Rob Radke
Age: 34
Company: Method Testing Labs
Title: President
Although Rob Radke has only been working in the cannabis space for about five years, he’s seen the industry from multiple angles: from the corporate perspective, working in mergers and acquisitions; from the operations perspective, working in manufacturing and branding; and now from the inside of a testing lab.
“It’s been really refreshing to be able to focus on one area of the industry,” Radke says of his recent shift to focus solely on quality control.
Radke and co-founder Keith Browning opened Method Testing Labs in March 2021 in Tampa, Florida, knowing the local industry was growing by leaps and bounds and knowing that companies were already in need of testing services.
“With COVID happening, people actually seemed to be consuming more cannabis, so there was even more demand for the products — and for having a good testing lab,” Radke says.
Method Testing Labs is in the process of opening a second testing lab that will give the company an additional 7,000 square feet of lab space in Brandon, Florida, as well as opening an 8,000-square-foot lab in Worcester, Massachusetts, as part of a joint venture.
Radke, who had been working for Parallel when he made the jump to the lab side of the industry, saw firsthand the need for consistency and expediency.
“We understand how important turnaround times are to our customers, because we’ve been on the other side,” he says.