Recently, we attended Reggae On The River, the iconic music and culture festival in California’s Emerald Triangle. Our goal was to promote Higher Origins and our founder’s family farm Mendo Mystic through on site cannabis sales. We also did some shopping at the local dispensaries, and had a wonderful time enjoying the festival. This article sums up what we experienced and learned from 4 days immersed in the heart of the Emerald Triangle’s quintessential cultural event.
The Festival: Community, Sales, and the Direct to Consumer Experience
As we’ve written before, Reggae on the River is a unique festival, and this time was no exception. This year felt especially wholesome, with a positive community spirit that was reminiscent of the early days back when we were kids. There was a consistent atmosphere of appreciation, and everyone seemed grateful to be there and to participate in the celebration of roots reggae, community, and cannabis.
Matt and Daniel, Higher Origins founders, helping sell Mendo Mystic Products at Reggae on The River (Pic courtesy of Trike A Pose)
When we weren’t watching the music or taking a dip in the river, we were selling products at the cannabis space. The Reggae cannabis sales area was a collection of about a dozen booths, each representing a cannabis brand. The actual cannabis sales was handled by Proper Wellness, through their unique legal onsite delivery model. Festival goers with 21+ wristbands were able to wander through the space and talk to reps for each cannabis brand or farm to learn what they were all about and what they had to offer. Once they had made a buying decision, they were able to go to the central Proper Wellness booth and buy their cannabis products from a curated menu of all the brands who were on site that day. This kind of cannabis sales event has been pioneered by Proper, and used at multiple events around Northern California.
The Proper Wellness Menu for the event
Our honest experience as sellers:
We were given a normal sized space to set up our tables and our 10x10 awning. The space opened for sale at Noon when the Proper Wellness crew arrived in their van and set up their sales kiosk, and closed at 7pm. Our job was to greet the festival goers, tell them the story of the farm, and show off the various strains we had for sale, then direct them to buy from the Proper team. Throughout the day the foot traffic ebbed and flowed based on what was happening elsewhere at the festival, and the summer heat, which definitely slowed the crowd down.
Pros:
The ability to talk directly to customers in a relaxed festival environment was a fantastic opportunity for a small farm to get a taste of direct to consumer sales.
Having multiple brands in one space allowed everyone to network, compare and contrast products, and cross recommend products to customers- for example, Mendo Mystic doesn’t sell concentrates, but Errl Hill in a nearby booth does, so we could refer customers over to them. Likewise, we didn’t have any gassy strains, so we recommended they try Sweet Sister’s award winning Biscotti. This was a uniquely collaborative experience between brands.
Farms got to see how other people were doing their sales and learn from each other. There were a variety of sales approaches, from our active outgoing style, to Errl’s dab lounge, to Most Wanted’s sample bar, to Sweet Sister’s laid back atmosphere. We were all able to view the pros and cons of how we were all selling and learn from each other.
The immediate availability of the Proper Wellness crew onsite allowed us to get feedback on how well our products were selling, which gave us the option to work out discounts and test out different sales approaches to see which ones worked best.
Cons:
The logistics coordination of the cannabis space with the rest of the event was lacking. The sales area was located on the far side of the event, out of the way for most festival goers. Likewise, there was a lack of signage directing people to the area, and there were no maps posted around the event. Many of the people who came by our booth were surprised at the location and had stumbled upon it by accident. This obstacle to discovery limited the amount of revenue that sellers could make. As the event went on, more promotion was organized to direct people to the sales area but it was too little too late. Of course, the liquor licensed bar areas were given prime real estate right by the main stage, which for a profoundly cannabis oriented festival seems a bit backwards. If weed can’t be given pride of place here of all places, then where can it?
The event space was not really set up in a way that worked well outdoors. There was a big central tent but it didn’t seem to get used much beyond a few short events, so it was mostly wasted space. The sun was pretty intense, which caused a lot of booths to close for a few hours during the heat of the day. Multiple times people skipped over neighboring booths and went straight to those that had shade.
There was a lack of guidance for customers on how to buy. Multiple times people tried to buy directly from our booth and we had to redirect them to the Proper Wellness tent. This was a minor distraction, but when selling anything the last thing you want to do when your customer is ready to buy with cash in hand is to give them extra stuff to figure out. That said, the Proper team was very efficient at processing sales.
Overall, this was a positive event, providing farms a valuable hands on learning and collaboration experience with direct to consumer sales. Some farms were able to sell out of a lot of their inventory, and get direct feedback from their customers. The poor location, promotion, and sales area layout definitely reduced the amount of foot traffic and potential sales. Tighter collaboration between the event organizers for future events could really pay off with more sales for all and a smoother experience for both brands and customers.
Buying Cannabis Nearby:
After Reggae, we decided to do a little bit of secret shopping at the two dispensaries closest to the festival. Back in December, we shopped at 10 dispensaries around the state with the goal of understanding the average buying experience for small farm outdoor flower with lower THC- the key product category that we believe represents the cultural legacy of California cannabis. For this quick local shopping trip, we followed the same criteria:
Ask specifically for small farm flower
Ask specifically for outdoor
Ask specifically for lower THC products
Buy one 8th
Limit budget to 40$ (experience needs to be relevant to what average people can afford)
If asked, indicate no preference for Indica or Sativa
Other than the above, let the budtender take the lead and buy what they recommend
Tip, be friendly and polite, and thank the staff for their help
Stop #1:
Emerald Sasquatch
69501 Highway 101, Leggett, CA
The Experience:
This is a brand new dispensary located in a repurposed vintage gas station just a few miles South of the festival, next to the legendary Peg House burger joint (Never don’t stop!) The dispensary was small and straightforward, with one budtender at the counter. She was very friendly and seemed excited when I asked for small farm outdoor. She never asked me if I wanted Indica or Sativa, and mainly structured her sales pitches around the kind of cultivation, taking great care to explain to me the difference between full sungrown and light deprivation. She told me that they generally only sell products from within 30 miles of their location, and showed me a few different products that she personally enjoyed, and offered me sample jars to smell. All of the flower in the sample jars smelled fresh and wasn’t brown and dried out like I’ve seen elsewhere. She also mentioned that she had grown up around a lot of the farms that she was selling, and name dropped a few of them. Overall the experience was very down to earth and welcoming, very unlike the corporate, promotionally minded dispensaries I’ve visited in the past.
Canna Country's #26
What I Bought: First Impressions
For 32$ I got an 8th of #26, a strain grown by Canna Country Farms and distributed through Redwood Roots. The label clearly shows the license number of Redwood Roots Distro, as well as the package date of 6/10/25, and the relevant METRC data. A QR code on the jar links to the Redwood Roots website. This flower tested at 18.17% THC, with 1.98% total terpenes, so it was exactly what I was looking for. The buds themselves are dense and still have some humidity to them so they aren't crumbly and are still slightly sticky. This is some of the most darkly colored flower I’ve ever seen, a deep purple. The smell is also unique, with an overpowering dark stone fruit note followed by gas and lavender, it smells like an overripe plum that got soaked in petroleum products and lavender oil, and you can smell it from several feet away if you open the jar.
Further Research:
Redwood Roots doesn’t have a page for Canna Country Farms but I was able to find their own website. The strain I bought, #26, is a cross of Forbidden Fruit and Cherimoya, and has won awards and been on the cover of High Times. Their website mentions that they’ve been growing in the same spot in Humboldt for 12 years, and that they focus on sun grown in living soil. Overall, Canna Country seems like a perfect example of a small outdoor farm. Their website doesn’t clearly list a license number, but their site is copyrighted to a BFCCF LLC, and searching that on Higher Origins returns two licenses, a nursery and a small outdoor license.
Stop #2:
3525 Redwood Dr, Suite A, Redway, CA
The Experience:
Clarkies is located in Redway, North of the festival and the town of Garberville. When I went in there was only one budtender. When I asked him for some small farm outdoor flower, he referred me immediately to their in-house line of 8ths, all of which were 50$ or above. I told him that was out of my price range, and I was looking for something a bit cheaper, but still local. He then referred me to a brand based out of Nevada City for some reason, which was obviously not local, so I asked again and he put a few sample 8ths out on the counter for me to smell and then seemed to check out of the conversation. I smelled a few and picked the one I liked the most based on smell, because they all had more or less the same level of THC. While I smelled them, the budtender offered no further information. In general I got the feeling that he was only interested in, or trained to focus on selling their core line of Clarkies products, and anything else wasn’t worth his time. The shop was small but nicely set up with a wide variety of products on display- a cute little space.
Catch A Cloud's Durban Poison X Gushers
What I bought: First impressions
For 20$ and change I got an 8th of Sativa Durban Poison x Gushers from Catch a Cloud Farms. The packaging stickers state it has 29.8% THC, and was packaged on March 24th, 2025. The QR on the package directs me to a link aggregation page for the Catch A Cloud brand. The buds are dry and crumbly, which makes sense after spending 5 months in a bag. The nose is medium strength, with tangy vegetable and sour citrusy notes much more reminiscent of Durban Poison than Gushers- there are no fruity or sweet tones noticeable.
Further Research:
The Catch a Cloud site contains a bunch of information about the farm’s story and origins. They do both outdoor and mixed light cultivation in Kneeland California, and have a long history in the region.They hold an active medium outdoor license and a microbusiness, and they had two mixed light licenses that expired in 2022 and 2023. Despite their larger license, they still seem to represent the cultural legacy of small farm cultivation. They also do extraction on site- overall they seem to be a successful operation that has grown from small roots into a diverse business.
Takeaways:
So what has all this festival cannabis sales and secret shopping in the Emerald Triangle told us? Clearly, when compared to all the retailers I visited for my previous secret shopping article, there was a different cultural and geographic context that put outdoor cannabis front and center: the immediate availability of outdoor flower and the local history and identity tied to it. Clearly, retailers here have a different mindset around outdoor- instead of treating it as a bottom shelf category and not prioritizing it for sales or even telling their budtenders about it like so many of the dispensaries I encountered previously. This highlights the strong regionality still present in California’s cannabis economy- in a state larger than 75% of countries on the planet, distance, demographics, climate, and geography still play a strong role in market trends. You can’t get good outdoor in most parts of Southern California for the same reasons you can’t get good sushi in Nebraska.
So, let’s boil this down into some simple points that brands and retailers can work with:
For brands/farms:
If you’re struggling to get into retail, take ANY opportunity you can to sell or promote your product in person to consumers- the feedback and knowledge you’ll get is invaluable.
Network, Network, Network! The more people you talk to, brands and stores you work with, and events you participate in, the more you will be invited to participate.
Selling your product wholesale involves actively surrendering one of your most powerful sales tools: your personal brand, story, and identity. Your plants are the way they are because of how YOU grew them and the effort you put in, and by selling wholesale to a brand who will force your weed into a pre-existing brand identity, you’ve relinquished your ability to be part of the sales.
Little handheld menus are a HUGELY helpful tool for consumers, whether at stores, deliveries, or events. Invest in a few hundred little menus with QR codes on them and include them with your products wherever they are sold.
For Retailers:
No matter what you’ve heard about outdoor being all low quality bottom shelf, THIS IS NOT THE CASE. You can get outdoor that still blows your nose off 8 months after harvest, in good quantities, with a good story you can use to sell it. You just have to understand the economics: you’re importing something from hundreds of miles away, and you will have to work with the suppliers directly to make it work for both of you.
The magic words you’re looking for during sales are “Damn, that’s outdoor?” Those words mean that a consumer just had a whole shift in their understanding of weed, IN YOUR STORE, with weed that YOU SHOWED THEM- you’ve curated a new experience that the customer will always associate with you and outdoor weed that you can sell to.
Being part of an event can be a huge boost for your brand as a dispensary, especially if you can bring along reps from the brands you sell in your store. The brands, whether small or large, are your product, and bringing them along and introducing them to your customers allows you to make connections and build an image beyond your brick and mortar.
Reggae was an excellent experience for Higher Origins. The connections, sales, and observations we made really helped us to dial in exactly where we needed to improve our platform and branding models. Going forward as we expand into harvest season, we’ll be bringing a lot more brands and retailers onto the platform, some of which are a direct result of conversations we had at the festival. If you’d like to join in and get your products on a menu or on the marketplace, or if you’re looking to buy from farms we work with, consider signing up today! Higher Origins has more momentum and more cool features now than ever before!
It was great seeing y’all at Reggae, and if we missed you, come through next year!
Network, network, network!
-The Higher Origins Team
