On June 27, Karma Club had the fortunate opportunity to chat one-on-one with Jono – Illinois’ lively sales representative for Smokiez Edibles. If you aren’t already in the know, Smokiez Edibles is a brand devoted to nourishing the body and elevating well-being through their use of plant-based ingredients. Their award-winning edibles are vegan, gluten free, and are expertly handcrafted to make your mouth water and get you lifted. We’re thrilled to carry this brand and find their product to be a great value. In this interview, we’ll take a dive into the history of Smokiez, how they make their fruit chews taste so good, and what their plans are for the future. You can listen to the interview audio and read the transcript below.
Transcript:
Jesse
What’s up? Karma Club coming to you live from the parking lot with Jono from Smokiez. Just enjoyed a nice little sesh on this lovely sunny Thursday and we’re here to talk to you about Smokiez and their wonderful edibles. Do you want to say hi?
Jono
I do want to say hi, thanks for having me. Glad to be here and in the parking lot doing what we do best. Having a little pow wow with some friends and very humbled to be invited to be part of your brand spotlight here at Karma Club.
Jesse
Of course, it’s so good to have you and what is weed for, if it’s not for sharing with your friends, right?
Jono
It’s always, always.
Jesse
And that’s what’s so good about Smokiez Edibles – they come in 10 packs or a really nice single piece. Good for sharing or for treating yourself.
Jono
Got the 10 packs. We also have single piece 100-milligrams for the heavy hitters out there, and the nice thing for the non-heavy hitters – our candies are handmade and our process is guaranteed to be perfectly homogenized. So, if a 10-milligram piece is more than you’d like to eat, you’re more than welcome to cut it in half and have two fives or you can quarter it and have 2.5 milligram micro doses and you can have that confidence knowing that because of our handmade process. That product’s going to be homogenized and you don’t have to guess what you’re eating.
Jesse
That’s awesome. That kind of reliability and trust goes a long way, especially for people who are still getting used to cannabis. It’s still pretty new for a lot of folks, and that’s why we’re so grateful to be where we are in Lincoln Park. And so grateful to be an independent that can bring on new brands like Smokiez.
Jono
100% I mean like, and you know, you nailed it like you’re in Lincoln Park. And the last thing anyone wants to do is have, like, a crappy experience because they overdid it before they understood their dosing tolerance with edibles. So you guys being located in Lincoln Park is such a nice thing for the community because it’s such a mixing pot of ages and demographics people from all over and a lot of those people, whether they have young kids and our new family or they’re older and at the twilight of their professional career and are like “Oh man I can smoke weed now. This is cool.” It’s nice that you guys are here because there’s really not a better place where you can come and have the variety that you guys have and then also the knowledge with the budtenders, it’s important because where the rubber meets the road is customer talking to a budtender without that interaction.
It’s not the same industry that we all want it to be, so I encourage customers to ask and and tell you guys why they’re there, you know, like maybe you just wanna get a bag of weed and go home. Pack the bong and watch Netflix. Maybe you’re meeting your wife at the train station in two hours from now and are going to The Rolling Stones concert and need a disposable and some Jays to stuff in your socks. Not that I’m doing that today, but hypothetically speaking.
Jesse
*laughs* Yeah.
Jono
But whatever, whatever your needs are, I encourage the customer to be forthcoming with that and that will make it an easy job for the budtender to direct them on the journey they want to go down.
Jesse
Absolutely. People deserve to know what they’re getting into, and we’re really grateful to have a wonderful staff who’s well educated. And that’s also why we’re here today. So, I guess we’ll dive into our questions. We prepared some for you. Off the top, We’re curious. What is it really like to launch a new product line in Illinois? Are there any surprising obstacles?
Jono
Yeah, let’s do it.
Jesse
Any surprising supporters?
Jono
I think there’s just a new lesson to be learned every day. Each day is a different win and success story to share with the team, and each day also presents a new opportunity, or not opportunity, a new headache or or obstacle that we have to overcome. You know, whether it be challenges on the production line, certain parts of our handmade process take longer than others. You know, every single individual candy is popped and sanded by hand. We do sweet and sour finishes on all of our flavors. So, there’s a lot of time and care that goes into making sure that each individual piece is uniformly sanded and looks nice and goes in the package nice because that sanding, also, is one of the reasons why our candy doesn’t stick to each other and turn into a, you know, a gooey monster of playing the guessing game of how much milligrams is left in this bag.
Jesse
Does that sanding also contribute to its unique texture? Because Smokiez have a very nice texture compared to some other gummies.
Jono
Yes and no. It helps the gummy retain its uniform shape and integrity, but the texture is the magic that makes Smokiez so good. I started with Smokiez a little over half a year ago, and it seems like it’s been six years now, just because it’s been such a learning curve, both industry wise, industry wise and internally.
Since I’ve started working with Smokiez, whether I’m passing out non medicated samples at retail or if I’m sitting with a neighbor at the pool and they’re wondering what you been doing lately and I say well, take a look at this and I get to whip a bag of Smokies out of my pocket and say I’ve been selling these now. Everyone’s reaction is always the same, and I call it the “interested puppy look”. You know, the head tilts to the side, the eyebrows go up a little bit, the eyes get a little wide and they go “Wow. Like, that’s a really ******* good candy.” And that’s just it. Like it’s easy to make any old candy and infuse some cannabis oil in it and put it in a bag. Slap it on a shelf and hope for the best. It’s hard to make like a legitimately good quality candy on a consistent basis and on a national scale because we’re in 23 states, including Puerto Rico and Canada.
So, to be able to replicate that high quality and high integrity and the actual quality of the candy itself, before we even worry about infusing it with the cannabis oil, says a lot to the time and effort that our ownership team, which is a father son duo named Chuck and Ryan. It’s a testament to the elbow grease and the dedication that they invested in the early days. When they didn’t quite know how they were going to make infused candies. This is in 2011 in Colorado. You know, I mean, it was the Wild West. Smokiez was not Smokiez back then. It was a different company, different product but being able to operate for 14 going on 15 years now successfully has afforded them the experience and the ups and downs of course, because you always learn from hardship. That’s why our recipe and our texture and our taste is so good, because we’ve learned through mistakes we’ve learned by growing. We’ve learned by putting the effort in and understanding the chemistry behind making candy, you’ll never have gelatin in our candy. And what does that mean? Well…
In layman’s terms, it leans vegan and gluten free, but in the down and dirty terms, it means there’s no ground up horse and pig hooves in our handy, and that also means that our candy’s not gonna melt, so you could even throw it on your dash in the car, under the windshield in the sun, humid Chicago summer, and you could go do your thing all day long. Come back and they will not melt. They’ll soften up on you, but you’re not going to have to again play the guessing game and you know, like, give it the old college try and slip down basically a glorified jello shot, right? Right. It’s really user-friendly in that sense too. So, when you start adding those things together, you know our our pectin-based candy, no gluten.
Jesse
Yeah, it won’t be a sticky mess in your pocket.
Jono
It’s vegan. It won’t melt. They’re available in sweet and sour. They taste great. The texture… Ah, it’s not like I’ve eaten every edible on the market, but I haven’t eaten edible yet that has the texture like Smokiez, and for those of you listeners and readers out there, close your eyes and picture digging a hand into a bag of Swedish Fish and a hand into a bag of Sour Patch Kids and making a little candy baby with them, and then eating that, and that is about the best way I can describe Smokiez.
Jesse
Yes.
Jono
The flavor coats your whole mouth. It’s juicy. I call it a mouth feel because I come from the beer industry. It might not be the perfect nomenclature for what I’m trying to describe, but the way it chews and kind of bounces on your teeth. It um it’s meaty. Almost on the palette. So, it’s just it lets you know it’s there. It’s the right size where you can eat it in one bite, and you could take cannabis out of the equation and just take our candy itself. Put it in our packaging, which looks fantastic, and slap it on a shelf in a target and it would rip right along with the with the old staples like Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids. So, my team’s amazing and we have a lot of confidence in our products. So, we’re pretty damn excited.
Jesse
That’s amazing. You really gave us a great window into what goes on with y’all’s process as far as the development. I’m curious if you’d be able to speak more to how you homogenize every gummy that is produced and how you incorporate different cannabinoids into that? Because I know that the sour apple is a really great one-to-one with CBG, and CBG is becoming more prominent in our market, and that’s a subset of a greater array of different options to choose from. So, I’m curious what you guys do and how you decide what flavor goes with what cannabinoid?
Jono
Yeah. So well, what flavor goes with the cannabinoid… I uh, I don’t have a good answer for you there. I’m too new to the crew. I’ve been so focused on launching this that there’s some questions I haven’t thought to ask and it’s how we’ve landed on certain flavors, but we have a really awesome operation where we have two main kitchens in the country, one in the Pacific Northwest and one in Oklahoma and we have teams stationed in each kitchen that only make our our wet and dry ingredients and then batch up our terpenes and our flavoring and everything besides the cannabis oil, because obviously from a compliance standpoint, you have to source your cannabis oil from the state that you’re producing in. So everything but that is completely owned and controlled by Smokiez so there’s no supply chain hiccups that we could run into other than a flat tire on our semi-truck of pallets full of wet and dry ingredients. We don’t have to rely on anyone to fill our orders for what we need to cook our products.
Long winded way of saying, that’s our way of assuring quality control as well, and and a very consistent product across the country. So, you could be visiting friends in Cali or Massachusetts, or Oregon or Montana and have Smokiez in all those state and then you could visit friends in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan and have Smokiez in all those states, and they’re all going to taste exactly the same. So that’s pretty cool. And that’s the testament to our teams at the kitchens, you know, Maddie and Sam, and all these people that work very hard to make sure that our teams in each individual state who work hard themselves to make product every day have the tools to make an awesome product for the end consumer.
Jesse
Totally shout out to that crew because having the ability to have a reliable edible that brings you the effects you expect, is delicious, and is overall going to give you a great experience, no matter the weather, no matter where you’re going throughout the day, in any state that you guys are currently available in, is massive. ‘Cause I am a medical patient myself and I know when I travel, when I visit family or friends and other legal states, I really seek those brands that I know bring me great quality effects, great flavor and an overall even experience.
Jono
Hmm, even experience, you know, like back to your question about homogenization.
In our handmade process, so we could, if you’ve ever seen like, you know, in in most Midwestern hometowns, at least. You’ll find like an old school mom and pop candy shop. And you peek back and they might be batching up like something really chocolatey and silky looking. And it’s in a giant copper pot. You know, maybe it’s 15 gallons capacity.
We fire up copper pots and we hand make everything. So how we homogenize is after the wet and dry ingredients are mixed, our cannabis oil goes in and our team works very hard and it is important work because it all comes back to compliance, dosing, consistency with the product it is a tedious and very important job to precision measure out each dose, and I’m not going to tell all our secrets, but we have a way to make sure that everything is hunky Dory and keeps our production team happy, keeps the lab happy, and keeps obviously all our customers and retail partners happy because they know what they’re going to get.
Jesse
That’s that magic you were speaking of.
Jono
But there’s just no machines that make our product. So, it’s because of the – if we were on camera, you’d see the motion I’m doing – because of the hand whisking that we do and how the copper pots conduct heat and so evenly it’s the perfect way to make a handmade classic quality candy. And then everything’s hand pressed through uh through a dispenser into molds, so there’s nothing limited. From start to finish there is no machine that touches these that is not run by a human.
Jesse
The personal touch is really special and a really thoughtful part of the whole brand.
Jono
Totally well, we couldn’t do it without the team in the kitchen, right? We got 15 people that work really hard to give us what we need to come out here and provide our retail partners, you know, you guys and everyone else in Illinois that that has given us the opportunity to do business with them. Without them there is no Smokiez. It’s just like without budtenders, there is no dispensary. There is no, there is no cannabis business without budtenders. Without the people working every day in the kitchen, there is no product to sell to you retailers. So, we love them and we’re very proud of the work that they do because it shows, you know, everyone seems to be real happy with Smokiez once they get it in their vault. So it’s been a it’s been a fun start to this, this new chapter here on in Illinois.
Jesse
Yeah. What would you say has been your favorite aspect of that journey so far?
Jono
The learning, it’s just been a ton of personal growth. It’s a new industry. Sales is not a new profession to me. But there’s so much nuance to the cannabis industry that like I mentioned earlier, every single day is still a learning a learning experience. There’s not a day that goes by, and I’m including weekends, mostly because I’m a young father, or a new dad. But even weekends, they’re still every day is a learning day. So, I think that’s kind of been my favorite part is just seeing what it’s done for me personally having the responsibility. To launch a brand like Smokiez in a market like Illinois, which is no small feat, and there’s a lot of eyes on Illinois and the cannabis industry, so a lot of eyes on the state, we’re the most widely distributed edible in the country, so there’s not a lot of room for error, so I enjoy the pressure. I enjoy the challenge and maybe there is some, what would I call it, some virtue to having ADD because you wear so many hats during the day and man, sometimes I’m glad I look at a few different things at once and still kind of keep my wits about me because it’s not for the faint of heart. So, I enjoy that, that competitive challenge.
Jesse
Absolutely. And we can relate here at Karma Club. It’s definitely been a journey launching our very own independent one-stop shop, and we don’t have any other locations as of yet, so this has definitely been our beating heart, if you will, for the last year, so with that being said, we’ve been talking a lot about the production, but I want to know what your favorite Smokiez flavor is. If you had to pick one.
Jono
My favorite Smokies flavor hasn’t hit your buds yet. You haven’t tasted.
Jesse
Ohh that’s exciting.
Jono
I actually have one. Do I have one? Here I might have one in the trunk. I might have to do a trunk run.
Jesse
Whoa. Exclusive look.
Jono
But before we leave, I’ll have to look – it’s Blackberry. We haven’t released Blackberry in Illinois yet.
Jesse
OK, cool. You bet.
Jono
I’m very excited to do it. It’s gonna be an indica strain, so it’ll be for all you sleepers and couch chillers out there, or people like me who are wound tighter than a gnat’s ***, but the flavor is just ah, just light in your mouth. Not on fire, because that would make it sound spicy, but it sparkles on the tastebuds. It’s just a hint of tartness, really fresh, not unripe. But like, I like a tart blackberry. I like tart everything though. So like, I like tart blueberries. I do not like soft blueberries. I do not like soft, mushy blackberries. I I like my raspberries.
Nice and tart. So, it’s just got that kiss of tartness and like the rich juiciness of the blackberry flavor, it’s just perfect. So, stay tuned, Illinois, for the Blackberry Smokiez indica we will have that later this year, but that one is my all-time favorite. And then my second while we’re on the topic, I mean, I got a lot of favorites.
Jesse
Yeah, I was going to say that’s one of my questions I’d like to know.
Jono
My second favorite is jamberry and jam berries are one to one. With CBN. You also asked earlier about the the ice different isolates and and minor cannabinoids and and so yeah, we have the 1:1 with CBN and the 1:1 with CBG. The CBN is jamberry flavored. So picture all the good berries, your raspberries, your blueberries, your blackberries, your strawberries all jammed up together. That’s jamberry and now, sometimes I find myself sitting in my office just going to town on my non-medicated jamberries because I can’t eat a whole bag of fully medicated jamberries. With that CBN, I’ll be a walking- I’ll be a zombie. So yeah, I functionally can’t eat the full diesel version but sitting in my office. When I’m feeling a little frisky and daddy needs a little sweets, he goes for the blackberry and the jamberry.
Jesse
Yeah. Indeed, great selections. Well, that makes me really excited to see what the blackberry packaging is going to be because one of my favorite aspects of the Smokiez brand since launch has been their very unique styling. I love the illustrative aesthetic as far as the bags go. I also like that the bags feel very smooth and comfortable in your hand. They don’t have sharp edges.
Do you have anything to say in regards to the thought behind that design? Was there any pushback from Illinois? Because I know they’re a little bit hard on things that are more graphic.
Jono
Yeah, we had to. We had to be flexible a little bit with Illinois and it’s not the only market that, you know, has these same or similar rules, but most markets, our Smokiez bags have gorgeous, vibrant, colorful fruits on them that are relative to the to the flavor of that particular bag. So in Illinois, we’re not allowed to have fruit on the packaging, so we still have the the the leaves and the greenery. So like on the watermelon bags, the leaves are what? The leaves on a watermelon plant. The blue raspberry is a raspberry bush.
Another minor detail is in most markets the eye and Smokiez has a nice little pot leaf on it with cannabis leaf. Can’t do that in Illinois either, so it’s OK we flex, we do what we got to do, and then we move on, and our bags still look pretty darn good.
Jesse
They do.
Jono
The whole idea is you could – It doesn’t matter if you’re going on a camping trip to a a music show if it’s slipping into a luxury handbag at a, you know, a soccer game.It doesn’t really matter like who you are, what you’re doing. It’s it’s. It’s easy on the eyes, you know? And I like that. And like you said, it’s got a matte finish to it. It’s kind of soft.
It’s kind of luxurious and yeah, there’s a lot of things that that make it fun and exciting to sell Smokiez and packaging is one of them. You know, it really does stand out as beautiful and functional. And certainly not generic.
Jesse
MHM. Certainly not. Well, all of these are amazing qualities. I know that Smokies has won many awards for their edibles in other states. Any plans to compete in Illinois?
Jono
You know nothing explicit, but uh, like I said, every day is a new learning experience, so as soon as. You find out the deets on when the next High Times Cannabis Cup is here. We certainly want to enter because we do have the most awarded edible in High Times Cannabis Cup History across the country. So that is something we are proud of. There’s a lot of good brands around the country.
Jesse
As you should be.
Jono
We we like weed, right? I mean, we’re a cannabis company. We don’t hate on our competition. There’s a lot of great stuff out there, a lot of beautiful packaging, lot of products that taste good. That’s also have good texture. We’re unique in some ways, but we do know that there’s also good competition out there and for us to kind of hold that title of the most award, the most awarded edible in High Times Cannabis Cup history is is humbling and we’re proud of it for sure.
Jesse
Well, congratulations on getting those titles. Thank you. Well, my very last question for you, you’ve already kind of covered with the blackberry reveal, but do you have any other exciting news to share or a preview of what’s next for Smokiez?
Jono
What can I share on this public forum?
We got a lot of exciting stuff coming up from a product standpoint. We’re going to have a line of gummies that are coming out at some point hopefully this year called Spinello’s.
And you may ask, what is Spinello’s? Well, spinello means joint in Italian. So Spinello is a rosin-infused gummy and it’s beautiful. It’s delicious. It has that hash rosin flavor. You know that that us. What would I call us 20 percenters truly like, you know, like the bona fide stoners.But it’s also got that classic amazing Smokiez flavor to back it up and keep it balanced and make it approachable for someone that doesn’t want to bite into a gummy and just taste cannabis. So, my team and I are really excited about that.
And that’s another thing that that is not coming up, but is happening now is the team in Illinois. I’m extremely lucky to be surrounded with teammates, teammates that I just, you know, was telling someone earlier today – I never lose sleep. And I never have anxiety about what the sales team is doing in Illinois with Smokiez, I’m surrounded by veterans. Knowledgeable people with a lot of experience and good people so.
I’ve seen enough to know in the last couple of years that that’s not always the case and it’s hard to find good people and the fact that we have such a strong team is going to pay dividends for most importantly our retail partners. And that’s what I’m excited about. I’m excited for everyone to get to know Boot Hermano and Ken Kuhn and Bruce Scissors cause we got a hell of a hell of a squad and I just never had this much fun in my professional career, so like I’m on Cloud 9 and it’s just the start of something that I think is going to be pretty special here in Illinois, for Smokiez, and without that team, none of it would happen. So, everyone at the kitchen, Becky and Courtland, everyone at the kitchen. It’s a family and it’s a team effort, so we’re all very, very happy and excited to show the rest of Illinois what we’ve been working on for the last, I mean, gosh, we don’t have enough time to get into it for the last few years, very excited to show you what we’ve been working on. So stay tuned.
Jesse
Wow. Will do. We’re so excited to see you guys continue to grow and blossom in this market and we are beyond grateful for our partnership with you all. It was really special to launch Smokies here on 4/19 the day before 4/20, and now we really feel like we’re in there deep with you guys and we’re just really excited to support you as you continue to grow, and we’ll continue to get all those new SKUs and stay tuned as new things drop.
Jono
Yeah, you guys were the very first cannabis dispensary in Illinois to ever have Smokiez. We’ll never forget it. And that’s why there’s a Smokiez grill-out back and I look forward to the July Smokiez Smoke Out “Weed-and-Feed” at Karma Club. What do we do last? What do we do this month? We did brats and dogs and a couple of sausages. I think next month we might have to turn up the wick a little bit and maybe do like.
Jesse
Oh yeah. Smokiez Smoke-outs!
Jono
Burgers and even wings. They take a little bit more focus to like, get them right on the grill.
Jesse
Oh.
Jono
But I’m here for it. I like manning the grill. Yeah, it might be burger and wing month in July.
Jesse
I’m so here for burgers and wings. Let’s also grill some pineapple.
Jono
We’ll plan it. Ohh yeah, don’t get me started how I do pineapple is and my wife and I kind of concocted this idea. Little olive oil just to just a little schmear and then. Like rub some brown sugar on there and then and then just a little bit of cayenne, just like a little sprinkle of cayenne. So, you get the sweet, you get the heat, you get the grill marks the char or the savory. So, it’s all that rolled up. And then, yeah, slapping on the grill and chart to your own desire.
Jesse
Oh.
Jono
It’s phenomenal. It’s better than any like, ice cream or cake dessert you could ask for.
Jesse
That sounds insane. I gotta try that next.
Jono
Yeah, real good, real good.
Jesse
Well thanks.
Jono
We should do like a monthly grilling blog too. You never know.
Jesse
Absolutely. You never know. Hey.
Jono
And see how much time we have on our hands, which is not much but I like doing weird **** like this.
Jesse
That’d be sick. Would be a fun reel as well. Thank you so much for your time. You are the best. It’s so good talking to you, Jono.
Jono
Yep. Yep, Yep, Yep. Ohh no likewise. Thank you for the time and I know we’ve been talking about doing this for a while, so I’m glad to see it come to fruition and and on a beautiful day in Lincoln Park, man.
Jesse
Me too, it’s gorgeous out here.
All right. Of course. Thanks for being here. And then for all of y’all listening, be sure to pick up some Smokiez on your next visit to Karma Club. Ask a budtender for a recommendation.
Jono
Well, thanks for having me. Ohh yeah and come by on Saturday for Smokiez Saturdays.
Jesse
You better. That’s a good time. Alright, peace y’all.
Jono
See you later.
—— 🙂
