Elevate Magazine - April 2022

Growing Through the Pain

Rapid City Couple Finds Success in CBD Oil

BY SIANDHARA BONNET // PHOTOS BY HENRY ROY & KEVIN EILBECK

Tyler Meyer felt foggy while taking several different medications throughout the day to help treat his insomnia.

“My energy levels were off and that was just impacting everything I was doing,” he recalled. “You’re working seven days a week and all these things, it just really took a toll on me.”

While he was a general manager at Indian Motorcycle of San Diego, Meyer decided to stop taking all of his pharmaceuticals and switched to natural solutions. He found his own natural concoction of resources and tried CBD.

When 2020 hit, he decided to leave the industry and start his own CBD business with his wife Kristina. The couple now owns Dakota Labs, a locally-based organic CBD oil manufacturing business certified by the USDA.

The couple moved from California to Meyer’s hometown of Rapid City in December 2020. He said growing up in Rapid City, CBD and anything cannabis related was very taboo.

“Just starting to see the attitude toward that change was really neat,” Meyer said. “We thought there’s all kinds of stuff in California, the market’s too saturated.”

So, they came home and brought the market, and education, to people who didn’t know too much about it. Kristina said they’re able to do pop-up shops and educate people about CBD. Meyer said education and having conversations about CBD oil is the majority of what they do at events or pop-up shops.

It took about a year before the finished product was ready to go. Tyler and Kristina worked with several different laboratories and formulators to determine the strengths and levels of the products.

Dakota Labs uses plants grown from farms in Montana and Colorado. Meyer said it took them a while to find the right farm to use, and focused on testing quality.

Kristina said all of the company’s products are tested and each bottle features a QR code that customers can scan to see their lab results.

Meyer said they test for pesticides, heavy metals, cutting agents and the level of cannabinoids in each bottle. He said everything has to be less than 3% Delta-9 THC per net weight. Delta-9 THC is the psychoactive component of marijuana.

He also said the company has some products that have no THC, like their Broad Spectrum formula.

After farmers harvest the hemp, the plants are dried and then ground into a coarse powder. It is then shipped to a facility for processing. The company uses both medicalgrade Ethanol extraction for signature formulas and CO2 extraction for the Full and Broad Spectrum formulas. For the latter two formulas, the company uses a purification process that involves supercritical CO2 that preserves phytocannabinoids, terpenes and flavonoids.

After processing, the hemp extract is separated from the CO2 or Ethanol compound and refined by removing compounds like wax, chlorophyll, pigments and other trace materials.

The products are then tested both in-house and using a third-party lab.

Meyer and Kristina said they both use their own products and have seen improvement in their sleep, anxiety and immune systems.

Meyer said he’s the tester for any of their products, and that’s one of the reasons they don’t have a topical product yet. He said he hasn’t found anything that works great on him, so if it doesn’t work for him, he’s not going to try to sell it.

“I just wouldn’t feel right about bringing something to market that I didn’t really believe in,” he said.

Dakota Labs will be releasing organic CBD gummies soon, and they are working on a topical solution. Dakota Labs products are carried at Black Hills Cultivation and Supply in Rapid City, Good Earth in Spearfish and Back to Nature in Sturgis. Products are also available online at dakotalabs.com