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Kind Care of Colorado
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Magnolia Road
Bananaghani, Black Amber, Cereal Barz, Colorado Cutthroat, FUN, Forza Sans Souci #4, GG #4, Gold Dropz, Grape OZ, Item #9, LCS, Lava Breath #2, MIL, Macchiato Haze, Malibu Mirage, Muffinz Breath #1, OZ Kush, Peach Crescendo #2, Peking Duck #6, Platinum Kush Breath, Purple Milk, Sherb Crasher, Slurricane, Sour Diesel, Sour Rado, Strawberries N Cream, Sueno, The Sauce, Triangle OG, Unicorn Poop, Veritas Cookies, Wedding Crasher, ย  Yuk Mouth
Medicine Man
Bananaghani, Peking Duck #6, Triangle OG, Unicorn Poop
Native Roots
Carat Cake #2, Colorado Cutthroat, Dosilato #8, Forza Sans Souci #4, Frozen Dessert, Fruit Snacks, GG #4, Garlic Breath, Gold Dropz, Grape OZ, Item #9, KPF, Lava Breath #2, MIL, Macchiato Haze, Melonade #8, ORE, OZ Kush, PZ3, Papaya Cake, Peach Crescendo #2, Peking Duck #6, Pineapple Blast, Platinum Kush Breath, Purple Milk, Root Canal #2, SOZ, Shock Tart, Sour Rado, Square Grouper #2, Sueno, Super Lemon G, Super Sour Lemon, The Sauce, Triangle OG, WRZ, Wedding Crasher, White 99
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Rino Supply
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Ripple
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Rocky Mountain Cannabis
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Rocky Road
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Rocky Road Remedies
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Roots Rx
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Skunked
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THE GREEN SOLUTION LLC
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The 404 Dispensary
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The 64 Store
Colorado Cutthroat, Forza Sans Souci #4, Oz Kush, Peking Duck #6, Platinum Kush Breath, Sour Rado, Square Grouper #2, Sueno, Triangle OG
The Dispo
MIL, OZ Kush, Peach Crescendo #2, Slurricane, Sour Diesel, Square Grouper #2, Sueno, Veritas Cookies
Tumbleweed
Colorado Cutthroat, Dosilato #8, Item #9, LCS, Macchiato Haze, Unicorn Poop
Canna Cabinet
Bananaghani, Black Amber, Carat Cake #2, Dosilato #8, Durban Kush #8, GG #4, Item #9, KPF, Macchiato Haze, OZ Kush, Papaya Cake, Pineapple Blast, Purple Milk, Root Canal #2, Sour Rado, Super Sour Lemon, The Sauce, Triangle OG, Unicorn Poop, Veritas Cookies
Cannabicare
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Colorado Harvest Company
Colorado Cutthroat, Gold Dropz, OZ Kush, PZ3, Square Grouper #2, Sueno, WRZ
HERBS 4 YOU
Sour Diesel

July 16, 2021

One of the biggest names in craft beer is hopping over to the cannabis business

By Alicia Wallace, CNN Business

Updated 10:08 AM ET, Thu July 15, 2021

His business is alcohol, but he sees a future in cannabis

San Francisco (CNN Business) Nearly 20 years ago, a batch of hand-canned beers started a seismic shift in the craft beer industry. Now the man behind that endeavor is turning his attention to hand-cultivated cannabis. Dale Katechis, whose eponymous and popular Dale's Pale Ale revolutionized canned beers, has invested in and taken an active leadership role at Veritas Fine Cannabis, a boutique wholesaler specializing in cultivating and selling premium cannabis.The company declined to share details about the investment."When I got a peek inside of Veritas, around every corner, it just whacked me in the head: It reminded me of the early days of Oskar Blues," Katechis said, noting the Colorado-based brewery he started, first as a restaurant and later as a beer-brewing operation, in 1997.Katechis' move signals a further intermingling of beer and cannabisThe two sectors have drawn frequent comparisons to each other for their grassroots growth, consumer base, competitive pressures and heavily regulated nature.The biggest names in the alcohol business have staked claims in the global cannabis industry, establishing a foundation for further US expansion (especially once cannabis is no longer federally illegal) in part to diversify business, prop up sales, and stave off a potential competitor.

Dale Katechis, whose eponymous and top-selling Dale's Pale Ale revolutionized canned beers, has invested in and taken an active leadership role at Veritas Fine Cannabis, a boutique wholesaler specializing in cultivating and selling premium cannabis. Katechis (foreground) is pictured with Veritas CEO Mike Leibowitz.

Dale Katechis, whose eponymous and top-selling Dale's Pale Ale revolutionized canned beers, has invested in and taken an active leadership role at Veritas Fine Cannabis, a boutique wholesaler specializing in cultivating and selling premium cannabis. Katechis (foreground) is pictured with Veritas CEO Mike Leibowitz.Veritas, a cannabis brand that has long embraced hand cultivation and harvesting, hopes to tap into Katechis' experience of creating high-quality products and expanding operations without losing sight of the craft and culture that got the company off the ground.Enter your email to receive CNN's nightcap newsletter.close dialog

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In cannabis there has been a race to the bottom, a race to the finish line, a race to get in before big corporations take over," said Mike Leibowitz, chief executive officer of Veritas. "I feel like our brand has really set itself down a different path." Katechis echoes this emphasis on quality and the role it played in the success and staying power of Dale's Pale Ale, which launched commercially in 2002. Oskar Blues carved its niche by packaging Dale's Pale Ale in a vehicle long-tied to the multinational beer Goliaths but not yet to craft brewers: the 12-ounce aluminum can. By slinging a "voluminously hopped" craft brew into a can, the then-unique effort put Oskar Blues on the map and and launched a trend that's still going strong nearly two decades later. As craft beer surged in the mid-aughts and 2010s, chipping away at Big Beer's market share, the Budweisers, Heinekens and Molsons of the world started snapping up regional breweries. Rather than selling to a alcohol giant, Katechis grew Oskar Blues into one of the larger craft brewers in the nation, landing venture capital funding and merging with other craft brewers. The venture-backed "disruptive brewers collective" now known as Canarchy is the eighth-largest craft brewery in the US, has eight brands, and sells its beer internationally. After stepping away from the day-to-day of the brewery business, Katechis sniffed around the cannabis space for a couple of years searching for the right investment. Katechis, a "fan of the space," was intrigued by the parallels with the craft beer business. In addition to touting flavors and aromas similar to cannabis strains, Oskar Blues' beers were branded with plenty of not-so-subtlenods to weed. "If for nothing else, I want them to grow the way they want to grow, but I might be able to raise my hand and offer some input on all the mistakes we made and keep Veritas from making the same ones," Katechis said.Katechis joins a line of other craft beer executives who have entered the cannabis industry. The interest in working in cannabis has increased amongst people from a broad slate of industries and has grown exponentially in the past 12 months, said Karson Humiston, founder and chief executive officer of Vangst, which runs a recruitment site for cannabis jobs. "During the pandemic, cannabis went from illegitimate and illegal to essential in many places," she said. "That was the tipping point moment for a lot of executives to take a look at the space." Cultivation businesses are attracting talent from traditional agriculture; retail operations are pulling from businesses such as apparel; services firms are tapping into the tech world, said Karan Wadhera, managing partner of Casa Verde Capital, an investment fund co-founded by Snoop Dogg. "It's more or less a foregone conclusion that cannabis is on a path to full-scale legalization," Wadhera said, making a nod to the latest federal efforts, including Senator Chuck Schumer's draft legislation to decriminalize marijuana. So instead of trying to resist the turning tide, investors and executives "want to have a horse in the race."

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