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Welcome Note
Welcome Back Gardeners to the 127th edition of Herbal Profiles!
Happy Friday, y’all.
Last week I told you the THC drink boom and the THC drink ban are the same story. This week the beverage industry put that story on a stage and handed it a trophy. At BevNET Live, a 3mg-and-10mg THC brand called Dad Grass won New Beverage Showdown 31, the same competition that launched Poppi and Cann, with Coca-Cola and Whole Foods sitting at the judges’ table. Five months before the feds cap every can at 0.4mg of THC. I dig into why the establishment is crowning a category it knows is about to be outlawed below.
Plus: a fresh news roundup and more.
Let’s get to it.
-Lars
The subreddit I moderate with Chris Fontes has over 3,000 subscribers! And my other subreddit for the broader CPG industry is also growing, going over 1,800 subscribers. I would love to have you join us on either or both subreddits!
Any comments or questions? Leave comment on this post or shoot me an email. Would love to hear from you!
News Roundup
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JuneShine ramps up Willie’s Remedy+ as the November ban looms JuneShine Brands says it isn’t sweating the federal deadline that could wipe out Willie’s Remedy+, the Willie Nelson–branded social tonic it co-produces. The brand has moved more than 400,000 bottles since launch to become the top-selling THC drink online, and JuneShine is refreshing the line and pushing a 10-SKU portfolio of spirits, seltzers, and shots into retailers like Total Wine, Lowe’s, Binny’s, and TXB this year. It’s the clearest sign yet that the biggest operators plan to scale straight into the deadline rather than pull back.
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Black Market doubles the dose with a 10mg launch Hightails’ Black Market brand rolled out Black Market 10MG, packing 10mg of hemp-derived Delta-9 THC and 5mg of THCV per serving, twice the strength of its standard line at the same price. The brand is backing the launch with aggressive distributor and retailer incentives to drive trial and sell-through. Doubling potency five months before a 0.4mg federal cap is its own kind of statement about how brands are reading the runway.
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BevNET Live convenes a “Strategy on Deadline” panel for cannabevs At BevNET Live NYC on June 10 and 11, the category’s operators gathered to map their contingencies against the November 13 cliff. The panel drew Jill Johnson of Daizy’s Social Tonic, distribution executive Justin Ashby of Southern Crown Partners, and Diana Eberlein, chair of the lobbying group Coalition for Adult Beverage Alternatives. BevNET framed the split plainly: some brands are abandoning the category for energy drinks and nootropics, some are ducking under the regulatory floor, and some are betting a fix lands before the deadline.
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South Carolina’s THC drink deadline arrives with no clear winner The state’s six-member House–Senate conference committee was set to reconvene June 10 to reconcile competing hemp-THC beverage bills after its first meeting adjourned without a deal. The House has pushed either a full ban or a 21-and-over rule, while the Senate backs a tiered plan: 5mg-or-less drinks behind the counter, up to 10mg in liquor stores only, nothing above 10mg. Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey has said a full ban lacks the votes, so the fight is over how to regulate, not whether to.
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A Coronation on Death Row
Last week I told you the THC drink boom and the THC drink ban are the same story. This week, the beverage industry put that story on a stage and handed it a trophy.
At BevNET Live in New York on Thursday, Dad Grass won New Beverage Showdown 31, the pitch competition that previously crowned Poppi, Health-Ade, Cann, MALK, and Hiyo. Read that list again. Those brands outgrew their niches and defined whole categories. This cycle, the winner sells THC: a 3mg and 10mg line of Leisure Drinks, Grapefruit Mint and Jalapeño Lime, dosed low and built around CBD, Lion’s Mane and L-theanine.
Now look at who handed them the crown. The judges’ table included the Chief of New Revenue Streams at Coca-Cola North America and the Senior Category Merchant for Adult Beverage Non-Alc at Whole Foods. Coca-Cola’s New Revenue Streams unit sponsored the competition. Five months before federal law caps every container at 0.4mg of total THC, a line that makes Dad Grass’s entire winning lineup illegal, the largest beverage company on earth and the country’s most influential natural grocer sat in a room, watched a THC pitch, and said: this one.
Nobody at that table is confused about the calendar. These people decide what Americans drink next for a living, and they don’t hand out trophies to products they expect to vanish in November. They were judging the brand, and brands survive banned ingredients. Listen to what they praised: the taste, the graphics, the sessionability, the bridge to beer culture, and the way Dad Grass ignores “the overly science-y cues we see in the category.” Co-founder Ben Starmer said it himself on stage: the defining feature isn’t the dose or the functionals, it’s the flavor, because enduring beverage brands are built on taste. A CPG pitch that happens to contain THC. For now.
The hedging has already started. Brands and retailers staring down November are testing the next buzz in a can: kava, and now kanna, the South African botanical that just showed up canned on BevNET’s new-products page and that hemp attorneys call the closest legal analog to a THC seltzer. Dad Grass built its drink on a stack of functionals from day one. Cann always sold the ritual more than the molecule. The smartest operators in this space have spent years building brands where the active ingredient is swappable.
Dad Grass’s retail strategy reads like a tell, too. They’re going deep instead of wide, one DSD beer distributor at a time, several inside the Molson Coors system, and they just launched in Connecticut, a state whose 3mg potency cap previews whatever the post-November rulebook becomes. That’s not a brand racing the deadline for every last sale. That’s a brand rehearsing for the category on the other side of it.
Why it matters: last week I argued the ban and the mainstreaming are the same force, shoving this category into the alcohol industry’s machine. This week showed you who’s waiting at the end of the conveyor belt. On Thursday, Coke and Whole Foods crowned a brand, a team, a flavor, and a distribution playbook, the parts of a THC drink no act of Congress can ban. The deadline can kill the dose. It can’t kill the winner.
Enjoy this Newsletter? You’re in luck, I run a couple others. Check them out below!
📸 Written by Lars Miller — photographer & ghostwriter.
When I’m not covering cannabis beverages here, I help founders and executives look and sound the part: event photography, lifestyle and brand imagery, executive ghostwriting, and more across South Florida.