Aaron Riley: Rethinking Potency with the Cannaleptic Rating

In this episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt is joined by
Aaron Riley, founder of Certified Testing and Data, to explore the
development of the *Cannaleptic Rating*—a new product scoring system
designed to help cannabis consumers better evaluate quality across product
types. Drawing from his years of experience in lab testing and cannabis
compliance, Aaron explains how the system was built using sensory studies,
consumer feedback, and simplified metrics to create a more trustworthy and
transparent guide for buyers.

They discuss how the Cannaleptic Rating avoids over-reliance on THC
percentages, how it differs from traditional lab metrics, and how it could
help retailers, brands, and consumers make smarter choices in a crowded and
inconsistent marketplace. The conversation also touches on batch
variability, terpene preferences, and what Aaron learned from years of
testing competition entries and working directly with product developers
across multiple legal markets.
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Listen to the episode:
Ganjapreneur · Aaron Riley: Rethinking Potency with the Cannaleptic Rating
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Read the transcript:

*Note: this transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.*

TG Branfalt:

Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com
podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized
cannabis through the stories of entrepreneurs, activists, and industry
stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Aaron Riley. He’s founder of certified
Testing and Data, which recently launched the can Cannaleptic rating, a
product score that allows consumers to easily understand and compare
cannabis quality. How are you doing this afternoon, Aaron?

Aaron Riley:

Doing good, Tim. Thanks for having me.

TG Branfalt:

I’m really excited to have this conversation with you. I think this idea is
really something that is needed in the cannabis space and has been for a
long time. But before we get into the cannaleptic rating, tell me about
yourself, how you ended up getting the cannabis space.

Aaron Riley:

Sure. Yeah. So my initial foray in the cannabis was a little bit early. I
started in 2010, 2011, got in a little bit of trouble. I like to joke that
I was trying to get a distribution license in South Carolina before they
were handing them out,

TG Branfalt:

As a lot of entrepreneurs did, right?

Aaron Riley:

But kind of regrouped and my foray into, call it the licensed cannabis
market was in 2016, I decided I wanted to get into lab testing. I saw it as
a great opportunity as an entrepreneur. My main mission and focus is to
help people with their health. So I saw it as kind of a combo opportunity
to participate in cannabis, something that I was interested in and excited
about, obviously had experience in. And then the testing component where
there was an opportunity to participate in a part of the market that we
were going to be responsible for making sure products were safe for the end
consumers or patients.

TG Branfalt:

And so when and why did you decide to develop the Cannaleptic rating?

Aaron Riley:

So fast forward till 2022 probably, and I’ve been in cannabis testing since
then. I’ve had two businesses. My first business was Can safe and then I
left at the end of 2020. 2021, started certified testing and data. What
really led to the catalytic rating was a series of conversations with my
business partner, Larry from the food world. And just the overall
frustration I think everybody has in cannabis, especially people that
recognize good cannabis is potency, is just this terrible measuring stick
that somehow became the defacto or go-to metric for quality when it just
doesn’t align with that. So going back to Can Save, we do the testing for
the High Times cannabis competitions, and one of the things we noticed is
we got to see all the judge ratings, we got to see all the stuff. The
testing was a 25% of overall rating, and there was a theme. The highest
potency products never won in any of the festivals that we ever did. It was
never the top product in any category.

TG Branfalt:

That’s interesting.

Aaron Riley:

Which is telling, and it was kind of like this. It was like ding, ding,
ding. Usually the winners, at least for flour were in the twenties, mid
twenties you’d have some products that were submitted that might be over
30, but typically the winners were kind of called 22 to 25%. So my business
partner in 2022, he starts saying, he’s like, this is ridiculous. And the
food industry, nobody uses a calorie rating or an ingredient percentage as
a quality metric. They do sensory studies very hard to launch a food
product without doing a series of sensory studies where consumers try the
product, they rate that the attributes from mouthfeel, flavor, smell, kind
of the standard attributes they look for. So he said, we should do
something like this for cannabis. And at first I was like, I just didn’t
understand it well enough to know how, but we just talked about it for a
year and we’re like, you know what?

This is a really good idea. We should develop something like this that we
can run products through that gives consumers the information needed to
make these purchasing decisions. I think a lot of in cannabis, I mean a
connoisseur, it’s like for me, I hear about the best products from my
friends. It’s not necessarily something I see online or going to the store.
The bud tenders always trying to sell you something they’re getting free
t-shirts from or whatever. It’s like usually it’s word of mouth. It’s how
you hear about the best products and there’s a void for consumers to walk
in the store and be like, what’s good? I want this type of product. I like
this type of flavor effects. I want something more relaxing. What’s going
to be good for me? And that was really the culmination of events that led
us to develop the CANOP test.

TG Branfalt:

So you said there was about a year of discussions. What were those
discussions like when you were in the process of creating what this would
look like? What were you setting out to put on paper, if you will?

Aaron Riley:

Sure. And so I think the biggest challenge was how do you do that? How do
you organize this test, right? I think we knew early on, okay, the end
result is we want a product score that relates to quality and we want the
consumer to trust this score as like, Hey, this, if this says this and it’s
good, then I trust it. So working backwards from that, how do you get the
consumers to try the product? What questions do you ask? So we talked to a
series of people, some of ’em, the main consultant we used was a piece of
PhD food scientist expert. And we were taking different questions that
related to tea and just other different types of products and fitting that
specifically to work for the main cannabis attributes. And then the other
part of that process was, like I said, was trying to figure out how to get
the consumers to try the product and what’s the distribution mechanism.

Our initial plans wasn’t how we ended up doing it just because it would’ve
been just too much of a logistical nightmare to get people to try the
product. And that’s hard. You have to have with consumer ratings and
whatnot, you have to have a statistically significant group. I can’t say,
Hey, Tim let’s me and you try this product. Oh, it’s great. Let’s fucking
air it. Let’s put it out there. You have to have at least what we found is
like 25, 30 people. It’s kind of the minimum where you have clean data. It
doesn’t get skewed towards somebody who hated or loved the product and it
becomes a pretty good guidepost for consumers. The other thing that we
found out, which was really surprising during that process and is not how
we thought about it going in, is we thought connoisseur know the best.
They’re going to know what everybody likes or wants.

And we were dead wrong on that. And it is true for other industries, right?
It’s true for alcohol, it’s true for food looking. The mass general public
doesn’t eat the best food all the time or drink the best alcohol. So what
we found is the general consumer is a little bit more sensitive to the
boldness that a lot of the connoisseurs, so you call it 90% consumer,
doesn’t necessarily those super out there that the connoisseurs appreciate.
And that’s really when we develop this. I do think that connoisseurs these
products, the products that we’ve rated so far that have the highest
rating, there’s a pretty good consensus that these are the best products.
But while going through the attributes, the general public is better at
rating what the general public and general consumers more so than consu.

TG Branfalt:

How did you find people to participate in helping you with this?

Aaron Riley:

Yeah, so this was part of the creativity that was needed. So initially when
you do sensory studies for food companies, they recruit people and they pay
people anywhere from 20. Sometimes you don’t get any money. Sometimes it’s
like, Hey, come sit in here and try some Doritos and we’ll give you a bag
of chips and a coke on your way out. There’s companies that literally, they
just go to college campuses and they give away free food to get students to
try sensory products. And then there’s more complicated surveys. But
generally you recruit people and they show up or don’t you come to some
call it pre COVID sensory stuff was very like, you’re in a white box, it’s
white lighting, everybody’s in the booth and you try the product. So
there’s no environmental components and we just found that’s not going to
be realistic. And also we don’t want people coming somewhere consuming
cannabis and then leaving and being responsible.

So we developed our testing to be remote. And initially we used friends and
family, we just used our network to try products and go through the
questionnaire series of questions and all that. When we did our commercial
launch, it just wouldn’t have been financially feasible for the companies
to pay for traditional sensory tests. It would cost five grand per product.
And as you have a lot of exposure to the space, people are definitely cash
constrained now. So we came up with a process where, so the brand hires us
to do the testing and then we partner with dispensaries for distribution to
basically to essentially cut down the recruiting costs. And the way that we
do that is the brand subsidizes discounts for the consumers. We charge a
marketing fee. It’s part of our fee that we charge to do the study, but
part of that money goes back to the consumer in the form of a rebate. So
somebody walks in and they say, Hey, I want to try this OG cush vape that
that’s part of the cannaleptic survey and it’s a $50 vape. Well, we give
’em 25 bucks back for buying the product and filling out the questionnaire.
So it ended up being a lot cheaper of a way to get people engaged.

Brands enjoyed it too. The sell through is higher because not everybody
that bought the product did the survey. They come in, they’re like, oh, I
get a discount. I get paid from this lab to give them data on a survey. And
then 70% of the people they got high and forgot or whatever. So the brand
loved it. They were like, holy shit, I sold three times as much product as
I was normally selling while we’re kind of doing the call it data
generation period. But yeah, that was the trickiest part was how do you get
people to try the product and give you the feedback and just the whole
product distribution to get a wide demographic. We don’t want just one type
of person trying this product and giving us the feedback.

TG Branfalt:

So one of the things that you put on this rating is effects. And I do want
to ask you, and most people who consume cannabis know that those effects
can differ from person to person. Some people an alleged indica is supposed
to make you sort of feel sleepy, whereas to somebody else that has the
opposite effect, how are you trying to balance that portion of it? The
effects portion specifically?

Aaron Riley:

Yeah, so the effects and right on. I mean it’s the same way with alcohol,
it’s the same way with drug interactions. Initially we were, and I think
this just became too complicated, but we were going to try to pair the
effects with a DN component. There’s a couple companies cannabis that offer
DNA tests and be able to pair those. But absolutely for us, the main
drivers for effects were just generally what, and we have different
attributes like sleepy, tired, hungry, anxious, all that. And in terms of
how big of an impact they made on the rating, as long as they’re positive,
that was more important than were they the same? If me and you have
different experiences, are those experiences positive?

And with our algorithm, that turns into the product rating. That was the
most important aspect. And then we are also on lookout for the negative
ones, like anxious. And what we found is that certain products made certain
people anxious and they didn’t make certain other people anxious. But
generally speaking, it was that positive or negative correlation was the
effect experience overall positive or wasn’t negative. There also was some
association with people that might’ve been newer users. They’re more
obviously predisposed to get anxious. Somebody that’s first few times
trying edible, it’s more intense. So we noticed all of those things, but
that was kind of how we balanced that. And interestingly enough, I think
that’s either the third or fourth out of the four different main
attributes, there’s an overall rating, but that was maybe this lowest or
second lowest in terms of waiting, which is interesting. And that’s another
thing that I didn’t think going in. And this was something that the expert
that we worked with told us initially. She said, your nose drives sensory
every other alcohol, food, everything. Nose is number one. How does it
smell? We’re just seduced by our noses. And I thought that’s an important
component for cannabis products. But I was like, that’s not going to be the
most important one. But she was right.

TG Branfalt:

I mean, that’s something whenever I go to a dispensary, if I don’t have the
opportunity to smell a product, I will not buy that product. And so I think
that that’s interesting that that came up, the sort of nose noses idea.
What about some of the other various elements such as the qualities, how
did you get some of these people who participated in the sensory study? How
did you get them to speak the same language, right? Because the language
that you and I speak people in the know people who are seasoned consumers
who are in the industry, we have a jargon of what we describe things. So
how did you bridge that gap and get these people to use the terms that
would be helpful broadly.

Aaron Riley:

Got it. Yeah. So another interesting challenge that you brought up and we
worked, I don’t know, do you know Addison ura?

TG Branfalt:

I do not know.

Aaron Riley:

Okay. Addison’s a great guy. There was a few people on the cannabis side.
He is probably the most public social facing, but we worked with some real,
I mean he’s a hash, if there’s a connoisseur rating level, he’s at the top
a 10 or whatever. And the challenge was to simplify that and ask people
very simple questions. What color is this? Do you notice any trichomes or
hairs? And so instead of trying to full on educate them about these things
that you and I know and we look at, we will pick up a nug and be like, oh
wow, look at those orange hairs and like, oh, tricombs are milky. Perfect.
You just ask them simple. You just kind of simplify it down. Do you notice
these things? What color is the bud? Do you notice hairs? Do you notice
tricombs?

Is it sticky? What’s the physical? How does it feel? Your touch? Those
things that we would just naturally do and make our own assessment of. You
have to ask people very simple questions about it. And it actually worked
pretty well. And one of the other things too is, and people, this is a
non-con. This was the takeaway. People were the biggest takeaway from
people that did it. The one common thing that came up with these so many
people is I never thought about that. I just never thought about when I’m
trying a product. One of the things that we do on the flavor is we do
flavor on inhale and exhale, the aftertaste call it. And people were like,
I never thought about that. I only ever thought about the flavor, just like
I take a puff and that was it. That was my thought of the flavor. I never
thought about before. The inhale, the after, how it differs.

TG Branfalt:

And I’m just looking at one of the ratings specifically for GMO flour and
it says aroma diesel. I mean, that’s not something that, how do you convey
that to somebody who may not understand what that means when you’re trying
to get them to give you this score? You know what I’m saying?

Aaron Riley:

Yeah. So most of the questions are either multiple choice or hedonic scale.
So it’s one to nine or it’s earthy spicy gas, and it’s like you’ve done
those tests before where ask you the same question, but it has different
answers that mean the same thing.

One could say it smells like diesel. One could say it smells like gas. One
could say it smells like metal or metallic. And so people were given the
option to select these things, and if you think about it, they have the
product in front of them while they’re doing this. So it is like, okay,
smell the product. Now you smell the product and there’s 20 different
things that it could smell like does it smell earthy? Does it smell fruity?
Does it smell like gas? Does it smell like pine? And so they would click
the box for those ones. And for GMO to get diesel, that would mean that a
lot of people that did the study, that was one of the higher or highest
aroma attributes that people clicked.

TG Branfalt:

This is super, super interesting stuff because these are conversations that
as somebody who’s been consuming cannabis for 20 years or whatever it is,
the conversations I have with my friends. And so when I initially sort of
saw this sort of stuff on paper, I got really excited to be able to go into
a dispensary, maybe not armed with this document specifically, but to be
able to have a sort of a point at which I can, something that I can point
to and say, I want something like this. How can eclectic rating help
cannabis brands broadly?

Aaron Riley:

Well, I think a lot of people, most brands are trying to do this. It is
their position at a different spot on the value train brands aside, okay,
I’m going to sell super primo. I’m going to sell mid, or I’m going to sell
high volume. And the goal for all of ’em, people might sell, Hey, I want to
sell $10 eighth, or whatever. The goal for all of them is to be the best
product in their call it ring a rating and the highest quality. So if their
business model to sell $10 raise, they want to have the best $10 raise. If
they want to sell Primo, they want to have the best product. And this test
is for brands to cut down on a consumer learning curve.

The idea is an effective form of marketing. They can do this test. And also
if they have the best product, which a lot of brands feel that they do,
this is a better measuring stick than potency. It also gives ’em feedback.
So even if their product isn’t as good as they think it is based on
consumer feedback, it’s an opportunity to reformulate or make some
different flavors. Hey, people really like this one. We’re going to focus
on these types of strains or these flavors or these type of products. So
the idea is that it is not only, it is a marketing tool primarily helps
educate your consumer, but secondary focus is it’s an improvement tool.

TG Branfalt:

So one of the things that I’ve long sort of been a proponent of on this
show and broadly is getting rid of strain names. Quite frankly. There was a
study that was done by a company that went dispensary, dispensary in
Nevada, bought Blue Dream where they went, did an analysis and none of them
were the same, right? Chemically under testing, and I’m sure you’ve sort of
probably ran into this yourself, could this potentially be a way that we
could move away from what I think is an antiquated way of categorizing
cannabis and allowing people who may not be in the know to be able to buy
based on terpene profiles and what the expectation is feel wise?

Aaron Riley:

Yeah, absolutely. And I a hundred percent agree with you on that. Somebody
actually asked me the other day, I was like, do you have data on strain
data? Like terpene data on strains? I’m like, yeah, but it’s not that great
because you just said people will just, oh shit, blue dream’s hot right
now. Let’s name this blue dream. It’s not Blue Dream. Let’s name a blue
dream and just push it out. And everything has been so hybridized that it’s
really hard to tell. I mean, wine is probably a better way. You have
different types of grapes and maybe cannabis gets simplified into, I don’t
know what needs to happen for it to go there, but I like what you’re
saying. It’s like, okay, indiv is bad because everything’s so hybridized
and it doesn’t necessarily correlate to the effects, but maybe there’s like
five to 10 different generally types of strains.

And then this can just be fall under that bucket, but then have the
specific like, oh, this is going to be great for being creative and if you
like mango, it’s like mango and pine or whatever. But that’s the idea
behind this test is people can still use their strain names and it’s
something that consumers are familiar with, but it’s supposed to be more
like, here’s what you can expect, which I think you’ve identified the
challenge as a consumer yourself is you want to know that and nobody right
now does a good job of telling you what that is. It’s kind of like just a,
hey, either my friends tell me, or I’m just going to take a shot on this
product and see if it’s any good.

TG Branfalt:

So how else can the cane degrading help retailers?

Aaron Riley:

So it helps retailers by cutting down on the educational burden. When we
talk with the retailers, the most common question that they get is like,
which one’s the highest potency?

Oh no. And it is hard. People want a score, they want something, they want
a rating or score. And when there’s nothing else to go to, it’s like, what
can you give? So they liked this because it’s like, okay, this is great. It
cuts down the educational. Now someone comes, oh, what’s the highest
potency? Well, what are you looking for? Are you trying to buy the best
product? This is a better tool for you to get the best product for however
much money you’re trying to spend. So they like that aspect of it. And I
think everybody in the industry, I haven’t heard of anybody that’s just
stuck to their guns and said, no, potency is the greatest thing ever. We’re
going to keep on this. People want to shift towards something that actually
means products are good. What can I say? Here’s a rating because Posey is
not good. So if somebody goes in and they buy a product, they’re not
really, the next time they come in, they’re not going to buy the same
product. They’re just going to be like, what’s the highest potency? One,
they’re still searching for the best product. Whereas this is like, okay,
now, oh, I really liked the last one you gave me. So I want to buy
something else that’s rated highly, but this time I want an edible instead
of a vape or flour.

TG Branfalt:

We’ve talked mostly about flour. What are the sort of challenges between
rating, say an edible, a gummy, a chocolate, a beverage versus flour versus
vape, pens and concentrates?

Aaron Riley:

Sure. So the hardest to rate is concentrates just because when you’re doing
the rating, you want people to consume it the same way. So for ours, we
want somebody to use, we either have to kind of simplify it. You either
have a clean dabbri or you have a puffco or whatever, and we have to denote
that the edible products and drinks are actually easier to do because
they’re closer to food. Most of the rating attributes are similar to food,
which for us, the experience of who we worked with, it’s just easier.
There’s a lot more out there that exists.

It’s easier to get people to tell you a piece of chocolate is good than is
to tell you if the concentrate or a vape or flour product is good. So those
were actually easier. And it is also just a no brainer in terms of how you
consume it. People are generally speaking, we don’t question if people are
eating a edible or drinking a beverage the same way. Whereas sometimes with
the flour it’s like, okay, we hope they’re doing it the same way Flour
supposed to be via one hitter. We give out a clean one hitter just so it’s
like somebody’s getting a clean hit or we do a pre-roll. So for the gmo, we
had two subsets. Some of ’em were pre-roll, some of ’em were glass, one
hitter, just a new one. Hitter Hemp wick delight it.

TG Branfalt:

I mean, it’s really interesting because obviously it’s in the name, right?
Certified testing and data and you want to have these clean data sets. And
so going about it that way, I honestly didn’t expect it to be that clean,
to be quite honest with you. Who is using this now? Where could somebody
walk into a dispensary? What sort of region, where is this launched
officially?

Aaron Riley:

So we officially launched in New York. We haven’t gone anywhere else with
it yet because part of the idea is it’s a value problem. So the core of our
businesses is the compliance testing requirement. So this is a
differentiator for between us and the other labs. We’ve talked about doing
a more broad launch in different states, we’d have to partner with labs in
those states, but as of now, it’s just in New York. And there’s some pretty
prominent brands that have gone through and got raided. I mean the GMO you
referenced, that’s from Umami. They’re one of the best flower brands in New
York. And I don’t know if you’ve tried their flower, but it’s good.

TG Branfalt:

I have I,

Aaron Riley:

Yeah. Do you agree? What do you think?

TG Branfalt:

I don’t really want to comment and not because to me, it didn’t live up to
the hype, quite honestly. The Umami brand in particular, and maybe, I don’t
know, maybe it was just the sort of batches.

Aaron Riley:

Yeah, when did you try? And that’s the other thing with flour. The other
challenge with flour is just the inner batch variability. I mean, if you’ve
been around alone enough, sometimes your favorite brand is they put out a
banger. And really across the country, seven 10 Labs is the only brand that
I know of that has just their quality control on everything, and they’re
very honest about when they put stuff out. But we did notice that certain
batches are better than others the same.

TG Branfalt:

I do buy their infused pre-rolls occasionally because I can’t infuse my own
pre-rolls, which is unfortunate. Would love to love a machine to do that.
If anyone listening can figure that

Aaron Riley:

Out, one of our clients has one, but it’s really expensive. I don’t know
that it would make sense to

TG Branfalt:

Put my basement, probably not. When you bring this two brands, what
typically is their response?

Aaron Riley:

I mean, a lot of ’em are interested. I mean, we did I think nine, eight or
nine kind of initial brands and a lot of ’em are interested in, Hey, this
would be very valuable to help us with our consumers and our distribution
and even getting into the retailers.

TG Branfalt:

And what’s been the response from retailers?

Aaron Riley:

Retailers love it. Win-win, I mean, they get to sell more product. They get
a full ticket sale. So just say it’s a $50 product. Retailer gets to tell
consumers, Hey, you get paid 25 bucks or you get half of your money back if
you fill out this survey. So people come in and they buy a lot more of that
product. So leads to higher sales with retailer, I think they like
participating in the educational aspect of it. Where they get to it is kind
of moving the train forward, so to speak. And in terms of educating
consumers, and before we partner with the retailer, we do just a sort
educational tutorial with their bud tending staff in terms of, Hey, here’s
how you explain this. Here’s what it means. Here’s how people can go
through the process.

TG Branfalt:

And have you heard back from any consumers who may have bought a product
based solely on the rating or basis, their purchasing decisions on the
rating that may post something in social media or email you directly or
somehow give you feedback?

Aaron Riley:

We’ve got some feedback. We haven’t got a ton of feedback, but we’ve gotten
some feedback from consumers just laughing at some of the comments from
people like, oh my God, this is the best thing ever. Or yeah,

TG Branfalt:

I mean, I’m not a guy who drinks a lot of wine, but when I go into a wine
store, I rely on those ratings. And this is something I think really drew
me to this is because even as somebody who does consume reasonable amount
of cannabis, I go into the dispensaries and I’m in there for 20 minutes, a
half hour smelling everything, looking at everything because we don’t have
a similar system as to wine where you can just sort of walk in and get this
information readily available to you. What’s been something during this
whole process, just the consumer score process, the sensory study process,
is there anything that you just sort of when it came to fruition or when it
came across your desk that you said, wow, I was not expecting this?

Aaron Riley:

I mean, some of the things that we spoke to earlier were, I think really by
the time we launched, we’ve gotten through all those things like the nose,
the aroma being the most important attribute. That was to me a big surprise
in the process. I just didn’t think I thought effects was going to be
number one. I thought, okay, how the effects are is going to base whether
you liked a product or not. It was one of the lower ones, which is, it is
interesting, but it kind of speaks to why people eat certain snacks or
something. And that’s what we learned through the process. It’s like a lot
of things that people do are genetic behavior driven. Why do we eat chips?
It’s not because they just taste amazing, it’s because they’re salty and
crunchy and they have these certain sensory attributes to it. But yeah, I
would say most of the big shock or learning lessons were as we were going
through the process, by the time we got to the end of it, we’d already done
enough trial studies, we’d already seen enough products, we’d already kind
of generally seen how people were going to respond.

TG Branfalt:

And how are you going about getting word out about the scoring program and
when might we expect it to be more widespread in New York?

Aaron Riley:

So right now we just finished our first wave brands, I would say within the
past 45 days.

Aaron Riley:

Wow.

Aaron Riley:

So right now, I think we’ve been talking to some of the brands that did it.
They’re working on incorporating it into their marketing, and we’re
getting, we’re gearing up to go after call the next cohort where we target
either obviously the same brands that we worked with, larger portions of
’em working on trying to get with one of the digital menu providers to
incorporate the score into menu so you can see it when you go in the store.
So really I think it’s one of those things where if we get enough buy-in
snowball, we get enough brands do it, and then the retailers are going to
be all for it.

TG Branfalt:

So this is something that you send out or sent out with the products that
are scored.

Aaron Riley:

The way the Kenoptic portion works is the brand. It’s the same way in wine,
which is another. Here’s another that, going back to one of your last
questions in terms of what was a shock. So the wine thing, not every wine
that’s rated published, the brand hires the company to do the rating and
then they don’t always use the rating. Sometimes it might not be what they
want. Sometimes they’re just like, Hey, this is whatever. Same way for us.
So the brand really decides, so we market to the brand. The brand hires us
to rate whatever X products. We do the study, we give ’em the score, and if
they want to broadcast it, great. We’re happy to participate in the
marketing like this podcast and whatnot. But some of the brands that I
would say every brand that participated had multiproduct, there was only a
few products that didn’t have a good enough score where people didn’t want
to broadcast in the first go around. Most people put their best product in,
so wanted some of their best products. So it wouldn’t have been a good look
if they, it’s like, here’s my best product. Oh, sorry, not very good. So
generally consumers were pretty positive on the launch products.

TG Branfalt:

Well, in New York seems like it would be a kind of challenging market to do
this because not only, it’s only a few years old, but I mean I see dozens
of products released every single week right now from different brands.
Every dispensary I go into, it’s different brands, different weeks. So
keeping up with that, I’m sure has been a little challenging. Right?

Aaron Riley:

Yeah. So one of the challenges is that we want, we’re working on a way, we
just have to be creative because of cost constraints. For people to do a
one-off launch, they do a limited concentrate or vape or even flour drop.
Here’s this cross hype style. It’s hard. The way that this works, it takes
a little bit of time. It takes usually a month to get the product, to get
the consumers through, get it rated and get back out of there. So it
doesn’t really work very well for those limited releases, which like you
said, is really popular right now. People in New York are just shooting
stuff out and seeing what sticks,

And this is a better test for people’s mainstay products. Like, Hey, we got
40 skews, 20 of ’em, we just run the whole time. And the other 20, we’re
just trying to find what people like and this is better for those kind of
mainstay products because the rating is good for a year. So if you’re going
to just shoot out this one SKU and then kill it a couple months later, it’s
probably not the best use of use of funds. But that’s really the goal for
us right now is get core products, the skews that people are going to make
and have inconsistent rotation.

TG Branfalt:

So I mean, I’m really stoked to be in New York and to hopefully see this at
a couple of my local dispensaries. And just having been able to talk to you
and knowing kind what I know and being able to talk to those bud tenders
and other people who are maybe using the cannaleptic score to purchase
their products, where can people find out more about you, more about
certified testing and data and more information about the can catalytic
rating system?

Aaron Riley:

Sure. Yeah. Our website’s the best. BES certified td.com. And then I was
going to ask Tim, what part of New York are you in? Where

TG Branfalt:

You in? I am deep in the heart of the Adirondacks. I am deep, deep upstate.

Aaron Riley:

Okay, so what are your local stores on

TG Branfalt:

There? I go to the Herb Cave in Plattsburgh, and I also go to Elevate A DK
Elevate. A DK in Lake.

Aaron Riley:

Yeah. They have a DK Hemp too, don’t they?

TG Branfalt:

Yeah.

Aaron Riley:

Yeah. They’re one of our clients, actually.

TG Branfalt:

Well, they used to, so they’ve broken off since then. It’s a whole thing.
You can read about it on entrepreneur.com. There was some stuff going on.
So is there a place online where people can track down some of these
ratings?

Aaron Riley:

We’re working on it right now because mostly up to the brands if they want
to show. So we’ve got some press out there. The brands that participated
are pretty much all mentioned, so it is up to the brands. I mean, we got
Umami, soft Power Suites, heavy Hitters, jti, FO

Aaron Riley:

And a. Yeah, those are kind of the

Aaron Riley:

Main ones. I’m sure I forgot a couple people.

TG Branfalt:

Well, I forget the dispensary I go to twice a week. So it is what it is.
Dude, thank you so much for being on the show. Again. I think this is a
fantastic idea. I think it’ll help sort of demystify a lot of what kind of
goes on when you go into a dispensary and you don’t really know what you’re
looking for, or you’re a sort of novice user and you’re trying to find a
product that appeals to you. I think that this is a great sort of direction
for the industry to be going in sort of away from the strain names and away
from the potency and into the sort of terpene profiles and sort of
flavanoid stuff that really excites me as a consumer and a cannabis
journalist. So thank you for taking the time to come on the show and tell
me all about this. I really appreciate it.

Aaron Riley:

Cool. Yeah, rightfully so. I appreciate you having me. And yeah, offline,
send me some of your favorite products. I’m curious to kind of hear and
see, and I’ll see if we talk to ’em or not.

TG Branfalt:

Yeah, well, I’ll send you some pictures when we log off. That is Aaron, the
founder, certified testing and data, which recently launched the
cannaleptic rating, a product score that allows consumers to easily
understand and compare cannabis quality.