Veritas Fine Cannabis is always looking for new ways to engage with the end consumer, and this past year, the Colorado-based company has found success in a variety of limited-edition product drops.

The Veritas team likes to curate experiences, according to the company’s marketing director, Jordan Plunkett.

“That’s the thought process behind our new product lines and our new product drops,” Plunkett says. “We want to do something that goes above and beyond just giving someone a new product to try out. We want to tie that into an experience somehow, and we’ve done this in the past with previous product lines, such as our Pheno Hunts.”

While “pheno hunting,” or determining a cannabis cultivar’s best traits, is usually reserved for a company’s internal product development team, Veritas has given its customers the chance to try and vote for their favorite phenotype. The one with the most votes then becomes a permanent cultivar in Veritas’ genetic library.

“That [idea] derived from our gardeners coming to us and basically saying, ‘We have all these phenos and these incredible strains, and we don’t even … know where to choose from,’” Plunkett says. “We then came up with an idea to actually … get consumers engaged somehow.”

Veritas offers its customers a Pheno Hunt box that includes 1 gram each of three different phenotypes of the same cultivar, along with accessories like a grinder, a lighter and rolling papers. Consumers can then sample each phenotype and offer their honest opinions and feedback on which ones should have a place in Veritas’ genetic library, Plunkett says.

“It’s been a really successful and engaging way to really connect with our customers,” he says. “They seem to love it because it actually gives them a say so in what we do as a company. At the end of the day, they’re the ones actually enjoying our products, so we want to hear from them directly.”

Now, customers are anxiously waiting for the next Pheno Hunt to drop.

“We’ve really seen a huge number of growth, and we actually have people asking us when the next one is,” Plunkett says. “People are very familiar with it, they know about it, so I would definitely say our Pheno Hunts are probably our most successful limited-edition product line that we offer.”

Photos courtesy of Veritas

Veritas also has a First Cut product line, which is offered more frequently than Pheno Hunts and gives customers a look at a cultivar that the company is growing for the first time.

As with the Pheno Hunt products, the First Cut line gives Veritas’ customers the ability to provide feedback on the cultivars and decide whether they should have a permanent spot in the company’s genetics library.

“People have absolutely loved the First Cut concept so far,” Plunkett says. “We’ve been doing it for a few years now, and … people like having … the opportunity to be a part of something when it comes to working with these big cannabis brands.”

Veritas also tries to find unique ways to connect with its retail partners by offering them exclusive, limited-edition product drops.

For example, the company recently partnered with Golden Meds to offer exclusive day and night boxes. The day box contains two of Veritas’ sativa-dominant cultivars from its Invigorate line, while the night box contains two indica-dominant cultivars from the company’s Alleviate line.

“With that, we’ve given the users an experience, and with the store, we’ve given them this exclusive product that’s only available to them,” Plunkett says.

Veritas has also partnered with Wolfpac Dispensaries to offer Cocoa Puffs as an exclusive cultivar available in 7-gram jars.

“That is not typically a product line that we carry, so that was a cool, limited-edition, exclusive drop that if you wanted to get Cocoa Puffs, you had to go to Wolfpac,” Plunkett says.

Sometimes, Veritas will tie an exclusive product drop to a prize or giveaway to drive new product lines. For the 2021 All-Star Game in Denver, for example, the company sold a commemorative can with three 1-gram pre-rolls and a baseball rally towel inside—and one lucky can also held two tickets to the game.

“You’re already going to enjoy the product itself—you’re already planning on purchasing our product anyway—but we’re giving the consumer that extra little nudge, that extra thing to incentivize them,” Plunkett says.

Veritas evaluates the success of a limited-edition drop based on whether the products sell out. The company sets the drops at a certain quantity, and its goal is to sell out of that inventory as soon as possible.

For example, Veritas releases about 900 boxes for its Pheno Hunt promotion and typically sells out within a couple weeks.

“We consider that to be an absolute success and a win there,” Plunkett says.

The company also considers social media engagement when determining the success of a particular drop. Veritas never asks customers to post about the brand or its products, but if the company sees a lot of natural, organic conversation on social media about a particular drop, the team counts it as a successful promotion.

“We really determine our success based on what people just really, truly thought of the promo,” Plunkett says. “Obviously, we take a look at our sales data and our numbers and review all that stuff to make sure that we did it right and [where] we have room for improvement. … But our ultimate goal is to really just create an experience for the customer and have a positive little thing for them to try out.”

Looking ahead, Veritas plans to collaborate with Native Roots to roll out a live resin vape cartridge. Beginning Jan. 28, Native Roots will be the exclusive retailer of the cartridge, which will feature custom packaging.

“We’ve given them our product, our flower, to be pressed and extracted into pens,” Plunkett says. “We’re planning on only starting with about 3,000 of these in the market, so we’re hoping that these take off and we’re very excited to see how they do and how people enjoy them.”

The overall goal of Veritas’ limited-edition product drops, Plunkett says, is to create an organic conversation with the company’s customers and allow them to weigh in on what they like—and what they don’t.

“The biggest thing we just try to do here is really just give the end consumer the ability to feel like they’re a part of something,” he says. “We love pushing the boundaries of what’s out there and what’s possible, and we like to try to do things that pave the way for others to even follow."

South Dakota has issued its first three medical cannabis dispensary licenses to retailers in Wagner, Watertown and Keystone, according to a South Dakota Public Broadcasting report.

The licenses went to Custom Touch in Wagner, Dakota Dispensaries in Watertown and Puffy’s in Keystone, according to the state’s website.

South Dakota must still license medical cannabis cultivators, manufacturers and testing facilities, and the Department of Health is continuing to process applications, South Dakota Public Broadcasting reported.

The state’s voters approved medical and adult-use cannabis legalization measures in the November 2020 election, although the South Dakota Supreme Court has since overturned the adult-use initiative, ruling that it violated the state’s single-subject rule.

South Dakota lawmakers are currently considering several proposed bills on medical and adult-use cannabis during the 2022 legislative session, which kicked off Jan. 11.