First Mover Secrets with Colin Keeler: How Kiva’s Edibles Cover 80% of the U.S

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Colin Keeler: And in hemp, you are seeing — I absolutely believe it — new consumers coming in through various channels, and that will drive new products and more differentiation among brands. There will be more ways to succeed as we talk about the different places this stuff could be available. The general operating principles I referenced may be gone; we don't know what this world is going to look like, and that's what's so exciting for so many folks — this is the great unpacking of the industry. Bryan Fields: What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields, and with me as always is Kellen Finney. This week we've got a very special guest, Colin Keeler, Head of Business Development at Kiva Confections. Colin, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today? Colin Keeler: I'm doing great, doing great, guys. Thanksgiving week, super excited to be here, excited to dive in with you both. Kellen Finney: Really excited to talk to Colin, and even more excited to have an individual who calls Colorado home — which is where he currently lives — on the show. Excited to dive into Kiva and everything going on within cannabis and edibles. I know we have a long list of topics today. How are you doing, Bryan? Bryan Fields: I'm stoked. I've made no secret that Kiva is one of my favorite products, and edibles are my preferred form, so I'm excited to pick Colin's brain about products on the horizon. But before that — East Coast versus West Coast — where were you born, Colin? Colin Keeler: I was born outside Philadelphia, on the East Coast. But I live in Denver now and work for Kiva, which is a West Coast company. Bryan Fields: Split affiliations — that's fair. For our listeners who don't know you, can you give a little background on yourself and how you found your way into cannabis? Colin Keeler: Today I head up Business Development for Kiva. Coming out of undergrad, I worked in investment banking, really from a healthcare lens, and got into cannabis originally from that angle — seeing the opportunity to help with pain management and mental health conditions. I took a brief detour into harder drugs — I worked at a psychedelic biotech that I helped take public in 2021 — and then came back to a long-time friend at Kiva and joined the team. I've loved helping them expand across the country and into hemp, and thinking of creative ways to work with different groups and grow the brand. Easier said than done. Kellen Finney: So growing the brand — is it a target list where your team has a list of states you're eager to explore before the year starts, or is it more dynamic, based on things like "Tennessee is getting hot" or "Australia is starting to grow, we should look there"? How planned versus dynamic is it? Colin Keeler: It's a bit of both. Serendipity always plays a role — it is business development, after all — but I generally distill my job into three S's: strategy — where we want to go and making recommendations on that; sourcing — working through potential partners; and structuring the deals we do to pursue our mutual goals. Maybe it's worth introducing Kiva for those who don't know us: we're the largest edible brand in California, one of the largest in the country. Camino is our flagship gummy brand, and we have a stable of other products spanning mints, chews, and chocolates, which is our heritage. We're also the largest full-service cannabis distributor in California. As we've expanded outside California, we've worked through partnerships, licensing, and co-manufacturing — different business models to match what each state offers. So it's sourcing partners and then structuring deals to pursue our goals, and those goals have evolved over time. It started as "we can license the brand and touch other states," which was hard back then, but now the roster of partners has expanded and people think about their businesses differently, creating unique opportunities to be bespoke to what drives success in each market — which varies a lot from cannabis market to cannabis market. We think we're doing this as effectively as anyone, but it's an evolving thing. We're introducing new innovations and new ways to pursue being the leading edible brand while actually making money, which in cannabis can be challenging. Bryan Fields: From a business development perspective, it's had to be an exciting five years at Kiva. Before hemp became what it is today, did you guys traditionally target states that were medical-only and likely to transition to adult use, or wait for adult use? Colin Keeler: The way we think about it, size matters, and that affects what you can do — moving early against sizable markets is a winning strategy in our opinion. If it can be medical and supportable, we've done that and it's worked out well — Ohio has been a phenomenal story; we're the number one edible brand there, and we entered with momentum into adult use. In other markets it may be adult use first — like New York, where we were an early mover in adult use and that's paid dividends; we're now number one there too. There's no single recipe, but especially in edibles, people trust edibles — once you find one you like, there's durability to that because it's delivering an effect, and you're usually goal-seeking for something consistent. Being early into these markets is important because consumers build loyalty — "this is my go-to for sleep, for energy, for partying, whatever." Being early with an aligned partner who can execute the jobs to be done — producing to unconstrained demand, having the financial resources and facility capability, and then selling and marketing to unconstrained demand — is key. We can do that through licensing with a partner who has a great wholesale portfolio, or Kiva can do it ourselves, like in New York, where we have our own team building relationships directly. It's not one-size-fits-all, but the goal is always to be the number one slot, make the pie as big as possible, and structure relationships so there are dividends on both sides — this isn't an acquisition, you can't take advantage of somebody. You need a deal that works and can evolve and be resilient against a changing environment. Kellen Finney: It's one thing to target being number one, but another to actually achieve it. When a consumer walks into a dispensary for the first time and asks a budtender for a suggestion, is that where Kiva really shows up, or do you start earlier, priming consumers before they even get there? Colin Keeler: This answer isn't the same for every company. For Kiva, what's driven our success is that we're a product-led company — our founders, Scott and Kristi, care deeply about the products and the innovation, and that's led to brands that resonate because we've led innovation across so many dimensions in edibles. We had one of the first chocolate bars at a time when people were still doing Rice Krispy treats in plastic in California. Terra Bites was one of the first portable products. Camino was one of the first effects-driven gummy lines and an early mover in using CBN and minor cannabinoids to drive specific effects. Chews — our Starburst-style candy format — very few others are doing at scale, and that's rolling out to more geographies shortly, building on its success in California. That's been our core value, and then it's the ground game — education, educating budtenders who are still the gateway today, but also finding ways to reach consumers outside of just winning the hearts and minds of budtenders. We lead on brand and product; other companies lead on sales or promotions, which can be very right for them, but for us, this is what's durable and continues to drive our success in existing markets and in new things like hemp. Bryan Fields: Do you guys typically lead with two or three flagship products into new markets — gummies, chocolates, a specific flavor — or does that change by state? Colin Keeler: Great question. We look at each state and try to match what's needed, but it's almost always gummies to start, because in any edible market, edibles are on average 10 to 20% of total cannabis spend, and gummies are 60 to 80% of that. When gummies started taking share, we asked ourselves, are we a chocolate company or an edible company, and that's when we went hard after gummies — and we've seen success with Camino and Lost Farm because it's such an important category. Then it's about which dimensions of innovation matter — increasingly, minor cannabinoids and effects matter. Camino already leads on effects, delivering an understandable value proposition for consumers. Lost Farm fits consumers who already know the cannabis strains they like and can refract that into an edible delivering the same effect. I'm extremely bullish on minor cannabinoids — I love CBG, I love THCV — and we're increasingly bringing those into our portfolios. Second, dosage — what's the dosage paradigm for the state? A medical state looks very different from adult use. Is there a 100-milligram cap? Are there preparation loopholes? We have the Lost Farm One Piece, which has seen strong success in the markets we've launched, addressing the dosage-focused consumer who doesn't want to eat 20 gummies to get an appropriate dose. Those are the things that matter, but we always talk to partners who know the local market — should we bring in pineapple guava or yuzu lemon? Those are important geography-based decisions. Bryan Fields: Peach for Georgia, I'd imagine. Colin Keeler: Exactly — you build it around what matters to people. If someone suggested an apple flavor for New York, I'd say no — nobody in New York calls it "the Big Apple" in that sense; you have to get it right. Kellen Finney: I think the important part is we're seeing early signs of brands traveling. When a budtender recommends a product, they're more likely to recommend something they've personally tried many times, like Kiva, because it's easy to recommend. I wonder if you're seeing that trend too, which is why being early with a brand like yours that's expanded so quickly matters. Colin Keeler: Yes — the Northeast remains a priority because of that momentum. New York we've moved to number one. Massachusetts we've been number one for a long time. We just launched Connecticut about two weeks ago and are already doing phenomenally, well above expectations. New Jersey is off to a great start. Being from the Philly area, would I want Pennsylvania in the mix? Absolutely, at some point. And Maryland — we'd love to be there too. We want to be everywhere, but building on markets where consumers already know and trust us is very much part of our playbook. Bryan Fields: Let's get into hemp, because it must be really challenging to balance not competing with yourself in these markets while still gaining market share as the hemp consumer base grows and dabbles between both sides of the industry. Fair way to describe it? Colin Keeler: It's a really interesting thing. My wife is from Minnesota, and I was actually up there two years ago when they accidentally legalized hemp — that's when it really entered my radar. I'd been aware of Delta-8, seen it in stores, but always viewed it as "not real cannabis." Then I saw the legalization and, that Christmas, my mother-in-law said, "Colin, I think they're selling marijuana at the boutique." I said, let's go check this out — and I saw edibles that were essentially the same kind of products you'd get in any other cannabis market. I thought, we can't be behind on this. Then it was a year of figuring out how to do this in a way that delivers on the brand value we've established in cannabis, consistently, while balancing existing partners, dispensaries, and manufacturing relationships. It's been a thoughtful building process. Our strategy: we're in 15, going on 16, traditional cannabis states. Adding hemp markets through DTC and wholesale relationships brings that to 40 states, covering about 80% of the U.S. population as potential customers. As for balancing it — in some states we overlap, in some we don't. We're very judicious about which states we enter for hemp; if it's not bright-line legal, we're not doing it — we want to be fully in the right. Where there is overlap, it's actually been fascinating: we believe it's driving lift in our traditional cannabis business. I might be selling the same or a lower-dosed product for twice the price — take Oklahoma, for example, with 100-milligram products. It builds touchpoints with the consumer — how many times do they need to see the brand before they buy? Now I can reach them through channels I've never been in before. If they see Camino and then go to a dispensary, instead of paying $35 direct-to-consumer for 100 milligrams, they can get it for a fraction of that, or get 1,000 milligrams if that's their price point. We've seen a meaningful improvement in our Oklahoma cannabis business as an example. It elevates the whole funnel — introduction to the brand, trial, and price variance. This is a huge opportunity to bring people into cannabis, into our brands. That's validated by the product mix too: in a new cannabis state, sleep is typically the top seller, around 40% of the mix. That's not the case in hemp DTC and wholesale — you see completely different top sellers, including our low-dose product ranking as high as third in DTC channels, which doesn't happen in cannabis markets, where it's a nice performer but fifth out of the top five. Hemp is bringing in new consumers, and it'll drive new products and more differentiation among brands going forward. The general operating principles may not apply in this new world, and that's what's exciting — this is the great unpacking. Soccer moms are coming in, in a big way, and the question is whether you can position your business to take advantage of it without being taken advantage of. Kellen Finney: Does that have the same impact on international markets — from a legality perspective, can you do DTC in a place like Australia with hemp? Colin Keeler: It's not easy. The hemp bill is almost a singularly American invention. There are markets latching onto it that may create export opportunities, but there's no ripple effect from the Farm Bill that impacts national or international narcotics laws — the hemp loophole allowing certain THC thresholds legally isn't something with broader international legal impact. Bryan Fields: So depending on who you ask — you're not a lawyer, but that's essentially it? Colin Keeler: Right, I'd say it depends who you ask, and I'm not a lawyer, but over time I think this will crystallize more. Everybody thinks about it differently — Europe right now is very flower-focused, and edibles aren't even on their radar. We've seen some interest in Eastern Europe with synthetics like HHC. There's a chance this could become the operating paradigm for some nation-states, but I can barely predict U.S. state and federal regulatory changes, let alone international ones. We're looking at international expansion under more traditional cannabis architecture for now. Kellen Finney: Internally, does your team break up a state like New York into traditional cannabis versus hemp as separate defined markets, and compare them to check if hemp is cannibalizing the cannabis side? Colin Keeler: We've been judicious about overlap, and in states where there is overlap, we've seen a meaningful acceleration — we try to work directly with partners to support their dispensaries too. What's interesting is it hasn't required many hard decisions, because most states are choosing one paradigm or the other — hemp or cannabis — which makes life easier. Some states go through a dispensary-driven distribution paradigm, others through an alcohol/beverage or smoke shop paradigm, and I'm open to both. My long-term hope is some kind of high-low approach proliferates, like you've seen in alcohol — though every state does alcohol differently too. Bryan Fields: I grew up in New Jersey, where there are liquor stores, versus Pennsylvania with beer distributors and state-run wine and spirits stores, versus Minnesota with its old "3.2 beer" liquor store laws that have since changed. Maybe that's what happens here too — every state ends up pretty different. Colin Keeler: That's reasonable to expect. Everyone hopes for a grand awakening where it's all the same across the country, but nothing in the U.S. works that way — we're a collection of states doing things differently, and that's the nature of this grand experiment. I think that's what will happen with cannabis and hemp THC as well. Bryan Fields: One thing that helps regulate alcohol is that I can't ship a bottle of wine across state lines without a license — a distributor system. I wonder if something similar needs to happen with hemp, since otherwise you could produce in one state and ship everywhere, undermining cannabis operators who are handcuffed to their own state. Do you think some law will need to be enacted so hemp and cannabis can coexist, or will the two industries fully merge — THC is THC regardless of source — or will they remain parallel industries indefinitely? Colin Keeler: If I had the answer, we'd cut the recording and go start that business. I'd like to believe logic prevails over time, but my experience with cannabis is usually the opposite. My hope is that there's more emergence over time toward a science-driven perspective, with supporting rules enabling whatever regulatory framework states want — if a state wants to set its own rules, it should have that agency, and that's worked so far in hemp. Look at the Northeast, where some states are beverage-only, some ban hemp products outright, some set CBD ratios — where there's accompanying enforcement, it seems to work. In Colorado, my local liquor store now carries low-dose beverages because the rules changed and people are following them. Are there shady online sellers shipping against these laws? Without a doubt — but that happens with anything, even mushrooms shipped illegally across state lines. We can't blame the state architects for that; enforcement is what matters. Bryan Fields: Let's talk economies of scale in hemp — you can ship across all states, but does pricing need to stay close to dispensary pricing to keep the customer? Colin Keeler: Pricing architecture is one of the hardest things for any crossover cannabis company to get used to. State by state, pricing is wildly disparate — a tin of Camino might be close to $40 with taxes and cost of goods in one state, and close to $10 in another. That's hard to manage, and hemp simplifies it to an extent. We're starting high because we think that's important, and where there's overlap with a cannabis market, we won't compete on price there — we want to support our dispensary partners as the preeminent choice, since DTC customers may pay a premium for direct delivery. We want to be competitive over time, and every cannabis market seems to mature toward the same place. We never build our business model around an excess-profit period in any given state — that's a mistake many make, assuming high margins are permanent due to lack of competition. If you live in that world, you're not building something durable. You have to expect competition and want it — I want all my competing brands in the states I enter because I want to beat them, not because I don't want a fight. Bryan Fields: Does that mean your hemp platform pricing is geolocated, or consistent across all states? Colin Keeler: We try to be consistent across geographies on DTC — pricing doesn't change if you log in with a VPN from a different state. On wholesale, we go out with a consistent list price as well; the margins retailers take vary by state and channel — smoke shops tend to take higher margins, similar to dispensaries, while liquor stores and others tend to be lower, so MSRPs do vary. We try to guide retailers toward consistency with our brand values, but it's hard. We're live in wholesale in Tennessee and Minnesota, with a few more coming in the next couple of months — if any distributors are listening, give me a call. Kellen Finney: What have you learned from cannabis that's benefited you most in hemp? Colin Keeler: Kiva has a mixed heritage — folks who come from OG cannabis and have seen these markets develop, and folks with strong CPG backgrounds from companies like Red Bull and Pepsi. Together that's positioned us well to excel across go-to-market strategies and categories, bringing the best education and incentives from the cannabis world while understanding that the rules and channels in hemp are radically different. We'd never done a PDQ before — a "pretty darn quick" display box you see in retail where you rip the top off. I had to learn a whole new set of acronyms. It's challenging but fun, because people look at us and see the authenticity and proven strength of a cannabis brand, but also the retail sophistication we bring from CPG and liquor distribution. Some states require hemp products to be behind the counter, others allow shelf placement, which changes merchandising and retailer support needs. The biggest thing we've brought over is education — teaching beer distributors from the very basics up. It's exciting for them because it's novel, but without a heritage of educating budtenders and consumers, it's a lot harder. Bryan Fields: How much does Kiva prioritize internal innovation, given that consumers are so effects-driven, especially in edibles? Colin Keeler: It's central to how we think — where is the consumer, what do they want. We're willing to try things and let them go if they don't work, but the history of our innovation has been really important, and sometimes surprising. Beyond the major effect-driven areas, people innovate on form factor too — Chews were a great example, proven in California and then rolled out elsewhere, which is our model: prove it in California, own the results, then bring it to partners and show them the excitement. Bringing a full portfolio, versus a single product, means we can serve more of a dispensary's needs and grow their basket, and partners trust us because we've proven success elsewhere. Some innovation is just a fun gimmick for a period of time — we've done stunts like a ketchup-flavored product a couple of years ago — but durable innovation continues to address consumer needs, whether through minor cannabinoids, dosage, or whatever the next "unicorn" idea is. There are false flags too — I really thought speed of onset was going to be the next big thing, and we spent real time trying to find something that actually delivered faster onset. We found a technology that was incredibly fast but tasted terrible, so we never used it — it has to actually work and not taste awful. Bryan Fields: What area is your team investing in that you're most bullish on for the future? Colin Keeler: Dosage — building thoughtfully for low-dose, high-dose, and intermediate-dose consumers in the ways they want, since these are correlated choices. The Lost Farm One Piece is one example; we also have something more value-oriented in the works delivering a strong dose in a novel format I can't detail yet. High dosage, especially for medical consumers, is really important too. There's an interesting parallel to Coca-Cola, which resisted major changes at various points — the fun-size format, moving off glass bottles — but once you build brand value, it turns out to be pretty durable to extend into related, tailored products for consumers with different needs. And the more we can do with minor cannabinoids, the better — I'm excited about the research happening there. Our Recover SKU with CBG is my favorite; I had no prior affinity for CBG, but it's a phenomenal product. Kellen Finney: Is Kiva leaning more into the sports/performance and recovery side, or more into general wellness? Colin Keeler: I think gummies are such a dominant format because they fit neatly into supplementation and wellness — that's genuinely how many people use them. Sleep is such a strong category because it's a provable effect for people; you know whether you slept well or not. CBN products help with that, and research is starting to back it up. THCV delivers on focus and energy. Whatever we bring forward has to actually live up to what we put into it, and it fits into wellness as well as the traditional party/fun-time use case. Bryan Fields: I agree — the creative, focus-oriented effects are the ones I enjoy most, when you're stuck on a problem and an edible helps unlock a solution. I think that's an area where people don't yet realize edibles can deliver for them. Colin Keeler: Agreed — as for specific minor cannabinoids coming down the pipeline, I try not to get too far ahead of product and brand — that's not my lane, and I'd get in trouble for jumping the gun. Bryan Fields: What about other form factors, like beverages? Colin Keeler: I remain very focused on beverage and continue to contemplate it. Kiva's distribution arm already carries the bulk of the top beverage brands in California, and I wrote an article back in 2019 or 2020 about cannabis beverages as a frontier expander for consumption. I think it's proof that changing distribution models in hemp can beget success in product formats that historically haven't thrived through a single type of end-sale point. So beverage remains interesting for us — no immediate plans, but we're keeping a close pulse on it and working with many of the same distributors as several beverage brands. Not a no. Bryan Fields: Slightly switching gears — dream smoking session, three people, dead or alive. Colin Keeler: I listen to podcasts that ask this all the time and always have great ideas, so let me go a little different — Avicii, since I was recently listening to "Levels" and thinking about his passing. Then let's keep it presidential — Obama is on everyone's list, and I'd add Bill Clinton too. Bryan Fields: Tell me something true that nobody agrees with you on. Colin Keeler: My coworkers make fun of me for how much I love our CBG SKU — it's not that nobody agrees, but I think I'm the biggest fan of it by far among my close colleagues. Kellen Finney: What question do you wish more people asked you? Colin Keeler: "Where can I get Kiva?" And the honest answer is — everywhere. Bryan Fields: Are there any underrated elements of Kiva that you think aren't getting enough attention? Colin Keeler: I'm just proud of the team — everyone internally works extremely hard and holds our brands in the highest esteem. I've worked at companies where that passion wasn't there. This kind of expansion and growth is chaotic, fun, and full of unbelievable energy, but challenging at times, and I'm thankful every day for coworkers who help push this brand to new heights. Bryan Fields: Prediction time — one year from now, what does the edible market look like? Colin Keeler: Edibles will never again be as low a share of spend as they are today. Through more points of sale and continued product innovation, share of spend should keep climbing from the current 10 to 20% range — if it's dramatically higher than 20% within a year or a few years, I'd be surprised, because I think the potential of edibles is just starting to be realized. Kellen Finney: I agree — I expect a slow, steady increase in edible consumption, maybe five to ten percent growth year-over-year for the next five to ten years, since people are generally comfortable eating something that causes a psychological change, similar to how they view pharmaceuticals. Bryan Fields: A year ago, most people wouldn't have expected the beverage market to explode the way it has, so I think edibles could follow a similar path if the Farm Bill situation continues or gets addressed, and Americans increasingly recognize they can consume cannabinoids in a familiar, less intense format like a beverage. If edibles get that same kind of "aha" moment, it could be the next frontier that takes off in a big way. Bryan Fields: Colin, for our listeners who want to get in touch and learn more, where can they find you? Colin Keeler: Find Kiva Confections online, and please add me on LinkedIn — I love the banter and back-and-forth there. Bryan Fields: We'll link it in the show notes. Thanks for taking the time, this was a lot of fun. Colin Keeler: Thanks, guys.