Chris Pappademas saw his career path temporarily derailed by COVID.
Pappademas had worked in kitchens and restaurants his entire life. He started cooking when he was 14. He went to culinary school. He studied food science and nutrition. And then, all of a sudden, COVID was raging and fine-dining establishments across the globe were shuttered.
Through a restaurant contact, he was hired to run the edibles manufacturing division of a vertically integrated cannabis company, where he personally produced more than 50 million gummies for the regulated market. Learning the trials and tribulations of gummy manufacturing first-hand gave him a deep understanding of all the things that can go wrong. Now, as the technical director for Melt-to-Make, he uses that experience to troubleshoot problems with clients and teach them how to scale their edibles programs.
Melt-to-Make manufactures gummy bases for cannabis companies all across the world. The product was created to eliminate many of the problems that were torturing gummy brands.
For Pappademas, the position has been a bridge between his career as a chef, where creativity was a major part of his life, and his time on the production and problem-solving side of things with edibles manufacturing.
“Food science is a much bigger part of my life now than it ever has been,” he says. “It’s very important to understand the mechanisms and the dosing and the calculations. I think what I’ve been able to do is learn how that works through trials and tribulations and basically falling on my face many times. Because of that experience, I’m able to knock down a lot of the perceived barriers that people have in their head as far as how difficult it is to get up and going with a gummy.”
Marijuana Venture’s 2026 40 under 40 feature was sponsored by MoonDust USA
MoonDust USA helps pre-roll brands and operators source custom cones, tubes, blunt wraps, and branded packaging with the consistency and speed needed to scale. As a women-owned direct manufacturer, MoonDust focuses on transparent pricing, dependable quality, and repeatable production, giving cannabis teams a supply partner they can count on as volumes grow.