when you think and act like McDonald’s you probably are McDonalds and I really don’t want this industry to be like McDonalds
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This industry is on a crash course with commoditization. If you look at similar industries and their trends, the Writing is on the wall. Alcohol, tobacco, farming, generic pharmaceuticals, HEMP etc. all have gone through what cannabis is going through right now and we will be at that point sooner rather than later. It’s inevitable, for better or for worse.
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I don’t think cannabis is no where near commoditization. Cannabis is really about the experience. I’ve tasted a shit tone of high 20% weed that tasted bland and I’d rather smoke something not as potent with taste.
Most cannabis is chosen by first looks. Then smell. And perhaps the test label.
Cannabis will always have an exotic level. Just like there is cheap wine. There will be cheap cannabis.
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I agree, but my point is: a overwhelming majority of sales of beer are domestics, mainly bud light and similar ones. There is craft beer but it pales in comparison (sales wise) to the big players. I remember reading a economic report on bourbon in Kentucky and something like 95% of all bourbon sold was by makers mark and Jim bean (or something I don’t remember the exact two) and every other bourbon producer made up the last 5%.
There will always be people looking for something more, but the masses will want whatever it is they decide they want. But it will be mass produced and of decent quality. Maybe that isn’t commodification to a t, but it is pretty darn close and I would imagine within 10 years of federal legalization that’s where we will be.
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Some people don’t wanna be big like Budweiser.
Some family breweries make a batch and have lines down the street on release days. It’s enough to feed their families and communities around them. Not everyone here wants to be cookies.
Those big boys have shareholders and investors to pay off. Mom and pop business just pay themselves
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You are correct on that, but I don’t think the craft brewery is a good comparison. You generally can’t produce and sell on the same premise (at the moment). In my opinion it’s better to look at from the perspective of a grocery store or liquor store. It’s a lot harder to have that kind of connection with the consumer when you are so far removed from them. At that point you can only control packaging, marketing, and your product.
Dispensaries want to carry the products that are going to move and simultaneously boost their margins. This drives prices down and makes economies of scale ever important, which favors large producers. I’m speaking in broad strokes, obviously, and just talking about the trends I’ve seen and studied in other industries that are similar to ours.
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This needs to change
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I am for it. Unions are great in theory. Often they get corrupted though. like any position of power usually does. This is from experience been a member of a few different construction unions.
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Funny, sounds like you have had to make a payroll. Others on thread, not so much. Want your weed to cost more, increase costs…
Cheers!
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The way I explain the benefits of a union is this. CCompanies by nature want to pay their workers to do more and more for less and less every year. They take advantage if you will and unions represent the workers and dont allow that to happen. From my experience union construction workers are better payed better trained they mostly all.have 1 or 2 pensions ,vacation time thr best benefits. And they get raises to account for inflation regularly. This does increase job costs so the workers should use their better training to save the company money were ever possible. The one thing that will kill a union faster than corruption is lazy overpaid workers
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if you quote a job for union workers and non union workers the cost is going to be close to 2x for the Union bois. Great if you are in the union but most people aren’t willing to pay the difference.
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If your talking electrical I agree but the work will be 2xbetter you wouldn’t imagine the shit I’ve seen non union electrical workers do. They fucking kill people with their stupidity. But carpenters and sheetmetal union is actually cheaper. Unless you hire illegal
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While this is an interesting question, I don’t think enough nuance is being introduced into the conversation.
For one, not all positions are created equally, even though they are similar. Let’s construct a simple example…
Company A hires an extraction tech to operate equipment and follow an established SOP to produce a SKU that Company A wants to bring to market (or already is bringing to market). “It pours the slab on the parchment, or else it gets the hose again” as it were. This individual doesn’t need 5+ years of experience in this field in order to perform the duties for which they have been hired. 90 days of training and they should be following the SOP with their eyes closed. Additionally, this individual isn’t exceedingly hard to come by, and in fact many low skill workers with a passion for cannabis are actively competing for these very positions. In other words, the will earn what the market will bear in this situation, say between $15-30 hourly, or 30k-60k annually. You could copy and paste this example for a grow tech.
Now let’s consider the inverse situation. Company B hires an Extraction Tech and wants this individual to formulate product SKU’s to take to market AND establish replicable SOP’s for the production of said SKU’s. I think we would all agree that the individual Company A and Company B is going to hire will not be of the same caliber, nor should they be.
The person Company B goes with, bare minimum, should be drawing upon prior experience in order to know how to approach the manufacturing of a desired product. Company A doesn’t need to pay for this level of skill. They have @TheWillBilly in an office telling some wook that turns the valves how to make the products.
Company B, by contrast, NEEDS to pay for the higher skill level, in order to have a competent individual pumping out the products they want to sell. Individuals with this background are increasingly hard to come by as they are quickly finding themselves affiliated with a brand.
Although both companies are essentially hiring a person to operate extraction equipment and make a product, the similarities end there.
One individual will be relying on the scientific prowess of someone else. When a batch of product worth 100k hits for residual solvent, the wook turning the valves isn’t even going to get a phone call. He’s going to be updated on Monday about a change in the SOP.
The guy that worked to establish the SOP, and formulate the product is getting his ass chewed by a pissed off chad at 3am on a Sunday wondering why there is 100k of unusable product on his desk.
Both guys turn valves to make oil, but they are not mutually interchangeable equivalents, and do not deserve the same considerations when being compensated.
As I said, you could take this example and easily extrapolate it to describe the same situation on the cultivation side of the business.
This is essentially why most high skill healthcare workers are not unionized, although some unions for these individuals do exist. They are not mutually interchangeable within their respective positions. One Dr performs open heart surgery 5 days a week, another follows a well-established treatment protocol at a burn clinic. You couldn’t exactly take one and drop him in the others position at a 1:1 ratio. Is there some overlap? Yeah. Are they both Docs? Of course. But they are not “equal”. They must therefore be judged on an individual basis, and intentionally hired to fill a specific role, and that is no less true for any other skilled trade, least of all the cannabis industry.
The structure of a union does not facilitate this level of performance, which is why union labor is not considered the best in any field that I know of.
Personal Anecdote:
The best, and highest paid carpenters are not union. They work for themselves, and charge 3 times more for their skills because they build shit better, under budget, and ahead of schedule.
My dad owned a construction company (where I worked for almost a decade) with 90 employees on 10 different crews. 2/3 crews were assigned to build Spec homes, like the ones you see in a subdivision. These jobs would be contracted out to a couple of different building subcontractors, all of which were following the same 4-5 basic blueprints. My dad’s crews would frame these homes in 4-5 days or 1 work week. The union crews building the same house across the street would take 15 days on average or 3 weeks. Why? Because they didn’t start until 9am and left at 5pm on the dot. My dad’s guys showed up at 6am and left when it got dark. The union guys would all put their hammers down every two hours for a 15 minute break. My dad’s guys would pull a sandwich out of their bags for lunch and keep working.
Most of my dad’s full time carpenters took home over 100k a year. The union guy across the street made 60k if he was lucky after 5 years. My dad used to pick out the hard workers on the union crews and poach them. It’s pretty easy when you can double their salary overnight for the same job…
A Bugatti isn’t bolted together by UAW workers. And if you owned one, you wouldn’t want it to be. Just my two cents.
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You wouldn’t imagine the shit I’ve seen union electrical workers do…
Point is, you don’t intrinsically get better quality of output simply because it’s union; you don’t get a more useful wook because they’re certified.
Nobody is fighting to become journeymen or linemen. These industries are getting older because of their lack of growth, workforce wise.
Most every non-skilled labor job in the industry could be staffed within 24 hours; there is an eager workforce for cannabis.
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Amen[quote=“Saucysanchez775, post:70, topic:134139, full:true”]
The way I explain the benefits of a union is this. CCompanies by nature want to pay their workers to do more and more for less and less every year. They take advantage if you will and unions represent the workers and dont allow that to happen. From my experience union construction workers are better payed better trained they mostly all.have 1 or 2 pensions ,vacation time thr best benefits. And they get raises to account for inflation regularly. This does increase job costs so the workers should use their better training to save the company money were ever possible. The one thing that will kill a union faster than corruption is lazy overpaid workers
[/quote]
Fucking nonsense. I electrical code is code, regardless of who installs. If people are getting killed it’s because they ve hired idiots. Union or not. Grow up!
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So the culinary union employs millions of workers tou may think are expendable. The cannabis industry would be known different and as for the skill level the difference is training in the union it’s a five year INTENSIVE apprenticeship with thousands of hours of work experience and thousands of hours of in class learning before you are considered competent. In non union construction the schooling is 10percent of union and the quality shows. Obviously this is generally speaking some union works suck and some non union are great. But you cannot denie the difference in TRAINING
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They are, with few exceptions.
I’m unclear as to what the rest of your posting is going on about so I will refrain from commenting at this time.
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Usually on big job sites non union will get electrical then they blow the building and the union boys have their jobs . Seen it time and time again.
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Lol really… to sum it up for you. Union workers go through an intensive apprenticeship usually 4 -5 years with thousands of hours of in class and on the job experience before they are considered qualified. Non union doesn’t require even 10 percent of that and it shows in their work
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Construction union in Nevada is only 6 months to a year…
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