Unfiltered thoughts from inside the cannabinoid beverage industry.
The ban doesn't need enforcement. It just needs nervous buyers.
Retailers will tell you THC drinks have never sold better. Many wholesalers and drink distributors will tell you they've had to stop ordering them. Both are true, and that's the problem. Nobody gets fired for skipping a purchase order in October. Plenty of people get fired for sitting on forty pallets of unsellable, possibly illegal, seltzer on December 12th.
Continue Reading »The extension is the tell
This week the President signed a funding bill that quietly moved the federal hemp cliff from November 12 to December 11. One month doesn't sound like much until you ask why anyone bothered. Nobody extends a deadline to give an industry more time to shut down. You extend it because the replacement isn't finished.
Continue Reading »Getting regulated like alcohol isn't losing. It's growing up.
Last week the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, the distribution arm of Big Alcohol, ran an op-ed asking the cannabis industry to join them in backing regulation over prohibition for hemp beverages. The reflexive read in this space is suspicion: Big Alcohol only wants in because THC drinks are eating into their shelf.
Continue Reading »Buyers keep asking what belongs on the first door.
Every week a liquor buyer or a dispensary buyer asks the same thing: if I give this category one door, what actually goes on it? Not the brand pitch. The merchandising one. Session seltzers versus tonics versus shots. Hemp versus cannabis. What to require before you cut a PO. We wrote it down. A Retailer's Guide to Stocking THC Beverages is the floor-level version.
Continue Reading »Did the 3-Tier Model just stop being hypothetical?
Two members of Congress, coming from different directions, just reached for the same answer on hemp beverages, and it looks an awful lot like the U.S. alcohol model. Manufacturer sells to distributor, distributor sells to retailer, retailer sells to the customer, nobody skips a step. They can't even agree on how to tax it.
Continue Reading »Hemp beverages grew 133% last year. Congress wants to ban them.
Hemp beverage volume grew 133% between 2024 and 2025. Case equivalents went from 692,000 to over 1.6 million. Points of distribution more than doubled. Retail accounts grew from 25,000 to 43,000. That's from the Hemp Beverage Alliance's Future of Drinking Report, released this week. What stands out isn't just the growth, it's the shape.
Continue Reading »THC beverages vs. the alcohol slowdown
Gen Z drinks less alcohol than any generation on record, and it's showing up in distributor numbers everywhere. Beer shipments are down for the fourth straight year. "Sober curious" went from wellness-blog buzzword to actual purchasing pattern. The consumers pulling back from alcohol aren't pulling back from social drinking.
Continue Reading »Why so many THC drinks taste "chemical"
Here's the thing nobody in this category wants to say out loud: a lot of THC beverages taste bad. Not "acquired taste" bad. More of the slightly sour, dry your mouth out, "chemical" bad. That dry, puckery aftertaste at the start or the finish of the sip that makes you set the can down half-finished.
Continue Reading »Lemonade is the IPA of cannabis beverages.
There's a reason it seems like every brand has an infused lemonade. Nobody hates lemonade. It's the perfect carrier for cannabinoids: the citric acid masks that green, earthy taste better than almost any other flavor profile, the acidity is naturally anti-bacterial which helps with shelf stability, and you can branch into a dozen fruit variations without leaving the format.
Continue Reading »The co-pack question every national brand is asking
Every week we hear from another out-of-state brand with the same question: "How do we get into dispensaries in [state]?" The answer is the same whether the state is Washington, California, Nevada, or Ohio. You can't ship cannabis products across state lines. You can't sell in dispensaries without a licensed processor manufacturing your product in that state.
Continue Reading »55 brands, 3 cooler doors
There are 55+ active cannabis beverage brands competing for shelf space in Washington dispensaries right now. Most dispensaries have room for maybe 3-5 brands in their cooler. Do the math. Two years ago, being a cannabis beverage was the differentiator. You showed up, the buyer was curious, you got a slot.
Continue Reading »Your hemp brand needs a Plan B
If your business model depends entirely on selling hemp-derived THC beverages at 5mg or 10mg per can, you have about five months to figure out what happens next. P.L. 119-37 caps hemp beverages at 0.4mg total THC per container effective November 12. At that level, there is no consumer-relevant effect.
Continue Reading »November 12 is coming faster than you think
Despite the seeming "pro-hemp" tack the current White House administration has taken, one clause inserted in the last approved spending bill could be bad news for the hemp industry. P.L. 119-37 sets a hard limit 0.4mg per container cap on total THC, affecting hemp brands in all categories who use any added THC or full-spectrum hemp.
Continue Reading »One channel is a hobby. Three channels is a business.
Most cannabis beverage brands sell through dispensaries, in recreational-legal states. Period. Some hemp brands sell DTC online. A few do hemp retail. Almost nobody covers all three. But the math is simple: if your entire revenue stream depends on one regulatory framework, you're one rule change away from zero.
Continue Reading »Schedule III just quietly unlocked something huge for beverage brands
Rescheduling happened. After years of meaningless talk, medical cannabis has now been officially moved from a Schedule I drug to Schedule III. Most of the press focused on new research opportunities being unlocked or 280E tax relief -- and yeah, that matters. But here's the thing almost nobody's talking about: federal trademark registration.
Continue Reading »Hemp beverages in dispensaries: the SB 5367 play
Everyone's talking about hemp beverages going into grocery and gas stations. But in Washington, SB 5367 means detectable-THC hemp drinks sell through licensed dispensaries. Same shelf, same buyer, same delivery route as cannabis. If you're already in the dispensary network, hemp is just more SKUs on the same sales call.
Continue Reading »The "beer aisle" moment is coming
Walked into a dispensary last week and counted 14 different beverage brands on the shelf. Two years ago it was three. The category is exploding, but most of these brands are still doing their own distribution. That's about to change. When the beverage cooler starts looking like a beer cooler, you need a distributor who knows the category, not a generalist moving flower and edibles who happens to also carry your cans.
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