’s doing to help take Jones into a new category while retaining brand loyalty, and the unique opportunities that bigger brands have right now to enter this industry.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Why Jones Soda decided to expand into the cannabis beverage and edibles spaces.
- The two things that have so many people excited about the cannabis beverage space right now.
- What Mary Jones Cannabis is doing to build a new, savvy, and age-appropriate community around the brand.
- How federal legalization, if and when it happens, will change the legality of products across states and require brands to rethink their portfolios.
INSPIRING QUOTE
- “One of the things that I have found, which has been a blessing and a curse, is how little muscle memory knowledge there is out there for cannabis. It’s a new market for everyone.” – Bohb Blair
- “We have exacting standards because our litmus test is that Mary Jones tastes as great and exactly the same as Jones (Soda), and that the bottle experience is the same quality bottle experience.” – Bohb Blair
EPISODE RESOURCES
- Mary Jones Cannabis
- Jones Soda
- Follow Bohb Blair on LinkedIn
- Starcom
- Fyllo
- Mission Chinese
CONNECT WITH US
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TRANSCRIPT
Rick Kiley: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Green Repeal. I am Rick Kiley, joined as always by my co-host, Jeffrey Boedges. What’s up, Jeff?
Jeffrey Boedges: Greetings from the land of the Spotted Lanternfly. So, yeah, hopefully.
Rick Kiley: Where the f*ck is that?
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s New Jersey, dude. It’s like…
Rick Kiley: Spotted Lanternfly?
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. They’re not in my neighborhood yet but down in like Essex, down along the shore, they’re everywhere. So, I’m kind of like getting ready for the battle, the insect battle.
Rick Kiley: Do they eat COVID virus? That would be awesome if there were like bugs that did that.
Jeffrey Boedges: Wouldn’t it be great if we could just program a bunch of sh*t that people don’t like and have bugs eat them? Yeah. That would be awesome.
Rick Kiley: That would be good. That would be good.
Jeffrey Boedges: Unfortunately, no.
Rick Kiley: All right. Let’s get to it. Today, we have a really cool interview lined up. We are welcoming Bohb Blair, who is the Chief Marketing Officer at Jones Soda, which is the original craft soda known for its unconventional flavors, user design label artwork, and most recently, their cannabis-infused beverage and edible brand called Mary Jones Cannabis. That’s where Bohb also acts as the Chief Brand Officer. Prior to joining Jones Soda, Bohb has over 20 years of marketing experience under his belt, including global media agency, Starcom, where he spent five years as Global Chief Experience Officer. And as creative lead for the agency, his guidance led to multiple awards for clients such as Pringles, Budweiser, and Airbnb, as well as top industry honors for Starcom itself. He’s worked as a Managing Director of Invention at Mindshare and a Concept Director at Legacy Marketing Partners and is the National Events Manager at Draft FCB/KBA. I’m great with acronyms, Bohb. Just so you know.
Jeffrey Boedges: Draft Worldwide, just call what it is.
Rick Kiley: No, no, no. It’s all good. It’s all good. Bohb’s got quite an impressive career. We’re excited to get into it with him. Welcome to the show, sir.
Jeffrey Boedges: This is actually a secret interview, Bohb. We want you to kind of work with us here.
Bohb Blair: Everyone, be very, very quiet.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. Jeff, you said the quiet part loud again.
Jeffrey Boedges: Oh, sh*t. So much for my stealth.
[INTERVIEW]
Rick Kiley: Bohb, it’s so great to have you here and someone as accredited as yourself, and I hope the conversation’s a lot of fun. We talked a little bit about your background there. Can you just tell us a little bit more about how you got rolled in with Jones Soda and how you started work with them and then how Mary Jones came about?
Bohb Blair: You know, it’s funny because as you’re rattling those off, I was almost sitting back and going, “Eh, whoever this guy is it sounds like he might know what he’s doing.” And I certainly have felt for almost every one of those steps that I did not have any idea what was going on. And I think if there’s any kind of consistent thread to this, it would be just constantly building from the unknown because like almost every one of those roles that you rattled off, as good as they sound, didn’t exist before I was doing them. And it’s just because there’s been a pattern of coming into something where someone had a need or a notion and then building and doing it. So, I was the first Managing Director of Invention at Mindshare. I was the first Chief Experience Officer at Starcom. And so, these things of launching something I think is more than what’s in my DNA and I just love creating. And so, I think if there’s anything about those that would add any common thread of why in the world does this career path makes sense, it’s more just saying yes to things that don’t exist and going and trying to make them exist. You know, I love that. Love it.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. It is interesting.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. It’s the entrepreneur.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. No, I was just saying it’s interesting. Your current title, Chief Marketing Officer, is the most traditional. You’ve got a lot of like buzzworthy titles in your bio there. Like, Chief Brand Officer didn’t exist until like the last ten years. You know, people were coming up with roles like that. So, that’s…
Jeffrey Boedges: Chief Buzz Officer.
Bohb Blair: There you – hey. In this industry that makes total sense.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. No, total sense. Yeah. Yeah, we’re with you. But I like that idea.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. Well, especially when you come out with a nice caff- is one of the products caffeinated also, highly caffeinated?
Bohb Blair: You know, we have no caffeine in any of our formulations right now but it is definitely in discussion about whether there’s an on-the-go good time. Yes, 100%.
Rick Kiley: On-the-go good times.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. I like to call it it’s 8 p.m. and I’m out of gas and I still have four bands to watch.
Bohb Blair: Oh, my God. That is my iced coffee mode at the moment. And you’re right, we could enter into a highly caffeinated Mary Jones ready for that.
Rick Kiley: Nice. Well, the one thing I just do want to ask is were you brought aboard the company specifically around the launch of Mary Jones? Or were you brought on before that, when that was just sort of an idea and not something really coming to fruition?
Bohb Blair: I think it’s exactly in the middle of that in the lab because what was going on, and it’s just such a lucky me, I just have to make sure I put this huge blanket over all this. What a perfect scenario to walk into is that I was you know, as you mentioned, my last role is at Starcom and the parts that add a little bit around that is it’s a very big company and it’s a global company. And when you get into these global leadership roles that these big holding companies, they’re awesome and fun in certain ways but there’s other ways that they can start to feel very disconnected from the tangibility of literally anything from products to people. And when your main interface is with the leader of another country, you sometimes start to feel a little disconnected. And I will say that as a lot of people did during the pandemic and all these other things, we all reappraised, right? And one of the things I reappraised was what it feels like to be a global leader at a big company in a faceless role versus what it would be like to be on the ground touching something. And I was very hungry for that change.
I also have a family that includes teenagers and a three-year-old and I was a little tired of the global travel shtick as crazy as that is. And so, I was very hungry for a new experience. And I think when you’re hungry for those new experiences, you put out those feelers and you’re wondering, “Does the world hear me? Will the world pick up on my little radar?”
Jeffrey Boedges: Right. Will the world care?
Bohb Blair: Exactly. And thank God I was just so fortunate that my network effect touched some old friends that were on the board at Jones. And I could have never dreamt in a million years how perfect it would be if someone were to call me and say, you know, they said, “You know, would you be interested…” and the first part of the phrase was, “Chief marketing officer of this legendary iconic soda brand?” And I was already saying yes before they finished.
Jeffrey Boedges: We’re prepared to give you all the soda you can drink.
Bohb Blair: Done. You know, like I love Jones Soda like I loved Jones Soda forever. I think it’s one of the coolest brands. I love, love, love this brand. And then they finish the sentence by saying, “Because we have money in the bank to launch our cannabis brand and we don’t know what that is. We need someone to design it from scratch.” And I about fell over. I was like, could there be something more passionate-driven for me? I love brands, I love soda, and I love weed. And for me, for those things to come together into the opportunity to do this that I realized that like most of my job, which is creating from scratch, it was what I get. And so, everything from designing the name through the brand identity, through product and what we should come like and what our dosing should be, you know, it was just all blank paper and it was just a wonderful, wonderful process to get to. Now, where we are now with our brand in-market in California and having people actually buy it and love it, which is so great to see that arc. But getting to this moment was fun on its own. You know, it’s been a real ride.
Rick Kiley: That’s spectacular. Congrats. I don’t know what else to say.
Jeffrey Boedges: No, I’m just…
Bohb Blair: Well, sorry, I’m just a happy crazy guy that loves my job right now but it just really has been an interesting thing.
Rick Kiley: It’s wonderful to talk to people that love their job because, as you said, a lot of people have been going through some hard stretches, and COVID’s made life really hard for folks. So, that’s great to hear.
Bohb Blair: Yeah.
Rick Kiley: You mentioned.
Bohb Blair: Things may change.
Rick Kiley: Now, you mentioned you love brands and you love weed so that made the transition wonderful for you. Was there any, I’m just going to say, professional experience with the cannabis industry before you started or was it all – had you ever worked on a cannabis brand before?
Bohb Blair: Well, Rick, I believe what you refer to it is the legacy market that I have a lot of experience with.
Rick Kiley: Sure. Yeah. I think we all have a passionate relationship with the legacy market.
Jeffrey Boedges: I worked in sales for a while.
Bohb Blair: I had a very personal and professional relationship with the legacy market for years. But anyway, no, never had. I do not come into this with any cannabis business knowledge. And you know, one of the things that I have found, which has been a blessing and a curse, is how little muscle memory knowledge there is out there for cannabis. It’s a new market for everyone. Even if you look at the most mature markets in California, Washington State, Colorado, you’re still dealing with people who are figuring it out as they go. The regulations change a lot as consumers, you know, even the notion of like how long marijuana and cannabis has been legal, their notion of how formalized and wonderful the edibles part of the category has gotten over just very recent years and how the different distillation techniques have gotten very elegant over the recent years, you know, that business didn’t exist just a couple of years ago. And so, everybody’s new, everyone’s figuring it out. It makes it crazy, it makes it scary, but it makes it super fun. And it makes it for somebody who wants to get and be passionate about it and learn it, you can just jump right in and get involved.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah, I agree. I think there needs to be a movie made because there’s…
Bohb Blair: Oh, my God. Yes.
Jeffrey Boedges: The stories that we already have accumulated on the tomfoolery that goes around with this industry it’s like, man.
Bohb Blair: Even the most well-intentioned mistakes, oh my God.
Jeffrey Boedges: And professional people who like, “You used to run a bank, and now it’s like you really have no idea what you’re doing.”
Bohb Blair: I won’t mention names but you’ll figure it out real fast. I ran into a professional and she came from a very different industry, like computers and stuff but she’s now making cannabis stuff. She’d only been in the industry about a year and I talked to her about six months ago, and she was rattling off to me these nuances of manufacturing and regulatory compliance and supply chain management. And I kind of looked at her sideways. I said, “Did you already know all this? Like, how?” She was, “Oh, no. You pick it up. You become an expert fast.” And now I am the funny person that now, six months later, can rattle off everything about manufacturing and compliance and regulatory in this state and that state, and did you know this, and how are you going to do logistics in this? And you just kind of chocolate yourself like you go from being a novice to being a pseudo expert relatively quickly and then, hopefully, maybe you get over that word, pseudo, eventually.
Jeffrey Boedges: Does it remind you at all of like the early days of the Internet?
Bohb Blair: Of course. Exactly.
Jeffrey Boedges: Remember when you go get a job as a developer like, “Well, I can spell developer.” “All right. That’s enough experience.”
Bohb Blair: If you can say the word without giggling, you’re already well experienced.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. You’re in. Yeah.
Rick Kiley: So, I guess, look, I want to talk about the brand a little bit here and because what I’m finding really interesting is that a brand that has a lot of success, has a passionate fan base, decided to make this change and have this cannabis line extension. And I’m just curious about because they won’t like Pepsi’s not doing it.
Jeffrey Boedges: Coke’s not doing it. Yeah. The big guys aren’t doing it.
Rick Kiley: They’re not doing it. So, perhaps, of course, it’s a smaller company and whatnot, fewer decision-makers, but how did the idea come about and get approved really?
Bohb Blair: Oh, it’s actually just gorgeous, in my opinion, and kind of the way it came to be. Because, one, is that what you have to think about with Jones, and anybody can visit our Wikipedia page and catch up on any of this so it’s not secret knowledge or anything. But Jones for being a brand that started in the 90s, has been around about 25 years, has really had some arcs. And Jones has been unbelievably cool for a very long period of time but the business has not been consistent. The business has gone up, it went way up, and then went way down. And part of that is the difficulty of being what we are just very much the interesting piece of being the biggest of the indies. Right? Jones is the biggest independent, the biggest craft, the biggest of this. Every brand when you look at the brand equity charges, the sales, or anything that’s passed us on one end of the chart are these really interesting regional niche players that are small. And then if you look to the other side of our chart, you immediately start looking at the Sprites and the 7-ups of the world, and there we are right in the middle.
And the middle is a tough place to be. The middle, you have the temptation to scale up. The middle, you’re trying to get these bigger partners but you’re just big enough that the big soda might push you back down. And I think that’s what Jones for years and years before anything to do with me, that’s what Jones is experiencing, is just as being an authentic, credible, really passionate, loyal fans brand but really just treading water at that biggest indie stage. And so, for the time period that immediately preceded me, the board and the leadership of the company were saying they measured it. Actually, there’s a wonderful brand equity study that they did right before getting funding for cannabis that said, “What’s going on with our brand?” And what we realized was that you have a brand equity that massively outpaces the brand business, that you have so many more people that know us and haven’t just heard of us but know what we’re for. “No, you’re the brand who puts photos on the labels. You’re the brand that…” Like, they know what we’re famous for.
Rick Kiley: Right, right, right.
Bohb Blair: Other brands would be so envious of that. But then to look at that and go, “That brand is selling how many million dollars’ worth of soda?” Not much. You know, it’s a small business. And so, in that respect, you either have to invest in your core business to get up to your potential and say, “Well, then we are going to be as big of a soda brand as our equity would say we can be, or we’re going to take that equity and see where it actually could move business, where it could actually shift to the side. And that was the exploration that led to cannabis. And in fact, they explored other things. They explored doing an alcohol pre-mixed version. They explored where can this equity go, where it could have transferable equities, where people would welcome it there, where the business has potential to grow in exponential ways. And now in hindsight, you look at it and you go, “Well, yeah, cannabis is perfect for that.” And it was and what we realized was that the things were three-fold. And I’ve thought about this a lot, so I hope I don’t go into too much detail here.
One was that the brand equity was very interesting. Everyone had heard of us. Even though there wasn’t a huge business to risk, everyone knew who we were and that recognition exceeded the people who drank us today, which was awesome. Like, “Oh, I heard of you even though I don’t buy you in my normal life.” Wow. That’s really wonderful. Two, the momentum around the edibles and the beverage part of edibles is where the fastest growth is. And it’s where the business is nascent, 3% of the market and most markets where you look. But it’s the fastest-growing part of it but it’s the part that no one knows how to do. And that’s the thing that we’re actually good at. You know, we’ve been running a nimble, scrappy soda manufacturing business in regional pockets of the country in Canada for years. So, for us to say, “Oh, a state-driven manufacturing format to bring soda to market? Hey, we know this area.” You know, this is something we’re quite comfortable with and we know where to get all the stuff to do it. And so, that was something we could bring to the table.
But then the third thing we realized, which has just been the gift that keeps on giving, is our flavors. And people love our flavors. Our flavors are not small and shy. In the background, our flavors are big and bold and known and loved in a lot of places. And when we looked at cannabis and of course, there’s notable exceptions but really for most of cannabis, flavor is a masking agent. Flavor is doing a sad cover-up job.
Jeffrey Boedges: It’s an afterthought. They’re not flavor first. It’s cannabis first, and it’s really everything is cannabis first. It’s really THC first, how much will it get you.
Bohb Blair: Then how much can I cover up what I don’t like about that, whereas we’re like, “Whoa, haven’t we gotten to a point where we could have a flavor-driven cannabis experience?” where I would argue that a crave-worthy product, one you’re excited to have. And so, that was our driving force. We partnered with we took the flavor scientist from mainline Jones. One of the reasons that my role straddles both sides of the house is that we wanted a lot of continuity between how we brought this product to market. So, one thing we did is we had our flavor scientist, Sarah, shout out, who does all the formulation work for our wonderful bold flavors for mainline soda. She was the one who came with me to every meeting with our partners in the emulsion side, reformulating our products, driving that really. And for the first while of Mary Jones, we’re only taking the most beloved flavors from the mainline soda side and bringing them over. When you have 150 flavors in the library, you have plenty to go back to and bring things out. I got to tell you, my list of flavors I would love to bring out of mainline Jones is so deep, I don’t even know when I’m going to get to have a conversation about inventing a new one for Mary Jones. It’s just a wealth of great flavors to drop.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. The matrix of possibilities with 130 flavors and then add on 4 billion different possible formulations for cannabis.
Rick Kiley: I’m already thinking of…
Bohb Blair: That’s a specific number, right, that 4 billion?
Rick Kiley: I’m already thinking of the pop-up experience.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. It’s very specific, yeah. Research.
Rick Kiley: The pop-up experience has to be like one of those old soda fountains and it’s like a combination of the beer tap soda fountain with like all of the beer taps in there. And it’s a THC pop-up experience with the Jones soda.
Bohb Blair: I’m ready. You’re building it for me. I’m ready to do it. Let’s go.
Jeffrey Boedges: Absolutely.
Rick Kiley: Let’s get it down. That’d be super fun. Well, I could talk about events with this brand all day.
Jeffrey Boedges: Can I ask a quick question about manufacturing? So, again, just to geek out a little bit. So, you guys already had manufacturing plants spread around, right? So, were you guys using other big soda manufacturers the way spirit companies might where they’ll go to one distillery and have it made? Or were you guys building your own factories and making your own soda?
Bohb Blair: Now, Jones partners with our manufacturing and our co-packers. You know, we don’t own those facilities, although some of those relationships are longstanding.
Jeffrey Boedges: Sure. Yeah. You guys paid a light bill there. Sure.
Bohb Blair: Yeah, exactly. But no, we don’t own on that. And I think that’s one of the things that was interesting for us is the model. And it’s no secret as we go into cannabis, we have chosen to go into cannabis as a brand but not a cannabis license holder. So, in any market for manufacturing, sales, and distribution, at minimum, we’ll be partnering with someone who does hold a license, which is more similar to the way we operate our mainline sodas.
Rick Kiley: Right. And you’ll license the brand to each individual state for the most part?
Bohb Blair: And you have to do it either state-by-state or work with an MSO. So, part of our launch in California was very choiceful in that, that’s a mature market. We have a lot of infrastructure to tap into. It’s also a market where MSOs are least active and that was the choice for us. We wanted to prove and prototype our brand and get everything going and show that consumers love it and show we can make it but leave ourselves open to every type of expansion conversation for the rest of the country.
Jeffrey Boedges: But a bottling line versus a cannabis extraction facility that makes gummies, I mean, you’re talking about wildly different technologies.
Bohb Blair: Oh, yes.
Jeffrey Boedges: So, I’m just like, how does that happen?
Bohb Blair: Yeah. Welcome to my last six months. It has been interesting that even when you’re working with the premier partner and we have been choosing premier partners, there were press releases that have gone out about who we’re working with at any given time and none of them are ready to go 100% with making what we want to make. Whether that be currently doing bottles in glass bottles, whether that be hitting our carbonation levels, we have exacting standards because our litmus test is that Mary Jones tastes as great and exactly the same as Jones, that the bottle experience is the same quality bottle experience. So, obviously, the brand names and the labels are different for very purposeful reasons. But the product experience needs to be the same. And so, as we give that SOP and we give those expectations to people, we have realized that part of our job coming into this category and it’s part of the thing we signed up for was to get everybody’s manufacturing capabilities up to where we needed them to make our product. And so, that is part of what we’re doing, you know?
Rick Kiley: Wow. All right.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. That sounds, I’ll be honest, it just sounds daunting. It sounds like a Herculean task.
Bohb Blair: Well, lucky for me, this is where like I’m not going to pretend for one second that this guy right here knows everything to go and make stuff. I got to tap into the Jones Soda team here, and that’s where it just makes total sense. I mentioned Sarah, the flavor scientist. Well, you have Eric, the President of Jones Soda, has been my partner in crime on manufacturing capability and figuring this stuff out and getting the right glass bottles. And it’s really been a blessing to be able to tap into the coolest indie craft-making soda company to go make the coolest cannabis-infused soda.
Rick Kiley: Yeah.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. And I like another thing you said too because I think it was important and I think it’s something that we’ve been struggling a little bit with as we try to figure out what does the future of on-premise consumption look like or social consumption look like.
Bohb Blair: Yeah.
Jeffrey Boedges: Because most of the intakes like you’ve already pointed out are they can be smoked or they can be in a vape or they can be taken as an edible. It’s not a social experience. And so, when you try to replicate like the bar experience where people sit around and they have a couple of beers or they have a couple of martinis or whatever that is to get that relaxation level, it’s just different in cannabis. But now when you talk about – and people don’t choose necessarily like what kind of buzz they want in booze. They choose what it tastes like. They want that whatever that thing is that they like. And I feel like that’s where there’s a huge opportunity in what you talked about being flavor first, I thought was really good.
Bohb Blair: Oh my God. There’s two lovely things in beverage with cannabis that I think those of us who are entering the space. Eventually in this conversation, I’ll make sure to tell you guys about our edibles that go into things beyond beverage but beverage is the cornerstone of what we’re coming to market with. There’s two big things that I think everyone’s betting on and one of them is that that social occasion is something that you don’t need to teach people. That’s something that we’ve known for years what beverages and alcohol and bringing to a party and pacing yourself over the evening and understanding what you’re looking for and maybe the pacing or something.
Jeffrey Boedges: I’m a sprinter man. I’m a sprinter. I’m out of the gate.
Bohb Blair: I can’t wait for you to try our 100 milligrams 16 ounce.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. That sounds perfect.
Bohb Blair: Anyway, we love that this is something that people inherently understand. And so, what we really believe is that when 3% currently of the cannabis market turns into what alcohol currently is, which is 70% household penetration to the U.S., that’s when you’re looking at an upside that will completely excel beyond pre-rolled joints because it’s a more socially driven on-premise friend’s house, whatever, moment that makes sense. But what we also think is the other part of what you said, which we love, is right now the category is driven by price for potency. We understand that. It’s because it’s an immature market but no one walks into a Benny’s and picks out their whiskey on price for potency. That would be insane. We pick on way other attributes. And if you are, you’re at moonshine level.
Rick Kiley: Wait. You’re not saying… You’re saying no one?
Jeffrey Boedges: I wouldn’t say no one.
Bohb Blair: All right. I’m going to put the appellation up to the side.
Jeffrey Boedges: No one with shoes on. So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bohb Blair: But I really believe that all this is, is a reflection of where we are, our culture, and with this category. And as it matures, there will be other things you’re looking for. The format will matter more, the flavor will matter more, and that’s when beverage will shine, you know? And I think that will be wonderful.
Rick Kiley: Well, I think really people will start understanding the sessionability and that people, I mean, not everybody but people do learn how much they can drink alcohol-wise in a given experience.
Bohb Blair: Your twenties are for figuring that out.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. Your twenties but by the time you’re my age, it’s like, “Oh, this is the type of experience. I’m going to go out to dinner, I’m going to have a cocktail. I’ll have a glass of wine with dinner, maybe an after-dinner drink. That’s my evening.” You go to a music festival all day, you’re like, “Yeah, I’m going to be drinking most of the day but it’ll be like light beer and I’ll pace myself and that sort of thing.” And people really do need to do more individual work to understand how these myriad of products can impact them. Because I’ve had a beverage and it’s a totally different experience than an edible.
Bohb Blair: It really is.
Rick Kiley: When it hits you, how strong it feels, how long it lasts, totally different. And it’s very different than smoking. And I do think beverages are a real key to unlocking the socially acceptable behavior because as I do think smoking joints, it is inherently social. I mean, it’s been made tougher by the COVID era but it’s still smoke and like smoking and smoke is still it’s never going to be widely acceptable by everyone.
Bohb Blair: Yeah. It’s still uncouth in certain situations and you can’t do it in certain places and all that. So, that sessionability is really, really interesting and people understanding it for themselves. And I also think it’s nice that you point out that beverage is different. You know, one is just drinking it orally. It comes on faster. Everyone that does something sublingual versus digest all these things affect how fast it hits you. Also, our cannabis infusion is done with the nano-emulsification technology. You know, we partner with Source on that. It’s really a fast onset technically. And you can look at the technical attributes but at the end of the day, when you start talking to people, everyone has their own individual experience. You know, we’re in that window. There’s people who are faster and slower. There’s people who feel it. Generally, it’s a faster up and a faster down. Generally, you notice that pretty soon under 10 minutes but for some people it will always be different. And so, you just got to do your own personal exploration and figure out what your number is and that’s the great thing to do. You know, there’s any number of ways to enjoy the product from using it as directed to sharing it. And like we say, if you want to microdose Mary Jones, share it.
Rick Kiley: Right, right, right. That’s cool. I really want to ask about the consumers because it strikes me as a bit risky to take a brand that is not in the cannabis space and with a passionate fan base, and then all of a sudden come up with this cannabis line extension. And I’m curious, you mentioned a brand health study that you did before launching the product. Were questions around the cannabis line extension specifically part of that study? Did you feel like you had a really good read on how people in your core consumer base were going to react when this launched? And how has the response, I guess, it’s like a four-part question. How’s the response been? And then are the people who drink the core brand also drinking Mary Jones? Or do you find them going one way or the other?
Jeffrey Boedges: In your concentric circles chart, how big is the crossover?
Bohb Blair: If I can remember all four parts of this question, I will answer them because I actually have the answers. First of all, the equity study did not specifically address concerns about cannabis. It was specifically to say, do we need to know exactly who our current consumer is? That was what we needed to know. And we discovered a couple of things about our current consumer. Some of them would shock no one that was tracking with us. You know, for a brand that didn’t do a lot of marketing for growth audiences for the last 15 years, our consumer had aged with us. For most CPG brands, they would have been really upset about what they saw because what we saw was a median age consumer who was 42 years old, fairly upper income, and that our consumer base was decidedly an adult and that they had aged with us and were the type of people who bought craft soda, and they were the type of people who bought craft soda in the channels we sell it because we’re not in a lot of C-stores. We’re in Sam’s Clubs and we’re in Costcos and we’re in Kroger and we’re in Cost Plus World Market and all these places where you can just imagine that reinforces that type of consumer.
Now, if you are just trying to lean into the soda part of that business, we’d be like, “Oh my God, where’s my C-store strategy? Where’s my teenager strategy? Where’s my whatever? I got to age down that consumer base.” But as a group of people who knew we were about to go into cannabis, we’re like, “Well, this is actually pretty cool.”
Rick Kiley: Kind of lucky. Yeah. You don’t have to worry about someone saying, “Well, you’re advertising against kids.”
Bohb Blair: No. I have a well over 71% adult-compliant user base, consumer base, marketing target base for the last many years. I think people wouldn’t expect it. And that’s what you asked earlier on. I never answered the question, why can’t big soda do this? None of them could answer those questions. None of them. It would be very difficult for them to make that pivot in a meaningful way. Now, we didn’t just go out and call this brand Jones. We called it Mary Jones to make it incredibly distinct, to make it clear. Little things like flipping the N aren’t enough, which we thought that was cute but you have to make it very overt in addition to things like child-resistant tops and only selling in dispensaries and all that other stuff. But anyway, so that was one thing is the equity study was to understand who our consumer is. Secondly, we knew that our business to win in cannabis wasn’t dependent on selling Mary Jones to a subset of current Jones users. That wasn’t what we wanted to know. What we wanted to know was, does a current cannabis shopper recognize our brand marks?
And their answer to that was very much yes, which is I think I mentioned earlier do we have equities that allow us to go in with the current cannabis shopper? You know, and that’s what we’re needing to do, less than convert a current Jones soda drinker to a Mary Jones drinker. So, that was another thing that was part of that. I might have lost the other two parts of the question then because there were four parts.
Rick Kiley: No, I was curious. I think you got three of them, actually. I was curious if your current drinkers are crossover drinkers or if they are, it seems like…
Jeffrey Boedges: Are you alienating?
Rick Kiley: Your aim is to recruit new ones.
Bohb Blair: I can answer that question too. So, I had to have many, many, many conversations with our legal counsel who, God bless her, has been just really on point. We’ve had to like really kind of make sure we understand everything that we are doing to make sure we’re doing everything compliant because we’re a publicly-traded company and we’re intent on doing everything right. And so, what I talked to her about was where can the brands come together? Where can they be in the same place appropriately and in what environments? How do we invite the current Jones consumer to opt-in? And that’s really what it’s about is the brands need to be discreet, especially in their environments. They’re discreet where they’re sold. They’re discreet where they’re marketed. They have discreet websites. They have discreet brand marks. But we do want to create avenues where the current consumer can opt into being part of the cannabis community. So, we’ve done that with our email blast. We reached out to that because it’s age-gated and we understand our consumer there.
We reached out to our age-gated social community. We’ve done a couple of things, we reached out, and we have gotten nothing but overwhelming support. People are so thrilled to see what we’re doing. But for me, maybe the funnest part for me was probably we’re fairly famous for being people’s photos and putting them on our label and we’ve been doing that long before Instagram existed. And when we launched Mary Jones, obviously we had no community, we had no ecosystem, we had no photo submissions yet. So, we thought, well, for the first batch of Mary Jones product, wouldn’t it be fun to go into the archives of people who sent in for Jones, just nine pictures we thought were so fun, so cannabis, or whatever. And so, we did. And there’s literally I’m using a very real number, there’s 552,000 pictures on our submission website of people that filled out a form to say Jones.
I mean, they filled out a form to say, “Jones, please use my picture,” and then we have all their info and all this stuff. So, we reached out to, I think, about 50 people I sent emails to going, “Hey, I don’t know if you’re down with this but we’re launching this cannabis brand. It’s called Mary Jones. And I was wondering if I could use your picture on our launch products.” You’ve never seen more exclamation points come back. So, not one person said no. Every single person was thrilled to be featured.
Rick Kiley: That’s awesome.
Bohb Blair: And so, all but one of the photos on our launch package are pictures from submissions of regular people that sent in for Jones that we reached out to and asked to be part of this. Now, I say all but one because one photo was actually submitted but it was submitted by an employee and we picked it because if anyone looks at our pictures and especially kind of our launch PR, you’ll see a smiling dog in the corner of one of the labels of Berry Lemonade. That’s MJ. That’s MJ who actually stays at the Jones HQ all day, helps with shipments. And she’s always around our loading dock. MJ is always shipping out MyJones custom orders. And so, we thought it’d be really fun to feature the company dog on one of the labels.
Jeffrey Boedges: Is it just accidental that his name is MJ?
Bohb Blair: No. It’s part of the inspiration. MJ is actually funnily named Mary Jones. We’re a very cannabis-friendly company, by the way. I mean, you would be shocked to know that a bunch of craft soda makers in Washington State are weed-friendly. Yeah. So, the employee base was not, you know.
Jeffrey Boedges: So, you guys do drug tests but you have to fail. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Rick Kiley: You pass your tests. I’m sorry.
Bohb Blair: But it was funny, we were in the process of coming up with names for the brand and trying to work through that a little bit. And I was in our offices and I met MJ for the first time and they’re like, “Oh, this is Mary Jane, our dog.” And I said, “Oh, that’s funny. She should be Mary Jones.” It literally was the next day that it was like, “You know, we should call this.”
Jeffrey Boedges: Isn’t that funny, though, how the genesis of so many brand names are probably very similar to that?
Bohb Blair: It’s so obvious you have to. I remember I said it to my boss and some other people and like, “I love this.” The response I got was, “Well, when you have a name like that, you kind of have to do it. Like, you’re almost obligated to go. It’s so right there.”
Rick Kiley: I have separate questions but one is like I can envision with so many flavors that there might be the opportunity to do some sort of collaborative launches. Is that like Green Repeal Green Apple Jones Soda limited edition bottling like how do we make that come to life? Are people talking about doing stuff like that?
Bohb Blair: 100%. If you look at the way the mainline Jones brand goes, and at any given time, you can look at a snapshot of what’s going on with mainline Jones. There’s four flavors in the market, plus a fifth flavor that’s a rotating seasonal, whatever, flavor. And then also on top of that exclusive releases that are often partnered with other people. And so, like right now, if you go into a store for Jones, you’re going to run into the root beer and our cream soda and our berry lemonade and our green apple and orange cream. And those are the flavors, you know, Mary Jones has all but the cream soda of that. But you’re also going to run into our partner with Julianna Peña, current UFC champion, Crushed Melon Flavor, which is limited edition. We brought it back from the archives. And we also have ICEE, the frozen treat. We’re doing sort of versions of their flavors right now.
Jeffrey Boedges: Oh wow. With the ICEE logo on it and everything?
Bohb Blair: Oh yeah.
Jeffrey Boedges: Co-branded?
Bohb Blair: Fully partnered. Fully branded.
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s amazing.
Bohb Blair: They’re frickin delicious, by the way. The cherry one of that is soda but we are looking to do that model for cannabis too where you would have the core flavors of seasonal rotation that you might do with a partner or use cultural zeitgeist as the reason that you brought this flavor back versus that flavor, and then doing some things that are specific to moments or specific flavors. So, once we get all of our systems more fully going, you should expect that type of a seasonal rotation.
Rick Kiley: Sounds like a lot of fun.
Bohb Blair: Oh, yeah.
Jeffrey Boedges: And it’s California only right now or is it in the three…?
Bohb Blair: Only right now.
Jeffrey Boedges: Okay.
Bohb Blair: Right now, yeah, but trust me, as soon as we can get some things to finalize, we’ll be announcing other states as well.
Rick Kiley: Awesome.
Jeffrey Boedges: Awesome. I like New Jersey. I’m just saying, that’s a great…
Bohb Blair: There you go.
Jeffrey Boedges: Big Jones Soda country around here.
Bohb Blair: We do really good in that area of the country with Jones Soda. We’re so popular in New York, a lot of people think we’re from New York.
Jeffrey Boedges: We thought so.
Bohb Blair: Isn’t that funny?
Jeffrey Boedges: Honestly, until this call today, I thought it was definitely.
Rick Kiley: Well, that great Jones Street is there in Manhattan so I think people may think it’s related.
Bohb Blair: I grew up in Michigan and I thought Jones was from Michigan. And it’s funny things are, hey, it’s a wonderful thing to enjoy.
Rick Kiley: Where is Jones from sounds like part of an event that you have to put together.
Jeffrey Boedges: Oh, yeah. Find Jones.
Bohb Blair: Hey, man. You’re just full of great marketing ideas. I may have to start paying you, guys.
Jeffrey Boedges: No, this is an experiential idea, though.
Bohb Blair: There you go.
Jeffrey Boedges: Find Jones at the concert.
Bohb Blair: I love it.
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s where Jones in.
Bohb Blair: Someone had to do it.
Rick Kiley: Sorry. We’re marketers by trade. And I’m curious. So, when you’re getting the word out now, obviously, you can’t advertise the way that you would advertise Jones, I’m curious as to what are the tools that you’re using right now? What are you finding that’s most effective in terms of getting the word out about the brand?
Bohb Blair: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting that the playbook is the exact same pages that would be your CPG playbook for many of the brands I worked with all the way through the last 15 years of my life. But I would say the focus is probably a little different due to the category dynamics. And so, you have and I’ll start close to saying, you have your CRM, you have your own consumer data, you have your places to talk to your existing people, and that turns out as very powerful, especially once you already have an audience, you already have followers. The notion directly outside of that, I would say, is trade and the consumer is bottlenecked at where they shop. Let’s be honest. This is the category that is constrained. And so, the consumer is either visiting an online or a physical dispensary during the shopping experience. And that area is critical in your merchandising there, the way you educate the budtenders and make sure that they really do get you and love you and that you’re giving them reasons to love you. I think it’s really probably back to the earliest days of any beer brand marketing or anything like we’re in that stage with this category. It’s great because budtenders so far have noticed we’re awesome. We’re cool people.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. Now, we do a ton of work with that in the alcohol beverage side and you know as so many like restaurants and bars have changed over the need there is so much and it’s super effective.
Bohb Blair: Yeah. They’re great and they have a real hand in what the consumer gets because a lot of people are walking in not knowing what they want. And so, we love that. We think that’s great. We are working with Fyllo on programmatic media to have a very addressable group of people, known cannabis users, known shoppers, targetable based on their shopping habits. We like that for direct commerce support similar to how you would do in mainline businesses but really that’s a part that is regulated. So, that’s really good.
Jeffrey Boedges: And you can target state and zip codes and things like that. Very effective.
Bohb Blair: Yeah. I mean, you know where they shop and what they shop for. And so, that’s wonderful even though that dataset is small. And then you kind of skip over that part of that would be mainline advertising and a lot of other brands that do because that’s not possible very much in a lot of places but you go right to content marketing, public relations, and probably some influencers, although we haven’t really overtly done it yet.
Rick Kiley: Yeah, right.
Jeffrey Boedges: So, you… Go ahead, Rick.
Rick Kiley: No, no, no.
Jeffrey Boedges: So, social media, you mentioned. So, over the years we’ve interviewed a lot of people and the idea that Facebook or Instagram or Twitter even would take down these people’s sites once they determine that they were cannabis and they had commercial messaging that was crossing state lines and they would just shut you down and, I mean, not with notice and not with like, “Oh, we put all your contacts in this bucket that you can access later.” It’s just like gone. Is that something that you guys are worried about? Because clearly, Jones Soda has a much larger, you know.
Bohb Blair: Well, it’s one of the reasons that Mary Jones is very distinct from Jones in all those places. And so, you won’t find any Mary Jones messaging on the Jones Soda social media handles. And that’s it. Those are very drawn lines right there. We are aware and concerned as anybody would be in the space about navigating these areas correctly. And sometimes it’s ambiguous, I think to your point, like some brands have gotten shut down and they didn’t always know why. And I think all we can benefit from is how much knowledge has been gained now to date to say this is how we understand to do it. Very much, it points you towards behaving like a lifestyle brand, not a commerce brand when you’re on social platforms. And I think for us, that makes sense. I have no issue. I understand. I think if I was a retailer, that would be harder to navigate. But as a brand, I think we can easily stay on that side of it and not have a lot of problems. But I think it is a moving target, shifting expectations, and you try to stay ahead of it by working with people who get it.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. I kind of feel like most of the beer brands that we’ve talked to, like you mentioned earlier, most of them are new, right? These brands have been around for two years at best, maybe three, right? So, they don’t have that much to lose but I have to imagine that as other big players start to get in that the sophistication level is going to increase dramatically on this.
Bohb Blair: I can only imagine. I will say, though, that I have some private accounts for just my own market knowledge. I went and followed every single cannabis brand that I could think of and oh, boy, there’s a variety of how people behave.
Jeffrey Boedges: For sure. Yeah. Trust me. We’ve had them on the show. We know.
Bohb Blair: I’m like, if there’s any consistency to this, I’m not seeing it. So, I don’t know. So, we’re just trying to do it the way we were seeing it. But as I mentioned earlier, we are trying to stay really clearly on the side of doing everything right. We’re not a risky group. And so, that’s important to us.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. So, CRM, trade advocacy, I’m curious if you’re doing anything, especially because I think beverages are so important to the future of on-premise consumption. I’m curious if you’re doing anything in the live event space. Are you trying to create environments where people can come together and socialize and drink Mary Jones? Like, is that part of the marketing mix?
Bohb Blair: I’m very excited about where that part of the industry is going. And I will say that I’m someone as a consumer and now as a professional that’s got very much an eye on what consumption looks like on-premise, at events, experiential sampling, you know, across the board. You have a couple of things that are going on. Probably you’re really only talking about two real environments right now. You have a very, very small footprint of experimental consumption lounges going on in a couple of places but, honestly, those just hasn’t happened yet. I think we’re all kind of looking at that but those examples are varied.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah, the formula has not figured out.
Bohb Blair: Yeah. But I think we’re all thinking there’s a version of that in the near future that someone’s going to crack. Right? In the meanwhile, it seems to be the music festivals, both the cannabis created as well as the side lounges at existing festivals that seem to be innovating in the space most. And from my perspective, and I’m not saying that’s to jostle the economic totem pole or anything like that but what I have noticed is it makes sense for a retailer right now. Like, if those lounges make a lot of sense for a retailer to come in, do onsite sales, have some brands they’re promoting and supporting and have that go there, I haven’t seen a model yet where it makes a lot of sense for a brand to make that whole thing happen, especially because no matter how big and even when we talk about beverages and edibles together, the full experience of cannabis is to have a breadth of a portfolio of products to pick from that would cut across more than one brand. So, I do think there would have to be some sort of consortium of a retail-driven experience that makes the lounge the bar of the future rather than a one-brand experience.
Rick Kiley: Got it. Cool.
Bohb Blair: But I can’t wait to be there. I think we make so much sense for a music festival.
Jeffrey Boedges: For sure. Yeah. But I agree. I think you don’t go to a bar or any place and have, “Oh, it’s just Miller Lite.”
Bohb Blair: Well, in fact, that’s illegal. Like, if you think about it, it is illegal in the United States for a brand-owned exclusively one brand-driven liquor license. And so, it’s funny that you think about the models that were being inspired by in cannabis from other areas. One wonders, as consumption lounges come on, they might enforce things like that to keep it…
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. That’s a big suspicion on our part. But it is weird now because you have everybody wants to be seed-to-sale, which is basically antithetical to the three-tier system of wine and spirits.
Bohb Blair: Yeah. You’re 100% right.
Jeffrey Boedges: When federal gets their snoot in there eventually, what does that morph into?
Bohb Blair: Yeah. I do think that that is the primary two dynamics that are going to have to smash against each other in the near future, you know.
Rick Kiley: Well, let’s just put something out there and say this is what it should be and then see what everybody says. That’s what I think.
Jeffrey Boedges: This is just what we went back to. Where do you start?
Rick Kiley: No. I think you put the idea on this piece and say, “This is how it works.” And maybe they’ll go, “Oh, okay. That’s how it works.” You’ve defined the area. We are running towards the end of here but I know that you mentioned these edibles a couple of times and we haven’t talked about it. So, other than the soda, we have a few other products. What are we talking about?
Bohb Blair: Well, the reality is that when we were thinking about a flavor-driven portfolio and we were thinking about edibles and beverage being our hero product, we always wanted to also round that out by showing our flavors coming up in different places. So, we formulated gummies, which we’re really excited about. They taste great. They look like little bottles and you can put them in little miniature carriers and all that fun stuff. But we also realized that we had this Jones carbonated candy that’s been out for years, very popular in certain markets and in Canada. And this stuff fizzes in your mouth. It comes in our flavors and it’s a nice tablet format, doesn’t melt, portable, all these wonderful things. And so, we’re in the process of finalizing our formulation for that product. So, that’ll be out later this year in California. We’re going to be releasing that as our first kind of edible in a tablet format as well. And then we were very excited about our 1,000-milligram syrup but just to kind of point to…
Rick Kiley: I’m sorry. How many? How many milligrams? I feel like Jeff Goldblum in that first Apple iPod ad. I’m sorry. A thousand songs in your pocket? Did I read that correctly? So, 1,000 milligrams? What?
Bohb Blair: I adore this little quadrant of the edibles category, which is these brands that are making tinctured syrups at 1,000 milligrams in very small vials. As a consumer, I love high-dose products. I think they’re really fun. And I was excited about us and we actually have this brilliant formulation for one ourselves. However, cannabis is a nuanced and fluctuating category, and California just updated its regulatory rules on what it means to be a tincture these days.
Rick Kiley: 999.
Bohb Blair: And it no longer brings that product viable in California. And so, it is one of those things where it’s just been a learning experience for us. Nothing stays the same in cannabis very long. You always have to keep an eye on it. You have to be nimble that I’ll put that formulation on the back shelf and we’ll bring it out for a market that it is legal in and it’ll be wonderful and popular there. And meanwhile, we’ll rethink what we do in California.
Rick Kiley: It sounds like one of those things that you could only make available at the brand home when you have like the brand home experience. It’s just like you bring it out with the dinner. Like, it’s the little bits like at the end with the ice cream, you put all the syrup on there.
Jeffrey Boedges: This is going to make sure you sleep for 48 hours.
Bohb Blair: Doesn’t everybody need a home base where they can just really just experiment?
Rick Kiley: Oh, I’m a huge fan. I love the brand home and I love creating destinations out of brands. Anyway, if you’re not doing that, that’s where I’d do it. And there’s this restaurant that I’ve gone to in New York, which is called Mission Chinese, and they have only one dessert on the menu. And it’s this like ice cream thing that’s got a whole bunch of other stuff but it’s topped with pop rocks and it just like it reminded me of your fizzing candy, like create a nice old dessert around that as part of an edible experience. I’m always trying to create a culinary THC cannabis experience.
Bohb Blair: Oh, my, yes. I was pouring our syrup on top of ice cream and it didn’t make it a root beer float as much as – it didn’t go all the way to Magic Shell but it hardened on the exterior. Like, it reminded me of a candy apple when it has that kind of sticky outer shell. And I was like, “Oh, my God, this is brilliant.”
Jeffrey Boedges: The only issue I have with cannabis desserts is it feels like a cycle that once you started, it’s like the collider just keeps whirring.
Bohb Blair: And what a virtuous cycle it is.
Rick Kiley: Yeah.
Jeffrey Boedges: You wake up like two days later.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. It sounds like a really wonderful cycle.
Bohb Blair: And the problem is what?
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. Die 100 pounds.
Rick Kiley: No, but that can’t, that…
Bohb Blair: Yeah. You could get stuff once in a while.
Rick Kiley: That candy apple thing would sell at one of those concerts. You get that thing to go too.
Bohb Blair: Hey, man. It works in a snow cone, too.
Rick Kiley: Oh, right. Okay. Gosh.
Bohb Blair: Oh, my goodness. Snow cone.
Bohb Blair: Trust me, I’ve tried that.
Rick Kiley: All right. Bohb, we tend to finish every one of our episodes. We’re called The Green Ripple because we’re trying to chart the march towards federal legalization of the cannabis industry. So, we always ask people that we interview the same question, which is, if you were to place a bet, when would you predict that cannabis is federally legal in the United States of America? I mean, you might have some intel. Some people have different intel.
Bohb Blair: Well, without bringing in my own personal biases of how long it takes any government agency to do this or that or who might win this or that.
Rick Kiley: It’s part of the algorithm.
Bohb Blair: I do think that, you know, I would be wondering about a couple of things that have to knock down that I think will happen first. I think there’s going to be an infrastructure, somebody who succeeds in the financial area of this category, that shows that there’s money being left on the table like that. Somebody has to do something where everybody gets jealous that that money isn’t going somewhere else. And so, then you go, “Okay. Was it the credit union? Was it the e-commerce solution? Was it the Venmo of cannabis?” You know, all these people that figured that out, that’s going to make somebody have an eye on the price. The other thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to see a couple of multistate confederacies where – oh, I shouldn’t use that word. Multistate alliances, yeah, where they show a crossing of state lines with their cannabis regulations. And that’s just to…
Jeffrey Boedges: That’s the discussion that they’re in.
Rick Kiley: There’s a lot of belief the northeast corridor is going to be doing that.
Bohb Blair: Sure. And so, then you’ll see some efficiencies across the region. And then it will make a pilot model that other people go, “Oh, my God. That’s clearly beneficial. And now we need it to go with this.” Those two things are both viable but need to happen first to lead to, in my opinion, to federal legalization. And that will take a while. Six years.
Rick Kiley: So, six years, 2028.
Bohb Blair: Put my marker.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. If you win, you get to come back on the show because they…
Bohb Blair: Oh, what a prize. Woo!
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah with all the free soda you can drink.
Bohb Blair: Great. And I have to bring it too?
Rick Kiley: No, no. We’ll pay for that one. Awesome. Well, Bohb, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Everybody who’s out there in California, if you get a chance, you should try Mary Jones. If you want to, I guess, learn where they can get it or get more information, where should people go?
Bohb Blair: GoMaryJones.com. Our website has a product finder on it. You’ll find all of it. We’re in a bunch of places all across California. So, to your point, if you’re a Californian, get out there.
Rick Kiley: Cool. And we’ll help you get it here in New York any way we can. Okay?
Bohb Blair: Hey, make some phone calls.
Jeffrey Boedges: Well, we’re sort of more like driving across country.
Rick Kiley: Yeah. We have an idea to remake what it was Smokey and the Bandit but for cannabis soda.
Jeffrey Boedges: Yeah. That’s it. You’re going to give away all our good ideas.
Bohb Blair: I’d sponsor that video documentary.
Rick Kiley: Awesome. Sold.
Jeffrey Boedges: All right. Done.
Bohb Blair: I love that idea. All right, man.
Rick Kiley: All right. Great talking to you, Bohb.
Bohb Blair: Good times.