San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Coowner helps lower barriers to entry
The MD Farms cannabis cultivation facility in the Monterey County Green Zone south of Salinas looks like all the rest of the farms set well back from Highway 101. There is a sense of agricultural work happening — dusty pickup trucks, worn tools, hard dirt, dark mounds of fertilizer figure prominently. Security guards with walkietalkies hold down little shacks at the entrances. Whatever is going on behind the canvascovered fence is shielded from view. Occasionally a sweet muskiness drifts through the air.
MD Farms coowner Allen Hackett was not planning on becoming a major cannabis entrepreneur in 2015 when he joined Marie Montmarquet in San Francisco. The two met while attending the University of Tennessee and became so close they consider each other family (Hackett refers to her as his sister). Hackett was just coming out to the West Coast to help his best friend with her booming new cannabis delivery business. When they both concentrated on the business, it took off, and so did the possibilities.
Five tumultuous years later, the two are managing an agile and expanding threepronged cannabis enterprise that is completely Black owned, that is, completely owned by them.
“My sister and myself are really unique in the sense that we own 100% of this business. We don’t have any outside investors that own equity. We don’t have a board that we answer to,” Hackett said.
“Allen and I definitely have a passion for doing the work because we come from a place where we still can’t believe that this is our livelihood,” said Montmarquet, who cofounded MD Farms.
MD Numbers Inc. now features a family of cannabis enterprises that also includes Marie’s Deliverables and Légacy Coterie.
Home base is MD Farms, a 50,000squarefoot greenhouse cultivation facility that produces highgrade cannabis flower. Besides cultivation, processing, wholesale and private labeling, MD Farms also provides cultivation and education resources for equitybased entrepreneurs.
Marie’s Deliverables, a Bay Area cannabis delivery service, curates and delivers the full spectrum of cannabis products, including flower, tinctures, edibles, concentrates, prerolls, gummies and patches, while also providing access to CBD specialists and wellness consultants. Légacy Coterie is a cannabis consulting, distribution and sales service focusing on equity in the cannabis marketplace.
Through group tours and targeted meetups, the pair regularly share their business acumen and experiences with fledgling cannabis entrepreneurs of color. As an adviser to the Success Center cannabis equity program, Montmarquet wants to see POC at all levels of the cannabis business.
“Social equity for me is that: lowering the barriers of entry to not just be completely corporatized. For me, it’s the overall perspective of participation and not just participation as a budtender or security guard. We have to make sure that people can participate at that higher level and have ownership in these companies. Not just be the employees in a company.”
As Hackett shows off his farm, there is un
mistakable pride in what he and Montmarquet have built. “I believe they grew orchids in here before, but prior to me taking over, I don’t believe anybody had actually occupied this facility in about 10 years,” Hackett said, entering the first of a series of three greenhouse buildings.
“With the owner’s help, we replaced every piece of wood in here and we redid the roof because in the valley of Salinas, they will allow you to occupy a space to grow cannabis, but you cannot build any new structures, you can only use what was preexisting.” Such are what seem to Hackett to be often bizarre and byzantine laws that govern cannabis cultivation and commerce in California and throughout the country.
“Literally, next door, there’s open land. I couldn’t buy that land and just build a greenhouse if I wanted to,” Hackett said.
He explains that the farmers move plants from one area to the next as they grow, which maximizes output and revenue.
“For me, it was always just get in, do the work, work really hard, figure it out, learn on the go, don’t make the same mistakes that we made last month or last year, and then always just be the most knowledgeable,” Hackett said. He said he and Montmarquet share a “keep your head down and get your work done” mentality.
“I know the rules. I know the laws,” Hackett said. “I know every single thing there is to know about operating cannabis in Monterey County, in the state of California, because the information is all free,” Hackett said.
The two have expansion dreams and plans as cannabis legalization becomes more prevalent across the country. MD Numbers thinks it can be well positioned to grow as the industry grows as well. Montmarquet said that the corporatization of the industry is already astonishing, which is another reason they are so committed to social equity for newcomers to the business.
“Cannabis is one of the hardest industries you can exist in,” Montmarquet said. “The more that we can share at this point to help anyone that is looking to get into the industry that is not highly capitalized and comes from similar backgrounds as ours, the better.
“Corporate cannabis came in so fast. It was just a rapid expansion for a lot of companies and just changed the landscape.” The industry she had started in, which featured mostly small legacy businesses and longterm relationships, was disappearing.
“I really wanted to feel that way again about the industry, and not feel like everyone was a shark, and I’m just in this ocean with all these sharks. I wanted to feel like I can empower other people that are similar to myself to come in and compete with the sharks. Advocacy wasn’t my original intent,” Montmarquet said.
“Watching it develop so fast, and seeing how the 1% were really the only people that were going to be able to participate in the blink of an eye, it was mindblowing for me. If there’s anything that I can do to empower any sort of compassion in the industry, and smallbusinessdriven, minoritydriven, socialjusticedriven impact, I’m really blessed to be in a position to do that, to give back.”