Family-owned, 114-year-old apple farm, makes a splash in New York cannabis market
Ayrloom took a chance by dedicating 1 acre of its 1,000-acre farm to cannabis, and it’s paying off as it now produces one of the leading vape brands and infused beverages in New York. All photos courtesy of ayrloom.
As the New York market develops, one cannabis company, rather than starting from scratch, is building its brand upon a five-generation legacy of family farming and expertise in beverages.
According to CEO Eddie Brennan, ayrloom has become the top-selling vape brand in New York, as well as a leading manufacturer of cannabis-infused beverages and other edibles.
But talking about ayrloom requires some background on its parent company, Beak & Skiff, which was founded in 1911 and continues to operate the 1,000-acre apple orchard just south of Syracuse.
“The survival of our family farm has really been creating change and innovating and finding new ways to preserve our business because farming, as you know, is a really hard business,” Brennan says. “One bad night of cold and you can lose your whole crop, and we’ve experience that over the life of our brand. We got into cannabis with the hope of being able to preserve our land, and it was another way for us to utilize our land and our expertise in manufacturing products.”
Beak & Skiff also operates a retail campus on the property and an event space that hosts more than a dozen concerts throughout the year. In addition to apples, hard ciders and spirits are distributed in about 30 states under its 1911 Established brand — a nod to the company’s 114-year history.
A Head Start in Hemp
Ayrloom cultivation manager Luke Powers hauls in a crop of freshly harvested cannabis.
The company began its venture into cannabis about six years ago, with a hemp research license, producing CBD beverages, tinctures and balms for mainstream retailers under the Beak & Skiff brand.
Despite the early hype, the CBD market never really developed, Brennan says.
“We rode the CBD wave for two or three years,” he recalls. “Unfortunately, that crashed, but it allowed us to really be at the forefront of the market, and we took a really big risk constructing our manufacturing facility and investing millions of dollars before having a license to make THC products.”
The gamble — and the wait for New York’s market to get up and running — appears to have paid off. Today, the company grows one acre of cannabis outdoors on the family farm and handles the entire manufacturing process, from producing distillate to making edibles to canning beverages.
“It’s similar to our hard cider business where we grow all the apples, press everything and ferment everything in-house,” Brennan says. “We took a similar approach (in cannabis) which allows us to really control that consistency and quality.”
Farming DNA
Ayrloom is using a state-of-the-art processing and canning facility, as well as Beak & Skiff’s expertise as a manufacturer of hard ciders and bourbon, to become one of the leading cannabis brands in New York.
Not surprisingly, New York has proven to be a challenging state to grow cannabis outdoors, due to rain, humidity and a relatively short growing season, but, in some ways, cannabis is a far easier crop to deal with than apples.
“If you plant an apple tree, it takes six or seven years for it to reach full maturity,” Brennan says. “So for us to be able to plant a crop and generate a finished product within less than a year, that’s pretty exciting because the apple business can be really, really frustrating. It’s such a waiting game.”
The company’s top-selling beverage, the Honeycrisp infused apple cider, is the quintessential crossover that binds the traditional farming business to cannabis.
“It’s literally fresh-pressed cider from Honeycrisp apples that we grow on our farm, then we infuse it with THC,” Brennan says.
Ayrloom works with Vertosa on water-soluble emulsions for fast-acting beverages and gummies.
Vapes and standard edibles account for about 70% of the company’s revenue, with beverages making up about 10% of sales.
Betting on Beverages
Although the beverage sector is relatively small, Brennan sees it as a crucial category for cannabis, helping to bring in new consumers and break down boundaries.
“I think beverage is that form factor that helps lower the stigma,” he says. “Maybe you’re not going to light up a joint at Thanksgiving dinner, but bringing a beverage is acceptable. So we love being on the forefront of that.”
Ayrloom also manufactures hemp-derived versions of its drinks, distributing them in about dozen states from Maine to Florida.
Although New York’s rec market has been incredibly slow to develop, largely due to complications at the regulatory level, the Empire State is finally coming to fruition — still slowly and not without significant complications — and Brennan expects substantial growth in 2025. New York began allowing adult-use sales in late 2022, mustering a mere $151 million in retail revenue in its first full year, despite a population of nearly 20 million. With nearly 300 licensed retailers at the end of 2024, New York generated about $870 million in sales in the past year.
“I think we put the cart before the horse by licensing so many growers in the beginning without any outlet for people to sell their products,” Brennan says of New York’s early struggles. “It was a bit messy, in the beginning, but we’re starting to see that supply and demand come into balance to some degree.”
Although more retailers are needed, Brennan says shops that are open are “surprisingly healthy” and providing a wide variety of products to choose from — including beverages, which are often one of the last form factors to hit the shelves in new rec markets.
“New York has done a good job of being on the forefront of innovation, and we’ve got a really healthy beverage market,” he says. “We had so much experience creating beverages under our 1911 brand of hard cider and some of the other products that we make that we were able to leverage that expertise and infrastructure to really start a beverage brand in New York.”