Inside Curio Wellness with Wendy Bronfein: Maryland vs. Missouri Cannabis Markets and Crohn’s Treatment

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Wendy Bronfein: I'm like, medicine has flavor — people take their medicine when it tastes good. Look at all these products from the drugstore that anyone can buy — this is a ridiculous conversation. And that was the first hurdle we overcame, but that was a crazy stunt we had to pull just to make the case for common sense. [Music] Bryan Fields: What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields, and with me as always is Kellan Finney. This week we've got a very special guest, Wendy Bronfein, co-founder of Curio Wellness. Wendy, thanks for taking the time — how are you doing today? Wendy Bronfein: Hello, thanks for having me, guys. I'm well, excited to dive in. Kellan, how are you doing? Kellan Finney: I'm doing really well, excited to talk to Wendy — excited to dive into Maryland and East Coast cannabis. How are you doing, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Yeah, I'm stoked. I'm really excited to talk to Wendy and learn about Curio, as an alumni of the University of Maryland — getting the chance to pick Wendy's brain about the status of the Maryland market is really beneficial, because, as we were talking about before we started, the state of Maryland has changed drastically since my old self left there. So I'm excited to learn. Bryan Fields: So Wendy, we've got an East Coast versus West Coast battle — put yourself on the map, what side are you taking? Wendy Bronfein: I've lived in both, in the world of cannabis. I think I'm taking East. Kellan Finney: There it is! There it is. Bryan Fields: I wasn't even gonna try after that. No, we're just gonna — after minutes of bonding — let the record reflect... Kellan Finney: The record is now reflected. Cool. Bryan Fields: So Wendy, our listeners may not know you — can you give a little background on yourself and how you found your way to the cannabis space? Wendy Bronfein: Sure. I was born and raised here in Baltimore. I was actually in the television industry — that was my major, that's what I did from the time I was out of college until 2016, when I left and returned here to start a business with my dad. We had won a license when Maryland went medical, and there wasn't really a plan to go there — we sort of found our way. When Maryland stated they were going to have a medical program, there was talk of an application process. My mom, dad, sister, and I went with some family friends to Colorado over Memorial Day weekend of 2014, right around the time adult use had happened there, and we visited dispensaries and saw some stuff. I came home, and then the decision was made that I was going to go back to Colorado the next month for the NCIA convention to do due diligence. We sat around the kitchen table — I had my little notebook — and talked about how states were going to hit a critical mass and the federal government was just waiting for states to test it all out and prove it, and then it would all change. Ten years later, here we are, but we do have more states, so that's a win. We ended up winning pre-approval in that process, which was finally completed in August of 2016. We started building our facility in Maryland, were operational in 2017, and were actually the first company to ship to licensed dispensaries in December of that year. We've been in the space ever since. The state went adult-use alongside medical in July of last year. Bryan Fields: Let's talk about those early days. When you applied for the license, was there a consideration of 'this could work out,' or was it more, 'unlikely we win, unlikely we get approved'? What was the thought process internally? Wendy Bronfein: We were nights and weekends from 2014 until we heard back. The Maryland application went in in November of 2015, and they said they'd let us know by the end of the year. Then it kept slipping — March, and it kept going. There were some things we were doing, like visiting the sites of other operators while we waited, but that time was also filled with heavy due diligence with scientists and physicians and experts, both in this country and outside of it, and building up a core team — essentially educating ourselves on things we didn't have a full grasp of before. Bryan Fields: Is Maryland itself, from a medical standpoint, vertically integrated or not? Wendy Bronfein: No, it's wholesale. At that time we had one license to cultivate, process, and operate a dispensary, but you could also distribute any products you grew or processed to any dispensary in the state, and it's still that way. Bryan Fields: In those early days, did you have to build your own supply chain, distribution, and cultivation? Was this the first time you'd ever cultivated? Did you have inventory ready for the first day of sales — how did that work? Wendy Bronfein: The whole thing was behind schedule — so behind that the state had opened the patient registry and there were about 20,000 patients signed up before we could even get product to a store. Everyone was chomping at the bit once it finally launched. The way licensing works now has learnings from the past — back then, not only did you have to show your whole plan for securing, growing, and processing, but the brand you were going to build. We built out an entire brand in advance, including what our website would look like, because some states required you to show that. We identified the real estate and, as soon as we won, started demoing the interior of the building and building our grow facility, which was about 60,000 square feet total, including our grow, process, and offices. We only turned on so many rooms in the beginning and grew from there. We were also the licensee for Dixie Brands in Maryland, so the first thing we did was make their products — their Elixir, tablets, and topicals — and that's what we distributed early on, alongside our own flower. I think there were seven dispensaries that opened that first week of December, and then more cultivators, processors, and dispensaries came online as the new year progressed. It was probably another year before there was real critical mass. We had cultivators on our original team who knew how to grow, but no, we personally had not done it before. Bryan Fields: Did it feel like drinking from a fire hose, with all the decisions you were making at once? Wendy Bronfein: Oh yeah — that phrase is said in this building a lot. Our COO at the time was masterful at planning every little thing we had to do. We actually had a countdown clock in our office, set to the date of our inspection, rolling down every day. We got to a point where the building was done, ready, and inspected, and then we waited over a month for the state to have a meeting to award dispensaries who'd been inspected. We just sat around — one time we all went bowling because there was a bowling alley nearby. There'd always be talk of a meeting that week that would never happen, so we just kept doing stuff, and sometimes there was nothing to do. Bryan Fields: What was the biggest early hurdle — the biggest pain in the neck looking back? Wendy Bronfein: I think the overarching one is not knowing what you didn't know. I was doing a tour recently and was in the trim room — back then it was literally all hands on deck, whether you were in marketing or cultivation or processing, everyone was in the trim room, staying late. The pathway to trimming product to get to market now, versus the carts we rolled in from the dry cure to the trim room back then, breaking down the plant piece by piece on individual tables — the mess afterward was insane. Today we have something like a Mobius that does a pre-trim, getting off a lot of the heavy material first so the manicure is easier. We were doing every stem, every leaf, by hand. We also didn't realize the lab element — we'd do all the work and then realize we couldn't put a sticker on it yet because we didn't have the COA back, so we had to learn to wait for lab results before finishing packaging, to avoid doing double work. Bryan Fields: Are you a pretty fast trimmer? Wendy Bronfein: I haven't been timed in a very long time, but it's an activity I find very relaxing. I'm a detail-oriented person, so that sort of meticulous activity is enjoyable to me. Bryan Fields: Those stories are some of our favorites to hear, because people forget that once you get the license, there's no roadmap — everything is learned through trial by fire or slow incremental improvement. Wendy Bronfein: Exactly. We became a franchisor for our retail business many years ago, and the reason was that as states kept talking about expanding licenses, we — as the wholesale grower/processor and retail operator — could see the rate at which people succeeded or didn't, and the impacts of 280E and other factors on the business. We felt like if we took the model we'd built successfully, we could help other people get up and running faster without having to figure it all out themselves, especially since regs and nuances get more filled out for those who join later. I was actually telling this story earlier today: early in the medical program, a regulator wanted to say nothing could have flavor, and everyone was up in arms — we didn't even have edibles yet, but the Dixie Elixir and a dissolvable tablet had flavors, and there was a meeting about it. So I went to CVS and bought every over-the-counter medicine that came chewable or dissolvable — adult liquid Tylenol, children's flu medicine, everything — spent about $300, and got carded buying it all, which was embarrassing. I got up at the meeting, covered the table with it, and said, 'Medicine has flavor — people take their medicine when it tastes good. Look at all these drugstore products anyone can buy — this is a ridiculous conversation.' That was the first hurdle we overcame, but it was a crazy stunt to have to pull just for common sense. Bryan Fields: I guess take us through the concept — Maryland was a medical market and then switched to adult use, and medical operators were given the ability to go first. Is that how you were able to convert? Wendy Bronfein: Yes. We passed adult use by referendum in an election, and the following legislative session, in April, they wrote the law. Coming out of that session we knew July 1st was the turn-on date, so there was swift action to create emergency regulations so medical operators could convert and also start selling adult use. We all had to pay a very large fee to shift our business model — outsized compared to probably any state in the country. We turned on July 1st with no real discrepancy between dispensary types — you just had to identify whether you'd have medical-only hours or prioritize medical patients in the queue. Maryland doesn't tax medical purchases, but there's a 9% tax on adult-use purchases. Medical patients can buy potencies above 10 milligrams per piece or 100 milligrams per package; adult-use consumers cannot. Then new license rounds contemplated in the bill came through a lottery — the first winners were announced in March of this year, and a second batch in June. After the lottery, there were validating conversations to confirm applications were complete, then winners moved into a conditional phase with 18 months to become operational, or the license folds back to the state. Bryan Fields: Were you able to — did you have to differentiate supply chains? Wendy Bronfein: No — for medical, you could use the same supply chain all the way up to the consumer, who decides at checkout whether they're buying as a medical or recreational customer. As a dispensary, you take in both high and low potency inventory into your point-of-sale system, and a medical customer just sees a different menu than a recreational customer would. Bryan Fields: That makes it so much easier. Wendy Bronfein: It is much easier. It would have been crazy to have two separate cultivations next to each other — like, this plant is medical, this plant is adult-use, based on THC percentage. We pushed back hard on that idea. Flower and vape are agnostic of the 10-milligram edibles rule, and we didn't want a bunch of extra metric tags — one system is much cleaner. Bryan Fields: What is the internal planning process like knowing your team is getting ready for adult use — is it 'how fast can we go,' or 'we think we can take this percentage of the market'? What's the internal conversation like? Wendy Bronfein: We did a lot of modeling, looking at states that had gone through this before — we thought Illinois was a good proxy because they'd done it well, and their medical program actually saw growth after the changeover. We used that to model our expected growth, and we were pretty much on the mark. Interestingly, consultants hired by the state during the legislative session presented numbers that were bananas — our team worked through them and found the projected volume would mean every adult in Maryland was smoking a joint every single day of the month, which is obviously not realistic, nor is every adult interested in participating. But that data helped shape the program, which was somewhat flawed as a result. Bryan Fields: Bet that market looked like it was going to really take off. Wendy Bronfein: Honestly, it hasn't grown nearly that much — people talked about 3x, but it's been a little more than 2x. Also, the advertising abilities we had as a medical operator became very constrained under adult use, so there isn't the same level of market awareness driving sales, and the state isn't seeing the tax revenue that was predicted. We also entered the Missouri market this past spring — they started in February, we started in July. Missouri has about the same number of adults 21-plus as Maryland, and we skew a bit higher in median income, but their market is far stronger than ours. We attribute that to two things: they can advertise, and they have a universal product mix with no potency cap. Bryan Fields: What do you mean by universal product mix? Wendy Bronfein: In Missouri, medical purchases carry a lower tax than adult-use purchases, but there's no cap on potency for either — you can buy a 5-milligram or a 50-milligram product regardless. That makes for a stronger market execution-wise. It doesn't mean people abuse how they use it — I could buy a pack of 10-count edibles today, come back tomorrow and buy more, and no one's tracking possession limits across visits. It all comes down to myths and stereotypes about who the cannabis consumer actually is. We did a lot of research this year to better understand consumers, because I think people make assumptions about a single type of consumer, and that drives product mix, price compression, and deal behavior — when the reality is much more dynamic. Bryan Fields: Can you give the demographics of the person you're alluding to? Wendy Bronfein: What people classically think of is the heavy flower enthusiast — a consistent consumer, but not loyal to any brand, driven by price and THC percentage. That's part of the market, but there are other consumer groups who can build a real relationship with a dispensary or a brand. Bryan Fields: Is there a part of the market you think is underserved, given your marketing background, that Curio is looking to attract? Wendy Bronfein: I won't give away all our secrets, but I'd say the 64% of the market that isn't that classic heavy-flower, price-driven consumer. Bryan Fields: Does that group fall into a particular age range, or is it wider than that? Wendy Bronfein: There are multiple groups across a range of ages, but from data in states like Colorado, teen use hasn't increased — this isn't really a young person's game. I think it's mostly 30s and up, people who are like the 'California sober' crowd — not drinking, but using cannabis to relax, unwind, or have fun — plus people using it for mood, sleep, or aches and pains. Since we went adult-use, customers ask for pretty much the same things they always did — barring a chronic or terminal diagnosis, it's aging, life changes, taking the edge off, sleep, feeling better. Bryan Fields: Are you exploring some of these concepts through marketing in Missouri? Has that been eye-opening, since you haven't had those tools in Maryland? Wendy Bronfein: We're doing it in both states, but we can execute much more broadly in Missouri, where there's essentially no constraint on public display — billboards, a table at a festival or farmers market, wherever. In Maryland, the law lists roughly ten synonyms for 'sign' that you cannot use publicly, except on property you own or lease, like your storefront. If you sponsor something and can prove the audience is 85% or more 21-and-older, that's valid too, and the same audience threshold applies to digital or print advertising. For the seven years we ran medical only, it wasn't a problem — it was tasteful, and no one colored outside the lines. It's striking that as Maryland adds many new licenses, entering a market where capital and banking are already hard, and 280E eats your profits, operators also can't tell anyone they exist. Bryan Fields: That sucks — these are just the basics of acting like a normal organization trying to grow a business. Wendy Bronfein: Right, it's a constant, oxymoronic situation — we've decided we're legal, but we're not going to act like we're comfortable with the fact that we're legal. Missouri, on the other hand, just has general parameters of appropriate behavior, and you can use traditional marketing and advertising, including sampling — as you should be able to, since these are just the basics of running a normal business. Bryan Fields: So trying to grow your brand within these constraints — does it start with an idea and then work backward through what's allowed, or do you sometimes just not try? Wendy Bronfein: I'll answer that through what we're doing right now versus the first time around, since we're actually working on a rebrand and package design right now. One place this really shows up is packaging, because every state has its own rules. We built a multi-state matrix of regulations and gave it to our agency, asking them to propose packaging designs under a new look and feel that could be compliant with minimal changes — we know we'll have to swap a symbol or a warning statement, but how minimal could that be across multiple states? The first round of concepts, we only liked one, and I told them we weren't moving forward with the others. Then they showed us what it would look like if it had to work everywhere, and I realized that was a bridge too far, so we dialed it back and asked them to show us designs that would work 80% of the time versus 40% of the time, and what we'd have to change if it didn't. They took the biggest offenders state by state, all the way down to states requiring black-and-white only, so we understood what layers of the look we'd lose. The packages didn't even have big claims on them — just an attractive, compelling design with a message hierarchy that's visually appealing to an adult, and it still had to work across every state's rules. It's much better now, and there's less anxiety knowing what will have to shift. When we went into Missouri, the inverse problem hit — Missouri's advertising is fantastic, but its packaging rules are a nightmare: one color, up to two logos, otherwise text is black or white, huge mandatory symbols and compliance labels. One package we submitted had a child-resistant bag with an IKEA-style picture showing how to work the CR bag, which we found out was actually a file the manufacturer gives you to add, not required — we had to remove it. The first time we submitted a gummy pouch reading 'Curio, Choose, Black Cherry Vanilla, 10 Milligrams,' it was rejected; they told us it would be approved only if it read like a literal sentence: 'Curio Black Cherry Vanilla Choose 10 Milligram.' Any artfulness in the design was rejected in favor of pure literal readability. Bryan Fields: Do you ever dream of doing the designs when regulations are more sensible? Wendy Bronfein: Maryland is like that — we can't say we cure anything, and we wouldn't anyway, but we can be much more visually appealing, like something you'd see in a cosmetics aisle. Bryan Fields: Talk to us about some of the research I know your team has moved toward, and areas you're bullish on. Wendy Bronfein: We've done a lot of product innovation and continue to. We wanted to move beyond 'I take five milligrams, you take five milligrams' toward something more definitive, matching product to person the way you'd reach for Pepto for an upset stomach or Excedrin for a headache. We have a scientific advisory board that's been with us since the beginning, and we work with them to figure out cannabinoid and terpene constituents that can address specific problems and how to formulate and deliver them. It started with a sleep product — we worked with a company called ResMed and their Sleep Score tool, which lets you evaluate your sleep via an app or a more stringent bedside unit. We built a tablet that's a ratio of THC to CBN with a pulsatile two-pulse release system: you take it 30 minutes before bed, the first pulse helps you fall asleep, and three hours later a second pulse helps you stay asleep. The pill is scored so you can halve it for a lower dose while keeping the same dosing mechanism. It was developed partly because my mom and our scientific board head's wife both had sleep issues — the idea was, can we break the Ambien-habit cycle? That led to a sister daytime product with CBD, THC, and THCV that, in my experience, doesn't produce a 'high' feeling at all — just a mood and energy lift, a very positive take-the-edge-off effect. The third area, which is more clinical, is a GI product — actually more than one version — currently going into a formal placebo-controlled trial. When we did the sleep product trial, we had to include the compliance label showing potency, which could bias how people felt about it, so we pushed for Maryland to codify rules around academic research, including placebo use, once the state went adult-use. This new trial is specifically looking at Crohn's disease: a tablet that doesn't release until it's deep in the gut, formulated by our chief scientific officer, a seasoned pharmacologist who knows how to build tablets like this. It uses a very high load of CBG and CBD with a very small amount of THC, taken twice daily, so there's no real psychoactivity, and it helps ease gut inflammation. We had a 'lab rat,' so to speak — who may or may not be my co-founder — who took an earlier version for a year as part of a safety study, since an animal safety study would have cost upwards of $100,000, which wasn't realistic given cannabis economics. He started with blood work and a colonoscopy to establish a baseline; he had a fairly high Crohn's index score, and the product brought him down into a non-inflamed range, completely changing his quality of life. We've now set up a formal trial with three formulations being compared for Crohn's patients. Bryan Fields: That's amazing — I can only imagine that guy volunteering. What's the timeline? For people who've faced similar challenges, is there hope they could learn more by the end of 2025? Wendy Bronfein: The recruitment window is about to begin. You do have to go to a Maryland dispensary — ideally ours — to get the product, and we're partnered with Practice Gastro Health, a local GI practice with multiple offices, whose doctors handle intake and patient assessments against the approved criteria. It's an IRB-approved study with a separate review board that validated the protocol before it began, and one arm of the trial receives a placebo so we can truly understand the results. Participants pick up their allotment at the dispensary, use it as prescribed, and return what's unused at the end so we can track it — the state created a whole protocol so R&D products can be reclaimed rather than treated as green waste, keeping the process as close as possible to how a pharma trial would run, so we can validate and hopefully publish the results. People need to be on it for multiple weeks, and we'll need a large group of participants, so we expect this project to run about a full year from beginning to end. Bryan Fields: Is this something you guys are funding, or is health insurance helping, or is it strictly Curio funding all of this? Wendy Bronfein: No, it's us. That's kind of the core of what we do — we grow great flower, make good gummies, and we've actually got a patent pending on getting real terpene results onto our labels, unlike a lot of products out there labeled 'Indica,' 'Sativa,' or 'Hybrid' with no terpene data to back it up. But this research space, where we can validate the legitimacy of the plant and change people's quality of life — even just helping someone relax after work — is the stuff that really gets us excited. Bryan Fields: That's amazing. Slightly switching gears — dream smoking session, three people, dead or alive? Wendy Bronfein: Oh my god, okay — Tina Fey is probably one. Then I was going back and forth between Janet and Madonna, but I figured I need to bring a guy into the mix — John Waters. Bryan Fields: Perfect, perfect. Tell me something that's true that nobody agrees with you on. Wendy Bronfein: I wish so many people around this office could hear you ask that and hear my answer — I think, to a certain extent, how much brand matters and that you have to live and die by it. I'm guessing you two didn't watch the Netflix series about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders — I was in awe of the woman who runs that organization, the discipline and rigor and respect everyone has for not messing with the smallest detail, because that's their story and legacy, and that's why they have the beloved status they do — it's all rooted in brand consistency and the discipline around it. You can't use your brand for convenience — it's not always the most economical choice, but you can't forsake it when it's convenient. Bryan Fields: Last question — what question do you wish more people asked you? Wendy Bronfein: Probably something about music, food, or places I've been. What's your favorite food? Probably ice cream — anything with a chip in it. We have a brand here called Tarka Brothers that goes deep on chip flavors, which makes me very happy, but I love a chocolate chip. My longtime favorite is Baskin Robbins regular or mint chocolate chip with rainbow sprinkles. And honestly, my favorite is a chipwich with my edible in it — if there's a Good Humor truck around, it's the chipwich, 100%. Bryan Fields: Can't go wrong. So Wendy, if our listeners want to get in touch or learn more, where can they find you? Wendy Bronfein: You can find me on LinkedIn, and everything about Curio Wellness online — I'm on the bio page with the other company leaders. We're also on Instagram and Facebook. If you're in Maryland, come by our stores — I'm usually at our Timonium store in Baltimore County, and we also have a store up in Elkton in the northern part of the state. If you're in the South, visit Sadaria, who's our franchisee in Olive Branch, Mississippi. If you're in Missouri, we don't have our own stores yet, but you can find our products in dispensaries around the state — and you can always write us an email and tell us how much you like them. Bryan Fields: I love it, we'll link it all up in the show notes. Thanks for taking the time — this was a lot of fun. Wendy Bronfein: Thank you so much, guys.