THE KUSHERY

The Terpene Transit crew, and Amber and Michael (and Pig the dog) in the driver’s seat.

TERPENETRANSIT.COM

What was the inspiration for starting

Terpene Transit? Dykstra: Our main driving point for starting Terpene Transit was doing my own deliveries as a Tier 1. To have to leave the LEAFMAGAZINES.COM facility or employ a person to do deliveries was really challenging, so I knew I wasn’t the only person in that position who wanted to have somebody else do their deliveries – that wasn’t a direct affiliate of the business. We were really thinking about how we could help farmers out, particularly the small farmers. Originally I-502, the law passed to legalize Cannabis in Washington, didn’t allow for third party delivery services. When did that change, and when did you begin operating? Dykstra: We were the second license to be approved in October 2016, and we began operating in the beginning of 2017. The third party transportation license was created a couple Vaughn: For now, we are considered a ‘last mile delivery service’ within state regulation, but we do believe that we are getting closer every year to a full warehousing and distribution model being allowed.

Was it hard to build a business from scratch in an industry that was in its infancy?

Dykstra: We’re Cannabis guys who were getting into logistics, not logistics guys getting into Cannabis. But now we’ve definitely learned both!

Vaughn: It’s been a journey. I had taken a step back from the industry and was working on a silent disco business when Mike started Terpene Transit, and that took precedence. We started with one van! I put everything into the logistics side, figuring it out while he kept the farm going. Understanding the struggles and what it looks like for the producer/processor side has given us the ability to be more than just a last mile delivery service to somebody, and that’s helped us create success – not just for ourselves, but for our customers.

From humble beginnings to being Whatcom

County’s largest I-502 employer is a huge step! What are the numbers like today in terms of employees, routes and deliveries?

Vaughn: We average between 1,600 and 1,800 deliveries a week, and those don’t include returns or rejections which are included in the service. That number only includes testing lab samples, vendor samples, and orders from producer/ processors to stores.

That is an amazing volume of people, pot and routes to manage. What’s it like to dispatch all of those drivers and routes?

Vaughn: The most fun part of it all is being able to see the whole circle. Having such a diverse knowledge about the industry as a whole and being able to anticipate issues before they arrive, allows us to help our clients succeed – and that’s one of the best parts. Our diverse knowledge set allows us to look at industry trends like product lines launching, buying and ordering patterns, consumer trends, and so much more. Those that utilize us in a meaningful way, and adapt to our routes and allow us to help prioritize our fulfillment based on our routes, has also been a pleasure, and we are able to see our clients and partners grow exponentially over time. The real key to it all is the faster you get it out the door, the faster you get it on a shelf, the faster they reorder the product for sell through rates.

How does security play a role in what you do?

Dykstra: We put a lot of energy, effort and money into the security of our vehicles. From tracking units that can’t be disabled, cameras, switching schedules, using different vans, making sure our drivers are on rotating routes – there’s a lot we have to do to be tactical with our operations. So if a security issue comes, we eliminate the human

How does Terpene Transit help clients save time, money and the stress of running their

own deliveries? Dykstra: We are a buffer for brands and limit their liability, so you don’t have to put your brand and company on the line in every situation.

Vaughn: We appreciate people who use us for big or small orders, or as part of their business. We can do specific deliveries to destination stores or hard to reach locations, and especially for smaller farms it can help them reach out statewide, while they focus on production. There are a lot of positives where we can come in, from large to small.

What is your favorite part of

helping clients grow? Vaughn: We have a client who owns a large producer/processor, and after nearly two years had gone from being involved in every aspect of internal distribution, to gaining trust and letting us run that side. I remember the owner telling us that he had, for the first time, gotten to see his son play little league baseball because he didn’t have to be worrying about distribution all the time. We are all in this industry together, and people forget that we are creating this from scratch, and so all of us have put every ounce of blood, sweat and tears into our operations. Watching people regain their lives after building businesses – that’s very valuable and gratifying.

Dykstra: For me, it’s seeing farms have the ability to be in a single shop in Vancouver, or in the one Walla Walla store they want to stock. The craft farms can’t be in every store, but we help them get to corners and pockets of the state, and can really help them grow. We’ve seen clients grow exponentially since partnering with us, and hearing that is my ‘I love what I do moment.’

What are your hopes for the future of Terpene Transit and the industry?

Vaughn: I love helping people streamline and prioritize, and watch their order numbers rapidly pick up and become more manageable – and I’m so hopeful for us to be able to offer warehousing someday. We are often a first call for advice or help, whether it’s a banking issue or traceability, and where we can really help is with all of our data. We would like to provide our data with our unique ability to see what the industry and consumer trends are – it’s there, we are now figuring out how to offer it as a service.

Dykstra: There’s a reason we call ourselves Terpene Transit instead of deliveries. We want to be seen as a transit route – something consistent that is always running. We have a lot of cool, new services we want to launch next year, and are excited to show the industry and clients how we can improve sales and sell-through based on that data — helping drive their businesses forward with those factors. In the future, Terpene Transit will be so much more than a delivery service!

“The craft farms can’t be in every store, but we help them get to corners and pockets of the state, and can really help them grow.” -MICHAEL DYKSTRA

THE KUSHERYTHE KUSHERY

Local Cannabis chain sticks to their roots from medical to recreational.

Washington’s Cannabis market has gone through a lot of change since 2012, and Joshua Shade has been a part of the industry from those early medical collectives and donations to patients, and has adapted and thrived in the recreational space where so many MMJ businesses did not make the transition. With the recent opening of the Kushery’s ‘At The Dealership’ location on Evergreen Way in Everett, there were nearly a dozen elected officials, including two mayors, all present to watch the ribbon cutting ceremony and presentation of donations to several cancer patients and organizations. We sat down with Shade to talk about his history in MMJ, the transition and the pros/cons of the new legal market, and why giving back to patients still matters in today’s Cannabis industry.

What inspired you to take the risk and open a medical collective (dispensary) and start providing medicine to patients?

I like helping people and dealing with the public, and my main thing was to provide patients with the good weed I was growing. It was pretty nerve-wracking at times to be scared that the DEA was coming in, and worrying all our hard work could get seized, it was scary back in the day. But I loved it – I loved people coming in and changing their lives. Plus, I wanted to share all the great weed I was growing at that time.

There was a real sense back then that Cannabis was helping people. Do you have a favorite memory of working with

patients? My favorite day I ever had, a patient came in who we knew had cancer, who wasn’t terminal but very sick – and he came in and said, ‘I have no idea how, but my cancer is gone!’ He was able to skip chemotherapy because of Cannabis. That same day, we had another patient come in who was terminal, and he told us his doctor had given him two months to live instead of two weeks, which for anyone dealing with end of life, is precious time. And I’ve told that story so many times because it really was a special day.

“When we opened, we lived in fear of the DEA every day – and now we have this opportunity to be a part of the community and political process.”

Founder Joshua Shade at the opening of The Kushery’s newest location on Evergreen Way.

How many years was Woodinville Quality Collective open, which was your name before the Kusherys became a company, and what was

it like to have to close? We were open all the way until the last day the State closed the MMJ program in July of 2016. My last customer was my second customer, we’d planned on it, and it brought tears to my eyes. I knew we were going into something bigger and that it was going to change not just Washington, but the entire world – but it was a sad day. Back then people would come in and say thank you for taking care of me and being open. It’s definitely different than now, where the customer attitude is that ‘I can go to any store for the same products.’ Medical provided a unique experience where you got to know your customer much more deeply.

How did the Kushery start and what were the early days of recreational Cannabis sales like?

We got pretty lucky in the lottery and were awarded four licenses. The first store, Clearview, opened April 2015. We were lucky that all our staff wanted to stay, and we really appreciated that. I didn’t like the prices 502 had in the beginning, because I knew that after the first harvest, prices would plummet, and the people taking advantage and wholesaling weed at eight dollars a gram would stop. I told people the market was crazy, that it was going to change drastically. Success in this industry is all about building relationships.

Tell us about the journey from one store

to a chain, one store at a time. We opened our second location in Cathcart, August 2015, then Lake Forest Park November 2015. Our sister store, Last Stop Pot Shop in Gold Bar, opened March 2016. Then the Kushery Stanwood March of 2019, and finally our newest Evergreen Way location in September of this year. The whole process has been extremely stressful, and each store has had its ups and downs. The first couple were stressful regarding the state being extremely stringent, even though we had great Liquor Control Board Officers in the beginning. It’s a flip of the coin with LCB Officers, where nine out of 10 are great, but if you get the one who doesn’t like Cannabis, it can literally bring you to tears. We’ve also had great landlords, landlords who tried to gouge us but still treated us well, and landlords who just outright gouged us. And that’s why we bought our Evergreen Way location, which I invested my life savings into.

To open the location in Everett you had to lobby the city council to change a moratorium on new locations, where they had only allowed five shops to open. What was the process like to lobby and get several new licenses approved, not just your own, in a win for greater access to Cannabis

in the city? Between the lottery and the MMJ 46licenses awarded later, Everett has an allotment of 10 licenses, but set a limit of five within the city. We started lobbying about three years ago using lobbyists Josh Estes and Sean O’Sullivan of Pacific Northwest Regional Strategies, and worked closely with other title-certificate holders in the same predicament. Lifting the cap for one doesn’t really benefit the access argument, so we were deliberate in advocating for the cap to raise overall. We wanted to make sure that we had a fair chance, so we did everything we could to find supportive council members and candidates like Liz Vogeli who understood the value in adding more stores. Then, we worked to educate the council by providing testimony about the industry and the impacts of limited patient access. Several local cancer patients also testified. In the end, we were successful in lifting the ban – bringing three new licenses to Everett.

You began donating to cancer patients with your medical collective. Why is it important to you to continue this work, especially with the shift from MMJ to

recreational? During MMJ, we would give away free or heavily discounted Cannabis, and offered 50% discounts to cancer patients or terminally ill persons for years. It always made the job better to hear the stories of how donating medicine had a positive impact, and unfortunately with recreational Cannabis, it’s not possible to give medicine directly to patients. So, we choose to give back by supporting charities and families directly with cash donations. Two members of our Lobbyist Team have had children with cancer, and we know how much it means to help. THE KUSHERY HAS FIVE LOCATIONS AROUND THE STATE

(425) 259-7958 4808 EVERGREEN WAY EVERETT, WA MONDAY - SUNDAY: 8AM - 12AM

CLEARVIEW

(360) 863-3256 18026 WA-9 B SNOHOMISH, WA MONDAY - SUNDAY: 8AM - 12AM

CATHCART

(425) 337-5145 5626 134TH PL SE B EVERETT, WA SUNDAY - THURSDAY: 8AM - 10PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY: 8AM - 12AM

LAKE FOREST PARK

(206) 403-1106 19258 15TH AVE NE #B LAKE FOREST PARK, WA SUNDAY - THURSDAY: 8AM - 10PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY: 8AM - 12AM

STANWOOD

(360) 939-0400 27206 88TH AVE NW STANWOOD, WA 8AM -10PM DAILY

THEKUSHERY.ROCKS

How did it feel to have nearly a dozen elected officials and two mayors at your

ribbon cutting ceremony? When we opened, we lived in fear of the DEA every day – and now we have this opportunity to be a part of the community and political process. It felt great, and it was wonderful looking out to the employees that have been here since the beginning. We have people that have gone from budtenders to regional managers, and our core people from WQC are still here. I’m blessed to have our team still with me, it feels like I have succeeded. And this new store will be a location where the employees will be able to make a good living – and I will be able to take care of the people that have taken care of me.

Your new location on Evergreen Way is massive! What are your plans for the future?

This was an auto dealership for over 50 years, and was purpose-built for Hyundai when they first launched the car brand in America. It’s 16,000 square feet and has parking for over 50 cars, and the dispensary is only part of the entire space. In the future, I would like to add a brewery or taphouse, and someday – if or when we are allowed to do consumption – we would have an easy transition and space to expand. I would really like to get ahold of other Snohomish County businesses and have a cup or event here this summer, as long as the LCB gives approval. We have a lot of space and want to bring the community together for an event, and are excited for the future as we grow into the new ‘At The Dealership’ location!