Pairing Convenience & Cannabis Flower: Why Pre-Rolls is here to stay ft. Harrison Bard

Pairing Convenience & Cannabis Flower: Why Pre-Rolls is here to stay ft. Harrison Bard

Harrison Bard: Once companies make that leap to really promise full-flower, fresh pre-rolls that have an expiration date — to have a best-buy date — that will win over so many more consumers. 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. This week we've got a very special guest, Harrison Bard, co-founder of Custom Cones USA. Harrison, thanks for taking the time — how are you doing today? Harrison Bard: Good, how are you doing, Bryan and Kellen? Bryan Fields: Doing good. Thanks for taking the time, Kellen — how are you doing? Kellen: I'm doing really well, really excited to talk to Harrison and learn as much as we can about pre-rolls and that whole industry. How are you doing today, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Yeah, I'm excited to talk pre-rolls — I didn't realize I was such a big pre-roll guy before getting into this conversation and some of the programs we're going to talk about today. But Harrison, before we dive into the fun stuff, we've got a little East Coast/West Coast battle going on, with loyalties split all over. Originally, are you from the East Coast or the West Coast? Harrison Bard: Yes, I'm from the East Coast — from Miami. I grew up there and always wanted to get out to the West Coast, because that's where the cannabis industry is. That's what brought me to the West Coast, and I'm now living in Seattle. Bryan Fields: Awesome. I also want to point out — thank you, Matthew, for noting that Kellen doesn't actually live on the West Coast. He lives in what Matthew described as "the Mountain West." So thank you for that. Kellen: Yeah, we can leave that one up for debate, but I'm going to say West Coast, you know. Bryan Fields: Yeah, I don't know, Matthew might disagree. So, Harrison, for our listeners, can you give some background on yourself and how you got into the cannabis space? Harrison Bard: Yeah, so I started Custom Cones USA with my co-founder, Frederick, in Seattle. We were both working at Amazon, and we'd talk every day about how brutal it was and how we should quit and get into the cannabis industry. Every day at lunch we'd talk about it, and every day after work we'd leave Amazon around six and work late into the night figuring out how to get in. Like you often hear in startup stories, the original idea isn't always the one that works out. Our original concept was a cannabis-infused blunt wrap where the paper itself is made from cannabis. We eventually figured out how to make it — manufacturing it inside a licensed Washington-based business — and when we brought it to farms to sell, people loved it, but said, "This paper is cool, but we need it in a pre-roll cone format to use in our lines." We had no idea about anything beyond making the paper, so we got exposed to pre-roll cones and how manufacturers were making pre-rolls, and that sent us down a rabbit hole learning everything about pre-roll cones. We'd already quit our jobs with no plan, and many months went by with no money coming in. Eventually we said, let's start a pre-roll cones business too, since we now understood it. We had three websites going at once, just trying anything, and then Custom Cones USA started taking off — this was 2018-2019, when pre-rolls weren't that cool yet but were starting to catch on. People started calling us saying, "What do you have in stock? I need 50,000 or 100,000 cones yesterday," and that's how the business kept growing. Bryan Fields: Take us through the timeline — from the original blunt-wrap idea, to pivoting toward Custom Cones, to when the business really took off. I want people to understand there were massive ups and downs; it's not overnight, you learn and iterate and keep moving forward. Harrison Bard: We started at Amazon in 2016. I put in one full year — thought that was the honorable thing to do — and both Frederick and I quit on the same day in 2017, which was a scary conversation. We'd started the cannabis paper company while still at Amazon in 2016, and mid-2017 is when we really learned about pre-roll cones and launched CustomConesUSA.com. We worked both businesses simultaneously for about a year to a year and a half, and in 2018 Custom Cones USA really started blowing up, so we made the tough call to put the cannabis papers on hold. We still have that technology and have talked to partners about bringing it back state by state eventually, but we tabled it to focus solely on Custom Cones USA. Kellen: In those early days, balancing different businesses and trying a bunch of things — how were you determining how to allocate your resources? Harrison Bard: We were all in — we'd quit our jobs, which has pros and cons. A lot of entrepreneurs say a safety net keeps you from fully investing, but you also want to be financially stable or have family to fall back on, because you can lose everything. Most businesses fail within five years, so you should expect that as the likely outcome, and that's why pivoting matters — if you're not willing to pivot, your chances of failure go up. We threw all our resources at everything, and we were good at listening to the customer, something Amazon drilled into us. As we got more data on how the pre-roll industry was growing compared to cannabis-derived papers, it became obvious where to shift our time and resources. Kellen: What do you think caused the spike that took Custom Cones from a side business to the primary focus? Harrison Bard: I think it came down to the life cycle of pre-rolls in the industry. Back in 2016-2017, cannabis markets in Washington, California, and Colorado were young, and pre-rolls were mainly a way for farmers to turn trim and shake into money — high margin because it used material they'd otherwise dispose of. Now there's more extraction for that material. Back then pre-rolls were pretty garbage, but consumers still bought them. As cannabis prices kept dropping, farmers who used to put garbage flower into pre-rolls could now use B and C bud — perfectly fine cannabis — for the same cost. Consumers started caring more about pre-roll quality, and budtenders love pre-rolls too — even great rollers don't want to spend twenty minutes rolling five joints at a party, so they'll grab a multi-pack. As flower prices dropped, it became more viable to put higher-quality flower into pre-rolls, which spurred category growth. Kellen: Washington is probably one of the strongest pre-roll markets in the country. In those early days, were you focused on Washington conversations, or learning outside the state too? Harrison Bard: We've always had a nationwide, North American focus — we sell a lot into Canada too. Interestingly, it was actually hard to tap into Washington at first, because Washington, California, and Colorado have done medical and recreational cannabis the longest, so those companies already had their supply chains figured out and weren't looking for new suppliers or attending trade shows. In fact, there aren't many trade shows left in Washington or Colorado. CannaCon used to do state shows there but stopped; Indo Expo in Colorado fizzled out too. MJBizCon in Vegas still draws everyone. So it was hard to break into Washington first — we succeeded by being in every state possible, and emerging states are where we get a lot of new customers. Bryan Fields: Going back to the value of a pre-roll and the tobacco comparison — most people going out to smoke a cigarette don't roll their own. I think that convenience is what unlocked the category, since not everyone can roll their own joints. Do you think that's the big difference, or what's helped unlock the category to the numbers we've seen? Harrison Bard: Definitely convenience is a big part of it — in the U.S. especially, convenience is king. You see it with drive-through restaurants, grab-and-go coffees, pre-made coffee drinks, energy drinks, bottled teas — everything is shifting toward convenience. And as you said, many people can't roll well. Infused pre-rolls have also gotten extremely popular, and those are messy and hard to make yourself even if you can roll — you need concentrate liquefied without overheating, special tools, and thin fragile papers that rip easily, wasting expensive concentrate. That's helped expand the category, since even advanced rollers struggle to make infused pre-rolls well. We're also seeing wood tips, glass tips, and different shapes and sizes — glass tips are slippery and slide out unless you use a cigar band, which almost no one has on hand. Plus, pre-roll automation has advanced a lot; the equipment didn't even exist 10-15 years ago. A lot of pre-roll equipment makers started as mom-and-pop producer-processors frustrated with bad machines who built better ones themselves. Advances in tabletop and fully automated pre-roll machines have dropped labor and production costs, improved consistency, and driven prices down. Bryan Fields: One question I've always had — why do pre-rolls still use crutches instead of filters like a cigarette? Harrison Bard: The filter in a cigarette is actually plastic — cellulose acetate — which is why you see thousands littering city streets. Heating plastic probably releases microplastics and chemicals into your lungs, so educated cannabis consumers don't want that. Cigarette filters also filter out some tar and carcinogens, but also some THC — probably minute, and we're trying to get a lab to study that. But the average cannabis consumer wants to get as high as possible and isn't used to smoking through that kind of filter; a harsh, coughing hit is often seen as a sign of quality and being really baked, which you lose with that type of filter. Bryan Fields: Just to clarify for listeners who might not know — can you break down the difference between a regular pre-roll and an infused pre-roll? Harrison Bard: A regular pre-roll is the all-encompassing term for a joint that's already rolled and ready for dispensary sale. An infused pre-roll is a subset that includes some cannabis concentrate. The most popular method is painting a light layer of cannabis oil on the outside and rolling it in kief — brands like Jeeter and Fuzzies out of California dominate this. You can flavor them too; oil is thinned either by heat or by adding terpenes. Cannabis-derived terpenes are extremely expensive — thousands of dollars per liter — so many companies use botanically derived terpenes from things like lavender or oranges, sold by companies like True Terpenes; these are common in flavor-heavy vapes. Live resin vapes usually don't use them and taste more naturally cannabis-like. Besides outside-painted infusions, you can infuse within the cone by mixing kief or bubble hash directly with flower before rolling. We also have an automated machine that can produce 800 infused pre-rolls per hour by injecting oil down the center of a finished pre-roll, and a newer attachment creates a hollow cavity and injects a rod of concentrate, creating a donut-style infused pre-roll. Kellen: Just to clarify, is pricing relatively similar, with infused costing a bit more, and people choosing infused mainly to get more baked? Harrison Bard: Infused pre-rolls are definitely more expensive. Bigger brands, like Juicy Joints in Washington, which only makes pre-rolls, sell infused pre-rolls for roughly what a smaller grower's craft full-flower pre-roll costs. Right now you could get an infused pre-roll for $8-15, versus a low-quality budget pre-roll for as little as $4 in Washington. The national average pre-roll price is around $4 on the low end and up to $10-15 elsewhere, while infused pre-rolls typically run $10-20, sometimes $25-30. Kellen: Is there a typical favored size for infused pre-rolls, like one-gram cones, or is it arbitrary? Harrison Bard: It's really varied. Jeeter leads the category nationally — in a report we did on Arizona, all of the top 200 pre-roll products were infused, ranging from small "dog walkers" to single one-gram pre-rolls. One-gram infused pre-rolls usually come in single packs, while smaller sizes (0.25-0.35g) usually come in multi-packs of five to ten. Smoking a one-gram infused pre-roll takes 10-20 minutes and is usually more than one or two people need, which is why smaller sizes are popular — cheaper and more accessible. Bryan Fields: I'd be impressed by anyone who could smoke a one-gram infused pre-roll alone — you'd probably find a YouTuber doing it. Bryan Fields: I want to ask about the cross cone, like in Pineapple Express — are those popular? I've never seen anyone actually smoke one. Do people buy those? Harrison Bard: They're really neat. A company out of Colorado, I believe The Green Solution, a huge vertically integrated dispensary chain, sells them. It's not a leading SKU, but it's a giftable, novelty item — great for standing out or wowing people at a party, even if it's not something people smoke daily. Bryan Fields: That's exactly what I thought when I opened one — it'd be a shame to smoke it alone, it's the perfect thing to share. Harrison Bard: Right, you actually can't smoke it alone — you need to light all three ends at once for it to burn evenly, which takes at least two people and three lighters. It's definitely a party experience. Kellen: Definitely an eye-opener. I'm curious about state-by-state purchasing habits — have you seen trends in size or paper preference across states? Harrison Bard: Things are pretty consistent state to state. Interestingly, pre-rolls have the most consistent sales across consumer demographics of any category. We released a white paper with Headset showing that baby boomers spend about 42.5% of their cannabis dollars on flower, dropping to 40% for Gen X, 39% for Millennials, and 33% for Gen Z. Vape pens go the opposite way — Gen Z spends 33.6% on vapes, dropping to 24% for Millennials, 20% for Gen X, and 14% for Baby Boomers. Pre-rolls stay remarkably consistent: about 14.4-14.5% of spend for Gen Z and Millennials, 13.6% for Gen X, and 12.8% for Baby Boomers. Kellen: Any theories why that consistency exists? Harrison Bard: I think it's the tried-and-true, proven method — similar to bongs, which are probably consistent across generations too. People have grown up smoking pre-rolls; it's trustworthy, hands-on, almost ritualistic, and very communal when smoking with a group. The convenience factor is huge too — even non-rollers can grab a pre-roll at a dispensary and step outside. Bryan Fields: And tied to convenience — multi-packs have exploded. We've seen over 400% growth in multi-packs since 2021; in 2018 they made up 27.7% of pre-roll sales, and by 2023 that's over 47%. Manufacturers save on labeling and packaging costs per unit by bundling multiple pre-rolls, and they pass some of those savings to consumers. Bryan Fields: This might be a weird question, but why cones instead of straight tubes like cigarettes, especially since straight tubes would save more space in multi-packs? Harrison Bard: No one knows for sure, but cones seem to be an invention of necessity — Amsterdam coffee shops needed to manufacture pre-rolls first, and filling a straight cigarette-diameter tube evenly is really hard and finicky, whereas a cone's geometry naturally funnels material to the bottom. Cones pack more efficiently in tabletop and fully automated pre-roll machines; tubes tend to produce loose, floppy tips near the crutch because sticky, chunky cannabis clumps instead of packing evenly. Bryan Fields: That makes a lot of sense. What about shelf life — how long does a pre-roll stay good, and is there a recommended window between purchase and consumption? Harrison Bard: That's largely unknown right now — no one labels this information. Washington actually removed the requirement to label harvest and package dates, reducing transparency, likely due to lobbying from businesses holding old inventory (some states reportedly have years of unsold surplus). As long as it's not moldy, it's considered fine, though potency degrades and THC converts to CBG or CBN over time, shifting the effect — some people might even prefer the sleepier effect of aged CBN-rich flower. I'd like to see more transparency in the future, similar to grocery store packaged/sell-by dates, where brands buy back and repurpose unsold pre-rolls into concentrates or vapes rather than let them go stale on shelves. Bryan Fields: I see the value, but it opens up a lot of operational challenges. Do you think it ever gets to where it needs to be? Harrison Bard: It comes down to better forecasting and demand planning, which cannabis companies are typically bad at. But it just takes one company setting the precedent of guaranteed freshness — consumers and budtenders will gravitate toward that trust, and competitors will have to follow or be seen as the cheap, possibly stale option. Bryan Fields: Exactly — consumers influence change with their wallets, and that's what pushes the rest of the industry to follow suit. Harrison Bard: As the industry matures, you'll also see more sophisticated operators, similar to soybean farmers who don't grow a crop unless it's already sold. That kind of business management discipline will help ensure fresher product reaches stores over time. Bryan Fields: Wait, Kellen — you think we should grow in only certain states? Why not grow in every single state and have all the markets divided? Kellen: Yeah, it's way better that way — fragmented, everyone doing their own thing with their own rules. The weather's the same everywhere, right? Definitely gets you the highest-quality, best end product. Harrison Bard: What we've seen in cannabis is a bit of a green rush — a lot of founders and operators don't have real growing or manufacturing experience, even if they grew in the legacy market for twenty years. People don't realize this is fundamentally a manufacturing operation — it doesn't matter how good your weed is if you can't get it from the ground into a manufactured product and understand operations, cycle time, and throughput. At the end of the day, a cannabis company is a manufacturing company. Bryan Fields: Really well said. Let's switch gears and talk about the DaySavers launch — what's the goal and origin behind it, and what are you looking to achieve? Harrison Bard: A huge emphasis for Custom Cones USA has always been compliance and testing — we're the most strict and comprehensive in testing for heavy metals, pesticides, and microbials, and very transparent about paper science through our blog and YouTube content on manufacturing best practices. We noticed consumer smoking accessories lacked that transparency entirely — it's mostly about sexy marketing and deception. The biggest example is "rice paper," which is a total marketing myth; there's no such thing as paper made from rice — it's just refined white paper made from wood pulp, and even popular "rice paper" brands have small disclaimers admitting this. All paper comes from plant cellulose; the difference between white, brown, and hemp paper is the level of refinement. Brown paper isn't more "natural" or better for you — it just retains more plant material, giving it a tan color and stronger flavor, while hemp paper, though very strong and durable, tends to taste the harshest. White paper actually lets cannabis flavor come through best because it has the least added material. We also used to sell palm leaf blunts, similar to King Palm's, and discovered through our own testing that they often failed for heavy metals, pesticides, and microbials — sometimes even mold inside the corn husk filter tip — because they're grown and processed overseas with little oversight. We stopped selling those years ago due to compliance concerns; there have even been news stories, like one from Westword, about recalls tied to palm leaf blunts. So we created DaySavers as a consumer brand to bring the transparency, science-based education, and strict compliance testing of Custom Cones USA to everyday consumers, along with innovative products like blunt cones and wood, glass, or ceramic tip pre-rolls that we pioneered on the B2B side. Bryan Fields: I've got to hand it to you — that's very Amazon-like, taking your business data and turning it into a forward-facing consumer brand. Harrison Bard: Got to thank Papa Jeff Bezos for that — he knows what he's doing. Bryan Fields: What's the most expensive lesson you've learned? Harrison Bard: It comes down to compliance — test everything and hold your supply chain accountable. We've had to throw away tens of thousands of dollars of palm leaf blunts after failing tests, since overseas suppliers won't take them back. We've also had issues with packaging suppliers falsely claiming child-resistant certification; luckily, in Washington, pop-top tubes don't require child resistance, so we could still sell those units as non-child-resistant, but it could have been a very costly mistake elsewhere. Bryan Fields: Were you ever close to closing up shop? What happened to change your path? Harrison Bard: Luckily no — we grew slowly and sustainably, starting in our living room in 2017-2018, adding one product and service at a time. We started only selling custom branded cones, requiring 50% payment upfront and 50% before shipping, so we were cash-flow positive from day one. As customers asked for in-stock inventory, we started stocking unbranded cones in our living room, hallway, and closets. Over time we found the best machine vendors by attending every trade show, testing machines ourselves, and getting real customer feedback before adding them to our catalog — eventually growing into a full one-stop shop for pre-roll companies, from grinders and sifters to cone-filling and packaging machines. Bryan Fields: Green smoking session, three people, dead or alive — who do you pick? Harrison Bard: Jerry Garcia, definitely — huge deadhead, inspired a lot of pot smokers worldwide. Maybe Ken Kesey, who hung out with Garcia and helped popularize psychedelics. And maybe Stephen Hawking, just to see if he'd want to get high and blow our minds. Bryan Fields: What was one of the most surprising or unexpected challenges you've faced operating in the cannabis space? Harrison Bard: It's not that surprising since a lot of people face it, but we've had our business and even personal bank accounts shut down — Bank of America once called to say they were closing both within two days after we missed a letter. We're not even plant-touching, and we still deal with discrimination constantly. We recently went through the entire leasing process for a new warehouse three separate times, only to be rejected at the final decision stage because we're cannabis-related, even though we don't grow on-site. We finally got a fourth warehouse secured, but so close to our deadline that we won't have our racking installed in time. Bryan Fields: And you're a non-plant-touching company. Harrison Bard: Right, non-plant-touching — we also sell to hemp industries and other fully federally legal companies. The government's happy to take our tax money, though, so no problem there. Bryan Fields: What did you get right when starting your journey in cannabis, and what did you get wrong? Harrison Bard: We got right keeping the customer front and center — always asking what they want or need, even before they know it themselves. What we got wrong was hiring and management. Most founders start with little to no management experience, and even prior management experience doesn't fully prepare you for owning and running a company. We learned that hiring a "jack of all trades" is usually a gamble — you're much better off hiring someone who's an expert in one thing they love and have a track record of growth in. Bryan Fields: Prediction time — how do you see consumer preferences evolving over the next five to ten years? Will pre-rolls remain the top choice, or will we see a shift toward edibles, tinctures, or other consumption methods? Harrison Bard: We predicted about a year ago that pre-rolls would eventually become the number one category, overtaking flower — and we're already seeing this in Canada. In the U.S., pre-rolls are the third-biggest segment at about 12%, but in Canada they're more than twice as popular: 20% market share in early 2022, now up to 31.5% by mid-2023, while flower has dropped from 45% to 35% over the same period. I think pre-rolls will be Canada's top category within one or two years, and it may take longer in the U.S., but as multi-packs, automation, and eventually guaranteed freshness dates take hold, pre-rolls will keep winning consumers over. Health and wellness categories like tinctures, capsules, and sublinguals make up less than 1% of sales and are declining every year, while flower, vape pens, and concentrates — the hardcore recreational categories — are growing. I think concentrates will plateau and vape pens will keep growing, especially all-in-one disposable vapes, which were one of the top three growing segments in both the U.S. and Canada last year despite environmental concerns. Kellen: Well said. I'll agree that pre-rolls will likely be the top category from a convenience standpoint, similar to how most cigarette smokers buy packs rather than roll their own — though technically it's still flower, just with paper around it, so flower arguably remains king either way. What do you think, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Per the unwritten rules of the podcast, I'll take the other side. I don't think pre-rolls will be the top category, because — in the words of Bob Hogan — generations "die off," and the generation that smokes the most is closest to aging out, while younger Gen Z consumers who vape may eventually shift away from vaping toward beverages instead, once manufacturing economies of scale improve, making cannabis beverages a comfortable alcohol alternative. I think beverages will be the top category in five to ten years. Harrison Bard: I wouldn't hold my breath on that one — beverages currently make up just 1.1% of U.S. sales and about 2% in Canada. Bryan Fields: I have no other choice but to take the bold, contrarian bet. Edibles felt too obvious. Harrison Bard: I think it's going to be pre-rolls and vapes. Personally I hate vape pens — they hit the back of my throat hard — and I suspect there will eventually be studies on how bad the cheap ones really are, given the metals and materials used, though ceramic options are nicer. Bryan Fields: Kind of funny that people who care about the environment still toss disposable vape pens without a second thought. Harrison Bard: Right, only bad for you if you don't inhale it, ha. Bryan Fields: So Harrison, for people who want to learn more about Custom Cones USA or get in touch, where can they find you? Harrison Bard: Our website is CustomConesUSA.com — check us out, we have tons of informational blogs and videos. Plenty of people have told us at trade shows that we've taught them everything and helped grow their business, which is always amazing to hear. Our new consumer brand is DaySavers, at DaySavers.com — great for regular consumers who want smaller pack sizes, though plenty of hardcore smokers also buy boxes of 200 or 800 directly from CustomConesUSA.com for the value. Bryan Fields: We'll link it all in the show notes. Thanks for taking the time — this was a lot of fun. Harrison Bard: Yeah, I really appreciate your time — have a good rest of your day.