Our Chief Cannabis Officer Wendy Bronfein gives Nestor the flavor of how and why Curio makes gummies that taste delicious and create very specific effects using terpenes, science and proven efficacy.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
flavors, mango, thc, tastes, day, orange, terpene, gummy, infused, gummies, good, cbd, tart, cfg, watermelon, pineapple, educate, products, toto, juicy watermelon
SPEAKERS
Wendy Bronfein, Nestor J. Aparicio
Nestor J. Aparicio 00:01
Come home we are WNS TA and 5070, Towson, Baltimore Baltimore positive we are officially getting into March February was long enough and can’t wait for baseball at the end of the month. There is a rumor that Luke Jones and I may be sunning ourselves down in Florida later on this month. We are going to be bringing the Maryland crabcakes we’re back online after crabcake row Warmia. Back in February the Maryland lottery has given us these 10 times the cash tickets giveaway our friends winter nation in conjunction with Jiffy Lube, multi care and now newest sponsor Liberty pure solutions in the clean water that I drink on a daily basis put us back out on the road again. My friend Wendy brown five curio wellness and foreign daughter joined us on day one. I think she was on the doubting side of whether I could actually make it 40 hours alive. Ready? What do you I was so inspired by all of that and your visit with Jace Piper bond and other folks up your friends from the Enoch Pratt library. We’ll make him a call. I’m going to do live radio again. I’m signing back up they’re pulling me back in and we’re gonna be doing fade Lee’s Fridays on days when the Orioles are home from two until five with a crab cake and a cocktail. And who knows some flavored gummies from cure? Who knows, right? Don’t use this online now. And so I’m getting it on the spirit. How are you? Are you going to opening day?
Wendy Bronfein 01:18
I am good. And I think I am going to
Nestor J. Aparicio 01:21
say I knew you would be you’re on the bandwagon.
Wendy Bronfein 01:24
I haven’t been to opening day. I mean, in a very, very long. I mean, it might have been since like, you know high school or something like that. We should
Nestor J. Aparicio 01:34
do that together. I mean, but like this is an all in thing like we’re we’ve been talking all month and how much fun this is going to be and all that you should you know you had a candle Blitz? Is there a bait? You know, is there some peanut butter strawberry baseball thing y’all gonna come up with here to have some fun, you know, some grand slam grape? I’m just, I’m just an idea meaning Phoebe, you’d be previewed
Wendy Bronfein 01:59
later I’ll say
Nestor J. Aparicio 02:03
you’re like a baseball play pool during during me. Right? We can. We’ll talk about that later. I’m not here to talk about that. Wendy, of course, is the Chief Brand Officer and our chief cannabis officer here for all things the future. So you know, in regard to I did a whole segment on CFG Bank Arena, and going down to the journey choto night and all that we can have fun with that and even promote tfg Bank Arena a little bit. But I wanted to talk to you about gummies. Because I mean, for the longest time, brownies a joke, you know, in movies, then Colorado comes online. And we saw every little bit that would come when somebody’s dog would get into I mean crazy stuff that would go on. But we’ve come a long way here. And certainly you’ve come a long way. And I would say the one thing about your products that I will I will die on the Hill for would be how good the gummies tastes when you get them. And I think to myself, these tastes almost as good as like well my dad got me a butter rum Lifesaver back in 73. And I’m thinking flavors have come a long way. But I still drink hydrate products that tastes like cough syrup. And they’re still awful flavored. And Alex tell anybody awful flavored stuff out there. I just think that’s something with your company you kind of have gotten right. And I know it’s something that you personally are really, it’s your jam, you dig it? Yeah,
Wendy Bronfein 03:20
no, thank you for that shout out. It’s so true. Now we are we are fairly anal on the flavor font, I will not deny that. And that’s because we go through a lot of behind the scenes trying to optimize that flavor before we produce it. And that happens kind of before it’s infused and after it’s infused, right because cannabis itself whether it’s just kind of a THC or CBD or other cannabinoid based infusion, or if it’s terpenes, which add a different an additional level of flavor. They they kind of can counteract the magic you’re working on. And so it’s really about figuring out the right flavors that can blend with that and testing it once you’ve infused it to know that it still tastes as good. And so we have we have people who trialed after we’ve infused inactive product to give us feedback to know that the flavor is on the money. And if it’s not, then we got to dial it in
Nestor J. Aparicio 04:23
to get anything really bad. I mean, you know what I mean? Is there there are times where you get some sit down No, no, no, we can’t sell this. This is terrible. And, and I would say for anything in the beginning errors of the plant that you grow be a part of was just sort of like, tastes like dirt tastes like you know, ground up awfulness, right, like in a general sense. And then may any of those products that were associated with that, whether it was butter, chocolate name, anything you want, you’d be like, still kind of tastes like it, you know, not like something that would be more pleasurable than it. Yeah,
Wendy Bronfein 04:57
nothing really too bad. Usually when we’re trying Killing it we liked we start with levels right so like say it’s gonna be the juicy watermelon right? So there’ll be like a loosely call it like a high medium low right so it’s like too in your face. Is it not enough? Is it right? Is it just right? That’s
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:15
a thing right because some people love Jolly Ranchers they make me yeah, they make me all in some people like tropical flavored lifesavers and some people like sort of tart, right? Like it is my wife loves tart, tart lime, and she likes tart strawberry. I’m like, What’s wrong with you? Strawberries, excuse me sweet, you know, but like, she would drink a tart strawberry milkshake. And I’m like, that’s weird. So we all have different palates, right? Like, but I find yours to be more. That was a tropical because they’re like pineapple and watermelon. They just sort of lend themselves to be more like that. But I find them to be not overly sweet, but just, um, enjoyable not I gotta get through this and get on it. Yeah,
Wendy Bronfein 05:57
I mean, my biggest shocker is I guess I’m, I like a lot of flavors. So nothing’s particularly offensive to me. But pineapple and coconut are two that like people are on like one side of the fence with the other those have been discussed a lot when we talk people are like, I’m not like those. I think the grapefruit Agave flavor is one of my favorites that we do because I mean, sometimes when you eat things that are flavored or candy, right, like they don’t actually taste like like a watermelon Blow Pop doesn’t really taste like eating a piece of watermelon. Right? But like we all accept that that’s kind of watermelon flavor. But this grapefruit one, if you like grapefruit, I mean, it tastes the same as like, eating fresh grapefruit is I think I’ve
Nestor J. Aparicio 06:44
hated grapefruit my whole life. Bring this up. See? Ya Jenna got into this about mango flavoring and like watermelon flavoring and different things like strawberry. She prefers tart, I don’t. But when it comes down to it for you, and I guess, as a new business, I mean, in new industry really, for what you’re trying to do with it is different than lifesavers where they’ve been making them for 60 years in whatever way they make candies to try to create consistency. I know consistency, not just the law and the taste, but also the delivery of the medicinal value and whatever you’re trying and even that’s changed with THC and CBD and the other availabilities and adult and, you know, more extra strength that that would be available. If you haven’t this little card. I would say for all of that, if it’s not selling or people don’t like it, they won’t come back and buy it a second time. Right, like so. You’re still it’s a little early on to figure out like, whether you have a big winner or not. Am I sure? Am I right in saying that cuz there’s so many flavors you could have, I
Wendy Bronfein 07:49
think right across all all of our versions of choose now I think we were about 15 flavors. With Joe nothing that we’ve really felt like, you know, has to be retired but definitely seen kind of which one starts to become more popular than others and or if there’s even some sort of some level of seasonality to certain strain. I mean, just certain flavors. But like mango in the beginning was super popular. I think today probably black cherry might Eclipse mango a little bit that people just like a cherry flavor more than a mango flavor, but they’re still really popular. And I will tell you also, I’ve never
Nestor J. Aparicio 08:26
had any of these flavors in any of your gum. You know, like when I think of yours pineapple orange, lemon lime. The early rollouts though right those were the original kind of flavors, right?
Wendy Bronfein 08:37
Well pineapple all the ones you just described are in the top two line. So like the three originals were the THC was mango the high THC low CBD was blood orange tumeric and then the high CBD low THC was lemon honey. But then we add we’ve added I mean there’s the grapefruit agave, there’s white peach juicy watermelon, elderberry, high viscous black cherry, vanilla, strawberry basil. I’m pretty sure
Nestor J. Aparicio 09:15
much of being a snowball Stan like a hot day in May and saying you know what he what are you coming at custard from? That’s what I say. I said that to Jen do this. What are you gonna add custard? I mean, that’s, that would be that would be an ultimate Baltimore NOD is we
Wendy Bronfein 09:29
would do that. That is That is so true. What’s just an idea. I
Nestor J. Aparicio 09:34
mean, I’m an idea. So I’m not opposed to ideas that you all come up with for all this. I would say when you said mango was the original when I’m trying to educate myself and go deeper into the rabbit hole just on the topic, masking the flavor of awfulness in the beginning. Was that an original goal for you or her? They sorted that out in the industry before you came online with it? Yeah,
Wendy Bronfein 09:56
so Okay, so here’s kind of like the backstory. So when We wanted to get into the chew space, we hired a consultant who had built his career at Hershey. And so he came in and educated us on how you make these types of products and the kind of the approach to make them well to have good consistency, all that stuff. So the first thing we did was we made three different textures of what the two would be. And we had an all team meeting and we gave everyone they weren’t infused. They were just placebos. Everyone had samples, there’s like over like, probably at least 100 of us. And they filled out surveys and like, do you like texture one, two, or three? And so then we and then the winning texture became the consistency of the two. And then our two flavors came from starting literally, by looking at flavor trends broadly, like what are the top flavors of anything people buy anywhere, mango, like orange, lemon, we’re all very popular and leading flavors, I think mango was mango or orange. One of them was the number one flavor that is just used for flavored things. And then naturally, after that, it was just adding things, it really kind of started in the beginning, I was, I was very much a stickler for avoiding the vulnerabilities of eating the wrong thing. So in the beginning, it was really about never adding a flavor whose color could look like a different flavor. So if we had this like, dark red ish color, that was blood orange, and we had orange that was mango and yellow, that was lemon honey, than if we were going to add we needed to it needed to visually appear very different so that you could not mix up what you thought you were taking, particularly because you might buy things that are different making
Nestor J. Aparicio 11:44
three different aspirin, you wouldn’t make them all look the same color. And the same way if you write if you wanted to distinguish, Okay, understood. Yeah.
Wendy Bronfein 11:52
So try to keep them really visually different. So you can’t mix stuff up, even though obviously, they come in their own bags and all that stuff. But you know, you don’t know what someone does when they get home with their stuff. So that’s sort of like kind of all of what happened behind the scenes. And then you know, the category is huge here in any other state. I mean, but even it doesn’t, it’s not even like necessarily cannabis thing. And if you go into a drugstore and you look, you walk down the OTC law like I’ll between vitamins, and OTC meds, everything can come in a gummy now, because it’s just a dosage form that people like and it makes it easier for people to be compliant with a behavior. And so obviously, this all started in medical. So it was more about how can you deliver this in a way that is pleasurable to the user, particularly those who didn’t want to smoke. What brought
Nestor J. Aparicio 12:43
fun is here continuing to educate us, I’m wearing my I’m a blunt person shirt. I’m gonna get my orange back on and get ready for my purple and get all that going. You can find her and the carrier wellness team over far and got it here locally, just south of Timonium road on York Road. The frontage has these cool shirts along with all sorts of sort of health items. And also in the back massage. There’s a whole Wellness Center going on there including a cannabis dispensary that we try to educate folks about here and you can always learn more out online as well. So from a gummy standpoint, it’s one thing to stand on the lawn as I did last summer during a cure concert and went up to an old high school buddy and said, Hey, dude, how you been? He’s like, my call me just kicked in, hang on, you know, I mean, and like where we are at this point. And I’m thinking, what kind of dummy you know, like we’re, you know, where are we? And I guess that that is we talk flavors all day long. But then there’s just, Hey, I’ve never had a gummy. I’ve seen a joke about on my favorite sitcom or took one and fell asleep one time or whatever. The educational part, especially in your place, you become the foreign daughter and say, All right, I’m having this issue. I want to sleep better. I’m having this issue. I want to relax more on a Friday night. I don’t want to drink wine. And I’ll tell you this, I made a couple of my wife and I have this thing we go to wise markets we see limes, we think tequila, it was national tequila day the other day, made some margaritas which they’re very tasty. And then I woke up with a little thing about four or five in the morning. I’m like ah, last shot and I put in that last thing I was stupid going from two to three I’m old and I you know the handle people have a lot of reasons that they would want to go me on the Hill for the cure. And but but in a general medicinal sense. People come in where do you direct them in that way because you don’t have to smoke it. You don’t have to vape you don’t that that there is a way here to get medicine in a gummy format even though we didn’t have those Flintstones chewables when I was a kid, you know what I mean? gummies it really is sort of a new newfangled thing. We didn’t grow up as kids taking medicine that way. Yeah,
Wendy Bronfein 14:56
so So the original two line which was We called choose. Those are those are all just THC based on the adult use side, they’re 10 milligrams, they come in a variety of flavors, then you’ve got the terpene infused choose and the terpenes are what give you like a targeted expected effect, right. So the mango and the orange have a terpene blend, that means that you’re always going to feel kind of socially on energized alert. I think I’ve talked about this before, those are the ones I like to use on a Friday or Saturday night. And this is
Nestor J. Aparicio 15:27
where I’m going to jump in and tell you I’ve never had the mango because the orange was more preferable to me the day I made the decision. And I’ve just never bought the mango. Yeah, then the orange is delicious. So why would I try the mango? Yeah, like literally, that’s what happened. Yeah.
Wendy Bronfein 15:43
The, the pineapple is the other end of the spectrum that has a terpene profile, that’s my very much aligned towards like, quieting your mind or like
Nestor J. Aparicio 15:53
bedtime for me as a consumer of your product bedtime, and delicious, more delicious than the orange even. And that’s saying something. Yeah,
Wendy Bronfein 16:01
for me, that one’s like, you know, I kind of want to like turn off the day and relax at home. But I’m not necessarily looking to go to sleep, but I’m just kind of my body gets loose my Type A quiets down a little bit. And then the lemon lime sits in the middle in terms of like, you do have a nice body of facts, nothing overwhelming. And the uplift you get is not as strong as the mango or the orange. So it kind of it could serve you any time of day versus I would recommend that the mango and orange are either used at the beginning of the day, or if you’re intentionally trying to be energized for something in the evening. And then and then you get into like what we call like the effects based solution. So you’ve got a good night’s shoe, which is the chew that version of our our tablet, so that doesn’t have the pulse release system, but it’s going to give you immediate effects to help you fall asleep and that’s a blueberry flavor. And then you’ve got a good day too. Those are all high CBD lower THC. So think of them as like a functional cannabis were a lot more CBD that’s giving you inflammation management and some mood uplift but not a lot of feeling high.
Nestor J. Aparicio 17:17
When you say to you mean gummy, right?
Wendy Bronfein 17:19
Yes, I’ve been gummy Sorry. Okay, we’re two but that means going. And then we’re about to excel. Well, well, we just we spent like three weeks talking about Oh, right. So we have our bedroom Berry, like sexy time shoe, again with a terpene profile that’s aligned towards those activities. And then we’re about to broaden our move vine which we’ve talked about the topicals a lot for pain relief with a mobility relief formula so that you can do a chew for systemic needs of of of managing pain.
Nestor J. Aparicio 17:56
That’s a CBD product correct?
Wendy Bronfein 17:59
It’s it’s so it’s there’s more THC than CBD but there is CBD in it and then it’ll end it’ll live on both the adult use and medical market so the adult use is at a at maxes out at 10 because that’s what’s compliant there. And on the adult use side the THC is high both the THC and the CBD are higher but THC has to be controlled. Up to 10 milligrams on the adult use side
Nestor J. Aparicio 18:24
didn’t leave anything out other than spring training and the fact that Luke and I may be running down to Florida for a couple days and trying to figure this Oriole magic out but I know what is gonna be fun here this year.
Wendy Bronfein 18:35
I think so. Did you
Nestor J. Aparicio 18:37
enjoy the journey toto experiences because look, Mike and I went through this we actually talked about it on the air I plugged you guys and I plug cfg and the arena and Frank and the pet event they’re having in a couple of weeks with our friends at barks and with with the show yourself side so I I’m in to all of this, but we had like the drunk women. I had the eight drunk women that started drinking around 12 They should have visited you quite frankly, they would have been way better off with an orange turf to totally Yeah, so we kind of had to like move away a little bit because I didn’t really want to hear them singing open arms and separate ways after I heard them talk over every toto song so we had the bad etiquette folks, but the vol was great. I got to be in ED Brown’s old office and play Papa shot which I thought was awesome. And I told the CFG bank and the O few people I said the lol I’m like, You really need to rename this place to Ed Brown. You have EDS to have a plaque of football here. But I you know I love being there and so free plug for all of them. I took the picture in front of the Led Zeppelin thing I went over to the 1962 I was in the other club area downstairs for a while um it’s magic in a magic space for me and I’ve said that from the bee I loved it when it was an old chicken box whatever you call it. I I love it now and I love even a bad time was a good time because I ran into friends and we had fun that night we had dinner with you and your husband was wonderful.
Wendy Bronfein 19:59
Yeah, I mean it. I think I shared this. I was in it for the todo. I saw journey at the classic a few years ago and at Citi Field. I mean, it’s like a like a journey song on the radio at a party. But I, at a certain point, I said to my husband, like, I can go whenever and he was like, You’re like the progressive commercial. You’re trying. You’re old. You’re trying to leave. Oh, no, here’s
Nestor J. Aparicio 20:22
what happened. I think you’re too young for journey. No, no, I was just like you are. You know, it was different for me when I hear escape. I’m 11 years old and toddler winsky bedroom. We’re dropping the needle. We’re singing posters on the wall. You know what I mean? Like, it’s different.
Wendy Bronfein 20:39
I was just more like, it’s like, I like all the songs. It’s not I could take or leave seeing it in person. And I’ve seen it before, so I was just more like, it’s Sunday night. I’m tired. I don’t need to hear them sing every song. My God did leave at the end. But, um, but like, but toto is like, you know, they’re all studio musician. Their musicality is another level. The band had so many more pieces to it. I just it just I think it’s just more audibly interesting. I did was like dying, laughing just to myself, because I walked in, I walked up the steps and I got to CSUN I looked at stage and everyone was old and i don’t i intellectually knew that but like, in my head, I only picture like people from like, say like the Rosanna video, right.
Nestor J. Aparicio 21:27
You’re in the African video right? Leg line. Lately caught
Wendy Bronfein 21:31
off guard was like wait a second, but um,
Nestor J. Aparicio 21:36
Lucas his hair. He looks a little bit like one of the first six presidents like he looks like he signed the Declaration of Independence.
Wendy Bronfein 21:43
Yeah. Well, what about the fact that thing that they have children married to each other? Oh, great.
Nestor J. Aparicio 21:49
Yeah. Lucas. His daughter’s married to Jonathan Cain son. Right. I think that’s what the Yeah, no, I bless all of us geezers and getting together. I mean, officers come in. Janet Jackson is coming back Pearl James coming in for Springsteen’s coming back to Baltimore. Yeah, timber lakes coming in. Right. So I’m good. Wendy brown find his great she’s our chief cannabis Officer, Chief Brand Officer for all things curio wellness and father and daughter. Stop by educate yourself. Don’t buy the high don’t watch the 100 year old videos for the government put out learn a little bit about all this and how it could benefit you and certainly my wife is a recovered cancer person and I did a big Leukemia Lymphoma thing last week as well. So all sorts of science going on and our friends at curio wellness are carrying that on in the Great Spirit. Right. You’re in Timonium, Maryland, and we appreciate you coming on all right next concert. We’ll figure out opening day and here’s what I’m not gonna go into this on the air because we’ll do but like we got to pick a better place for dinner next time I lost a man and Evan I’m telling him I’m man I’m not gonna plug place but we’re gonna pick a better place next time because you’re gonna pick or Jonathan’s gonna pick it I think I you know, so. I thought it was okay. I just won’t go back. No, it was okay. I’m not gonna go into this on the air. She is Wendy I am Nestor. We are wn st am 1570, Towson Baltimore. We never stopped talking all sorts of things. And Baltimore positive as Luke gets ready for opening day. You
