Ketchup or Mustard?

It was a simple question. And the answer came quickly and efficiently. I was standing at the counter of Lucky Leaf, the downtown Spokane cannabis retailer. A friendly young woman, who looked to be in her mid-20s and bore the tattooes and piercings you’d expect of someone working in a pot store, asked how she could help me. “I know you sell edibles,” I said. “But do you sell, uh, condiments? You know, like ketchup or mustard?” She turned and I followed, down the counter. Pretty soon she placed four different packages in front of me. One was Green Baker Cannabis Infused Cooking Oil, 10 one-ounce servings of 10 milligrams of both THC and CBD. “Drizzle it over pasta, add it to salads, sauces and dressings,” read the online instructions. “Put it in soups and chowders or stir it into your smoothies. The possibilities are endless.” Then there were the two packets of Swifts Cannabees Pure Honey – one with 10 milligrams of THC and 2 milligrams of CBD, and the other 10 milligrams of THC only. “Pure honey infused with cannabis oil in a convenient packet can be used as a natural sweetener,” goes the ad copy, “(and) can be drizzled on your favorite treat or simply enjoyed entirely on its own.” And, finally, there was the package of 10 sugar packets. Hot Sugar! by name, a Grow Op Farms/Phat Panda product boasting equal parts THC and CBD (10 milligrams a serving). But … no ketchup, no hot sauce, no steak or barbecue sauce. It’s not as if such products don’t exist, or did for awhile, at least. Yummi Karma in California previously sold a variety of condiments, including ketchup and barbecue sauce, but the company has since discontinued these products due to increased edible regulation. You may also find traces of information about infused condiments from companies like Lorax Labs, The Herbal Chef and Freddie’s Medicated Hot Sauce online, but no active product details. And even if these products are currently available, they are all created in California, which means they are not legal to sell or ship in Washington. To combat this interstate sale restriction, New Jersey-based cannabis education company Our Community Harvest has developed its own line of CBD hemp condiments, like BBQ sauce and hot sauce, which can be sold and shipped nationwide. OCH president (and EVERCANNABIS correspondent) Rob Mejia noted that finding cannabis condiments can be tricky; “It’s not a standard offering.” At the downtown Cinder, I got pretty much the same reaction as I did at Lucky Leaf: No ketchup, mustard or barbecue sauce, and not much call for them. Then I called Satori North and spoke to a young woman named Courtney Sargent, who was as helpful as they come. She told me that, other than sugars and some oils, the only kind of condiment that her store regularly carried was a spicy sriracha-like THC tincture put out by Fairwinds Cannabis, a producer-processor in Vancouver. That sounded interesting, especially when I went to the Fairwinds Cannabis website and read the description: “100mg of THC (25 servings) and a flavor profile even better than the original redefine the tincture category for all of us. Do you love Sriracha, but wish it was bumped up a bit on the heat scale? BAM! This tincture clocks in at around 6,000 units on the Scoville chart.” Unfortunately, none were on the store’s shelves when I called. “Usually, when we get it, it sells out pretty quick,” Sargent said. But as for other kinds of condiments, Sargent said that her store solicits data from its customers about what products they desire. “That’s what the producer-processors want,” she said. “Feedback.” And what feedback has she heard regarding condiments? “I haven’t really had anybody ask about that,” she said. Which echoes the opinion of one industry observer from Portland who said that the cannabis business in Washington state is still trying to find what works – and what doesn’t. “There just might not be a market for it,” the observer said. “Everybody’s still just kind of throwing stuff on the wall to see what sticks.” Apparently, though, that doesn’t include anything you’d want to slather on a hot dog.