Familia Verde

A year into adult-use cannabis sales, familyowned Santa Fe companies make a name for themselves

BY ANDY LYMAN andylyman@sfreporter.com

Many Santa Feans share memories of late Municipal Court Judge Tom Fiorina—particularly for his courtroom service in the '80s and '90s and his famed practice of collecting Thanksgiving turkeys as payment for parking tickets. At the time of Fiorina’s death last November, however, few public remembrances included his family’s new business.

Not only had Fiorina come to appreciate medical cannabis after experiencing its therapeutic benefits, but in 2022, his wife, daughter and son-in-law opened Green Fuego dispensary between the Santa Fe Regional Airport and the Santa Fe Country Club Golf Course.

Caryn Fiorina tells SFR her husband “became a real believer in the powers of cannabis” and tried just about every method of consuming, but found tinctures as his favorite way to experience relief from neuropathy later in his life. She says he had quite the sense of humor about the entrepreneurial effort.

“He would joke around about the Fiorina cartel,” she says.

Green Fuego remains one of a handful of retail spots owned and operated by long-time Santa Fe families amid a sea of larger corporate growers and sellers in New Mexico’s nascent adult-use cannabis industry. After years of limited sales and licensure under the Medical Cannabis Program, last year’s rapid-fire issuance of licenses under a new state law has broadened the number of local entrepreneurs and the opportunities for those who prefer to buy local.

Some Santa Fe cannabis businesses owners who have spent more than a decade establishing their brands are leery about how many new dispensaries the City Different can handle. In the balance, new operators say they’re confident of the special recipe for industry relevance.

Green Fuego could serve as the poster child of any locally owned Santa Fe business where the whole family is on the job together. As official owner, Fiorina handles the books and licensing issues, while her daughter Chanet Fiorina-Trujillo lends her business and marketing expertise. FiorinaTrujillo’s husband, Eric Trujillo, handles the company’s grow operation and serves as the resident plant expert.

Trujillo grew up in both Pojoaque and Santa Fe and studied soil management at New Mexico State University with an eye on golf courses. As a cannabis user himself, though, Eric Trujillo began growing his own out of necessity.

“I just had a hard time finding good quality medicine,” he says of the days prior to the 2021 Cannabis Regulation Act. “I studied growing and for 10 years straight, I dedicated my life basically to be a grower, too.”

During the nearly 15 years between legalized medical-use cannabis and the first recreational-use sales last year, licenses to grow and sell were hard to come by. Part of the rason is the Department of Health, which oversees the Medical Cannabis Program and was the sole authority over legal weed until 2021, sporadically opened the licensing process over the years. That bottleneck created a premium on licenses. When the law changed, out-of-state corporations rushed in. The state’s Regulation and Licensing Department began oversight of the recreational market and ushered in hundreds of applicants from new businesses hoping to find their places.

Operations that were licensed as medical cannabis producers prior to full legalization, commonly referred to as “legacy” producers, were the first to get an adult-use license and thus had a leg up when legal sales expanded.

Colorado-based company Schwazze finalized the purchase of New Mexico’s R. Greenleaf for more than $40 million in February 2022—about two months before adult-use sales started. Months prior, in September 2021, Arizona-based Nature’s Medicine purchased PurLife, which had been in the medical market since 2016.

Eli Goodman has co-owned Best Daze along with his father Len since 2018, but the elder Goodman had previously founded New MexiCann Natural Medicine, a legacy producer that shut down after two separate manufacturing-related fires. Best Daze has since expanded to eight locations state-wide, including three in Santa Fe.

Len Goodman flippantly and only half-kiddingly sums up his advice for cannabis tenderfoots looking to get into the market in a few words: “Don’t do it.”

“It’s not a gold rush, it’s not dot com,” he says. “It just isn’t.”

Eli Goodman forsees Santa Fe on the verge of oversaturation and that bumper outdoor crops later this year from commercial growers could mean disappointment for newcomers.

“If it stays as it is, the market will crash out, prices will go down dramatically,” he says. “If there’s an abundance harvest in October, you’re going to see a crash in wholesale and you’ll see that start to reflect in retail, and that will drive people out of business.”

Lyra Barron, who started Fruit of the Earth Organics more than a decade ago with her son and whose business has expanded to take up a significant portion of Early Street, shares the concern that more growers will lead to lower wholesale prices and eventually thwart small businesses. Her advice to new operators is to have realistic expectations and “Don’t bet the farm basically," instead, she says "take it step by step and see where this is going because now there’s a lot of veteran, bigger corporate interests that are moving in.”

Since licensing opened, Eldorado’s Abide Wellness shuttered and OSO Cannabis, which has stores across the state, closed its store near the Santa Fe Railyard.

Fiorina says she’s confident Green Fuego will make it, namely because the company is primarily selling its own harvest and not beholden to wholesale market prices.

“I feel like those dispensaries that aren’t producing are the ones that are more at risk,” she says.

A few miles north of Green Fuego is Endo, another family-owned dispensary where co-owner Ian Aarons is usually buzzing about while his cousin Alex Costello holds down the check-in desk.

Ian’s wife Stephanie Aarons can often be found behind the counter helping customers and patients. Behind the scenes—and literally in the back office—Ian’s dad, Ste-