It was all hands on deck for The Stoney Moose as the company hauled equipment and supplies into the greenhouse shell that will become the company’s grow facility.
Kolbe Rose
Director of Sales
The Stoney Moose
Ketchikan, Alaska
I have always maintained the attitude that the sky is the limit in this industry.
To achieve our goals, I believe that means going vertical and being our own supplier of flower, edibles and concentrates to our retail store and cutting out the need to depend on other producers. Being a key player means playing the whole game and having an outlet for both supply and demand.
I am the director of sales and a shareholder in what started as a very small company in Ketchikan, Alaska, located on the cruise route in the southeastern part of the state. When we first opened our dispensary, The Stoney Moose, it was not much bigger than a closet. We started with three employees; three years later, we have expanded to two floors and have more than doubled our staff. One of the originators and owners of the company branched off and started Stoney Moose Kitchens. This spring we will complete the next step of our vertical integration, Stoney Moose Farms. But man, what a workload!
There’s a reason everyone keeps go-go-going in this industry. From production to purchasing and catching flights around Alaska, clocking thousands and thousands of miles a month, there’s no rest for the wicked. Good thing we love what we do. We run a small crew, so we all pitch in where help is needed. In order to go vertical, we need to work long hours, help each other out and practice patience. The dispensary is my baby, but when it comes to unloading two tons of dirt at our recently purchased farm property, we need all hands on deck. This was a feat, because our cultivation facility happens to be on an island that can only be accessed by boat. We had to procure three boats, heavy lifting help and an ATV to haul all the soil, nutrients, manure, earth worms and other supplies into the greenhouse. Eventually, this remote location will be beneficial for exclusive VIP cannabis tours … but right now we are fortunate to have great people willing to go the extra nautical mile to haul our supplies. It was pouring down rain that day, but we cheerfully unloaded bags and bags of soil, having an assembly line setup from the boat to the ATV to someone hauling it up the muddy hill and finally to the person in the greenhouse.
After our hard, wet day of work, we gathered around and slurped up hot venison chili and homemade cornbread, reflecting on the sheer volume we moved that day and planning the never-ending list of what was next, with a promise of profit and excitement in the air.
The cannabis industry is so full of hard workers, entrepreneurs, visionaries, artists, lawyers and shrewd, savvy business women and men, that the overall stereotype of the lazy stoner is becoming more and more obsolete. I have met some of the hardest working people in my life in this industry. One example is our product developer and kitchen manager, who often works until 3 a.m. packing and manifesting orders. This story is not uncommon; in fact, it is very much the typical workload of someone making it in this industry. We work hard, we smoke weed and we love what we do. We are destroying the lazy stoner stereotype with every all-nighter.
My goal is to fully vertically integrate my company into Alaska’s market. It’s the last frontier, the northern lights on the horizon of the legal cannabis industry, and it is full of promise for cannabis cowboys and cowgirls looking to make their fortune.