Culinary Cannabis
Our friends at West Blvd Cannabis, home of brands like Choklit Park and Gladstone are launching a new line of culinary cannabis oils called Farm & Florist. We got together with co-founder Nico Sto Tomas to find out more about this new lineup launching on Friday December 15 at all our Vancouver locations (South Granville, Downtown, and West End). Make sure to follow us on Instagram for an update when it becomes available at our Deep Cove and Maple Ridge locations.
To get started, can you tell us your name and a little about your role at West Blvd Cannabis Co./Farms & Florist?
My name is Nico Sto Tomas, and I’m one of four co-founders of West Blvd Cannabis. As a founder, you need to be a bit of a jack of all trades, but what I love to focus on the most is marketing. I really enjoy the branding process, working with our designer to come up with unique marketing assets to support our socials and sales initiatives, and develop experiential activations to build brand awareness and connect with retailers and consumers.
What was the inspiration for the Farms & Florist brand?
My two fellow co-founders, Connor McNamee and Brad Quevillon, and I started off in the legacy dispensary days with a small shop on 10th and Sasamat, eventually expanding to 2 other locations in Toronto. During our days at the dispensary, we would be inundated with edible requests from customers. At the time, the municipal regulations prohibited licensed dispensaries to sell any sort of edibles as it appealed to children. Ultimately, this led us to develop the Farm & Florist brand in an effort to bridge the gap for people who wanted edibles by providing a high end product to allow consumers to make their own edibles at home. All of us founders were also highly passionate about food, so it just made sense to blend both our passions to create the first culinary cannabis brand in Canada. We believe there is a huge gap in bridging the culinary and cannabis worlds, and an even bigger opportunity to capture cannabis consumption by way of experiential events in the future.
How are these products from Farms & Florist different from other cannabis oils on the market?
As of now, we are the first cannabis company to offer unique infused culinary products such as Truffle Oil, Truffle Hot Sauce, Sesame Oil, Garlic Chili Oil, and Tamari Soy Sauce. We also have a unique Maple Syrup product that is infused with Nano and tastes absolutely delicious. Edibles to us are more than just gummies, cookies and brownies. We want to redefine edibles by infusing everyday dishes with standard sauces and oils you have in your pantry. We’re really passionate about developing innovative products that stand out in an extremely saturated market.
What is your favourite use for the Farms & Florist products?
My favourite product is probably the Trattoria Dynamic Duo pack. It’s a pretty unique product offering that features 2 of our signature cooking products in 1 pack. The Trattoria pack has (1) 30ml Truffle Oil and (1) 30 ml Truffle hot sauce, each containing 5MG of THC per bottle. It’s honestly the perfect way for new users, or food enthusiasts, to try our products. Obviously, the best way to use these products is to make delicious meals with them. We have a number of infused recipes on our website or our Instagram that shows you how to create your own dishes using our products. Right now my favourite dish to top with truffle hot sauce is a burrito from Budgies Burritos.
What is a fact that we might find surprising about Farms & Florist?
Farm & Florist actually started selling in the legacy days back in 2019. We started selling our first four products (honey, olive oil, coconut oil and maple syrup) to retail stores and online sites, garnering $150,000 of sales in the first 6 months. This might not sound like a lot, but it was enough data for us to identify a viable demand for the products and to pursue it relentlessly and bring it into the legal market for everyone to try.
And for fun, if you were going to name a new cultivar of cannabis flower, what would you call it?
I love this question! I would probably have to call it Manny Packloud, in honour of the famous Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao.
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