My WeedMD Facility Tour
Joseph R. Goldfarb
Februaries in Toronto aren’t the winter wonderland we want them to be. They’re bitter cold with comforts mostly found at home. This year, though, I was lucky to spend one frigid February day in a beautifully warm oasis found in small town Ontario.
I was invited on a tour of WeedMD’s Strathroy facility by Lisa Campbell, CEO of Lifford Cannabis Solutions. Lifford is already a leading distributor of fine wine, spirits and beer across Canada. Since adult-use cannabis was legalized last October, Lifford has become one of the first cannabis agencies in Canada to offer sales
and marketing services to licensed processors, representing WeedMD
in B.C. and Alberta.
Our journey started at Lifford HQ, in a striking building on Jarvis Street in downtown Toronto. After a few brief introductions in their classy office spaces we loaded up onto a bus sent by WeedMD to drive us out. We were greeted by Jason (Director of Sales) and Kait (Director of Marketing), who offered us drinks and snacks while we settled in and made our way out of the city. We hit the highway and headed toward London. On the ride up, as our physical landscape made way from concrete and glass to open fields lined with big trees, we had passionate discussions about the Canadian cannabis landscape. We shared stories and talked shop, laughing and learning on the 2-hour trek through the sparsely populated deserts of Ontarian rural scenery.
WeedMD’s Strathroy facility is at the end of a long road. You wouldn’t know anything was there unless someone told you exactly where to go. Rows of greenhouses jut out from a tree-lined path leading to the parking area. As we got closer, the number of trees decreased, and greenhouses started to take up most of the visual space. When we stepped off the bus, it felt like we had arrived on the set of a movie. Next to us was this impressively-sized facility surrounded by nothing but empty fields. It felt uncomfortably sparse and empty for a city-slicker like me; the group of us in this open space standing next to a big, bright, white building.
It was quiet all around us except for the beep of security logins as we walked through the front gate one-by-one and entered the waiting area to get passes. Once we stepped inside the main door, we found ourselves in a warm, husting and bustling work space. Considering the bareness of the outside, I was surprised how many employees were coming and going, doing their work inside.
The group of us were all dressed and ready to go when we were introduced to our tour guide, Nick Trueman, Cultivation Manager at WeedMD. I had heard good things about Nick from horticulture students at Durham College and from people he and I know in common. He’s incredibly approachable and clearly knowledgeable in his craft. He led us from grow room to grow room, walking through rows of classic strains like White Shark, Mango Haze, and Shishkaberry as he educated us on specialized cultivation methods and integrated pest management systems used at the Strathroy facility. We even got to peek at the research tables where WeedMD has exciting new strains in the works.
It’s a wonderful feeling to walk through a room with hundreds of happy cannabis plants. I was encouraged to walk up and down the walkways and chat with people tending to the plants. These people clearly know their stuff. The staff enjoy their jobs and that gets carried into the plants. It makes sense that to have happy plants, you need happy people tending to them.
I asked Nick about the employees and what they did before coming to work at WeedMD. He told me that a lot of the staff in the area were working in small farms or at processing facilities working in industries with less enjoyable aromas wafting in the air. They appreciate the opportunity to have a good job in that part of Ontario.
At this point in the tour we were joined by core management team members Keith Merker (CEO), Brett Moon (SVP Marketing and Sales) and Derek Pedro who recently became Canada’s first Chief Cannabis Officer. These guys have found a way to balance life between surf boards and boardrooms. They’re easy going and friendly with finely tuned business acumen. These are the people who are bridging the gap between old ways and new ways of thinking about cannabis. They’re helping to elevate cannabis to the corporate class.
Derek has been in the industry for decades, but his craft has become even more fine-tuned under the WeedMD greenhouse roofs. When I asked Derek, what made WeedMD stand apart from its competitors he emphasised that, “It’s the people. I’ve consulted for 8 LPs in the past and you know when you’ve found ‘The One.’ That’s how I feel about WeedMD. From management to cultivation and every person and position in between. Everyone loves the brand and it’s reflected the moment you walk into the place. Once you can achieve that, success comes easily.”
Standing in the WeedMD facility, you wouldn’t know winter was in full swing outside. From the moment I walked through the front door until I walked back out at the end of the tour, I felt like I was transported to another world. When I was growing up, my mother ran Toronto’s largest tropical plant maintenance company. Her clients included all the big banks, the Yonge-Eglinton Centre and the Westin Harbour Castle Hotel. I spent countless early mornings at Valleyview Gardens and Sheridan Nurseries picking up truck loads of plants and heading to work for the day. I always loved going to the greenhouses; the warmth and humidity, the variety of fresh aromas, and the colours. But Derek is right about the people too. All the greenhouse staff, at every level, has a warmth about them which is carried through to the finished product, just like how a chef adds love as an ingredient to their food.
I’ve had my own cultivation license for years and know quite a few people with farms and grow rooms, but so far, WeedMD takes the cake. The Strathroy facility is on a sizeable plot of land with an impressive amount of greenhouse space using top-notch cultivation tech and highly skilled, happy staff that know how to get the most out of their plants. They’ve dialed it in from the bottom to the top.
On the ride back to the city, we were all a bit quieter. Instead of chatting about the industry, it seemed like we were more within ourselves, reflecting on our experiences, flipping through photos we snapped on the tour. Looking out the window watching the stark winter landscape pass by, I felt like I had left part of myself in the WeedMD greenhouses while another part of me was back at Valleyview, walking through rows of tropical plants. So, thank you Lifford and WeedMD for helping me escape the February winter blahs for at least a day and transporting me to a warmer, happier place.
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