From Bud to Boardroom | Season 1, Episode 2: Building Fine Fettle – From Teach for America to Cannabis COO

Sarah Westby: Absolutely. So can you tell us a little bit about your background before you got into cannabis?

Ben Zachs: Sure. So I graduated from college in 2010 from U Penn, and I went and did Teach For America. So I taught English and social studies in a pretty rough neighborhood in Philly for two years.

After finishing up TFA and getting my Master's of education, I went and worked for Pearson, the big publishing textbook company. And there I ran a couple of education technology startups that they had acquired different like brain training games and a program specific for kids with ADHD and a couple of other new sort of technology ventures that they were working on with their textbooks.

And from there. I loved the startup sort of side of it, didn't love the huge company piece. And I applied to get my MBA and while applying to get my MBA I got recruited to work at the world's largest hedge fund Bridgewater. And they recruited me and said you can either get your MBA and pay and have a lot of fun, or you can get your butt whooped and get a PhD in management and work here.

And I guess as somewhat of a masochist I went and worked at Bridgewater for two and a half years. And got just an unbelievable training in managing teams and managing people.

And from there we had started investing on the family side in some cannabis operators, really because of an interest in addiction services as well as healthcare.

And Connecticut was having an application and the guy who he sat next to at UConn Games. Because we're huge Connecticut people and you find fans, right? And was this guy Rick Carre and he was on the pharmacy board and had been a long time entrepreneur and pharmacist, and we put together an application with him and then brought together a woman, Margie Giuliano, who's now our Chief Compliance Officer, who was the head of the Kinetic Pharmacist Association and had just retired and really wanted to get back into the action.

So we applied and from there during the application, it took about eight months to find out, and I just went and learned everything I could about the business and the industry. And we ultimately, luckily enough won in Willimantic.

We knew we were in a limited license, and then we got the opportunity to acquire the next license of another winner in Newington. And it's just all snowballed from there. And six years ago, basically right now, we had one employee.

And now as you noted in the intro we've got nine stores open in Connecticut. We've got our grow open in Connecticut, we're in Massachusetts. We have two stores now there and a farm. We used to have another grow in dispensary in Martha's Vineyard that we've recently sold, and then we won one of the six coveted licenses in Georgia.

So we have a cultivation there and three dispensaries, and that's a license where we can keep growing more dispensaries as the patient population grows. So today we've got those 14 locations open and the three grows and have 300 people and. Running into new problems every day and hitting new successes every day.

And so it's been quite a journey. It's been quite a journey to say the least.

Sarah Westby: Yeah, for sure. So it sounds like you, you acquired some grit doing a Teach for America, and then you got the business background after that. So that's so's an interesting journey. How did some of the municipalities feel about the dispensaries coming to their town back when the state only had medical.

Ben Zachs: Yeah. So when we applied in, in the 2018 application round and then found out we won in 2019, we actually put in five applications across the state. Willimantic, new London, Westport, Stanford, and Meriden. And in Westport actually, we showed up and five, there were five applicants, and four were in one building and one was us in another and the town came out aggressively against us.

So that was our first reality into it. Now we've been in the cell tower space, so we're pretty used to not in my backyard and quite used to, local zoning. Yeah. So we were up for the fight, but we lost that one. And but otherwise it's been pretty okay. We've generally found that if you follow the rules, the law is on your side in zoning and even at times where people have thought the law wasn't on our side, we've actually won appeals since.

I think there's always a lot of fear going into it, but we've never had an issue anywhere where we've operated. After we get open, I think people recognize that generally we're like a good, quiet neighbor who does a lot of work in the community. And so we understand though that what we do is in part just getting rid of stigma.

Sarah Westby: For sure. And I think something that might surprise listeners to learn is just how stringent the security requirements are for the retail shops in the state. Yeah. They, there are essentially like Fort Knox and in some cases I think there's been research out in Massachusetts, they can even make neighborhoods safer.

Ben Zachs: Because, we think that local. Access, safe access to Texas product is really important. We have interior and exterior cameras. We have double digit examples of something happening down the road from us and the police calling us being like, Hey we know that this isn't exactly why you have the cameras, but something happened, right?

And can we get access to your footage so we can see X, Y, Z, or catch a license plate? And we're always like, yes, we will happily help you because, we want to be a good corporate citizen, but also a good local neighbor. One of our, core values is cherish the communities that you're in. And so I think that really plays into what we try and do.

And then just operationally, as you alluded to before, I mean everything sits in a vault. We've got over 30, 40 cameras in every facility, and we've got double redundancy on our alarms. And you only certain people can badge into different areas, including our own employees. And so these facilities are unbelievably safe, and I think the entire industry in Connecticut should be proud of.

Sarah Westby: Yeah. It's, that's really interesting to hear about. So when the market converted to adult use or expanded into adult use in 2021, what were some of your expectationsfor the market, what it would look like and how did you see Fine Fettle fitting into that new market?

Ben Zachs: Yeah, so I'll answer the last one first. Our goal has been from day one. We don't want anyone in Connecticut to Google dispensary near me. We want people to Google Fine Fettle near me. And that means like we have to be Connecticut's cannabis company and we need to be synonymouswith people all over the state. And so when we found that equity joint venture structure, which allowed us to open two retails for each of our medical dispensaries, and then they also had to be 20 miles apart, this actually fit exactly what we wanted to accomplish. And so now we deliver. To basically everywhere in the state, except for just right around Litchfield, like in the northwest corner.

We probably could accomplish that from our Waterbury store, but it's just a little far for our delivery partner. And we expected it honestly, to be a little bit better in terms of revenue. I thought Connecticut would be like a $35 million a month sort of market, and it's been really like a $25 million a monthmarket. We've generally found markets evolve over time when price comes down. But Connecticut hit adult use in a really weird economic time. So adult use comes into play, as you noted in the, I think the 2021 legislative session. And then we don't open until January of 2023 and in those 18 monthstwo things happened. Like the actual economy went from this like booming COVID economy, give every American, six or $12,000, right? Stock market is just flying. The world is not actually ending sort of thing.

Sarah Westby: And cannabis businesses were deemed essential, right? So they gotta on that.

Ben Zachs: And cannabis businesses were deemed essential medical in Massachusetts Medical in Connecticut,in all the states where we operate. But then because of a lot of federal stuff like 280E and taxes and just the space becoming commoditized in these bigger states, the cannabis economy really got hurt as did the regular economy in late 2022, early 2023. And you could even argue outside of the stock markets, rise up until now, inflation is really high, right?

And inflation is pacing with the market. Connecticut saw a program that didn't get a ton of investment outside of retail. And when you over create retail stores but don't add more supply and you don't add more competition within the supply you see a market that gets things that are just really expensive because your wholesalers can force you to pay that.

Connecticut had 30 some odd companies apply to get the $3 million license. in cultivation, and now two of us are up and operating and depending on the rumors that you hear, four, three to four more are under construction. There's a couple of those micro cultivators, a small grow who can only add so much.

But we're also seeing now prices coming down and we're seeing, levels of oversupply in the market. And I think that all of these things together working, have just created a market that's, not probably reached expectation while also having, Massachusetts, which is just so far oversupplied that companies are selling things at a loss and going outta business.

You have New York, which had a total like illegal market, basically untapped. Did it differently with allowing hemp farmers to get into retail, sorry, to get into production but not allow retail to move as quickly. And so I think Connecticut has just been caught in this middle of having this like market that's actually growing at a pace that probably makes sense, but not necessarily reaching the consumer just yet at a level that leads to a lot of growth in terms of sales.

Sarah Westby: Yeah, it's

Ben Zachs: It’s been a really interesting reality just operating in, in Connecticut and candidly being the big dog in Connecticut.

And just how we've had to manage our business based on that.

Sarah Westby: Where do you see the market going over the next year or two in Connecticut in particular?

Ben Zachs: Yeah, so I, I think the biggest thing is retail is stabilizing in terms of new stores. I think in 2024 there were probably 35 ish, 30, to 40 new stores that opened in 2025.

There have only been about eight to 10. There's not many under construction right now, unless you're, again, like way deep in that northwest corner, you are within 10, 15 minutes of a dispensary anywhere. But I think with our cultivation coming online and us beginning to start soon to sell into the wholesale market, not just our own stores, the grow coming online in Hartford some investments by the incumbents building out more grow rooms, you're gonna start to see prices to come down.

I also think that one of the enormous elements that we're gonna need to see in Connecticut is how we handle the convenience stores, vape shops, gas shops that are, using a T-H-C-A loophole that Connecticut can look at, but is really right. It's really hard to shut down 200 illegal stores. But I think the law does a good job to allow the municipality to work more aggressively towards that.

And so getting people into the safe tested market with more supply that brings down prices. I do think the market should evolve, but I don't think we're gonna see this four or $500 million a year market will probably cap out at, 300, 3 20, which, makes margins thin and makes the business tough for sure.

Sarah Westby: Yeah, it has been really interesting, especially from my perspective as an attorney, to see how some of the other state markets have evolved and, you see this boom in the first zero to five years and then you start to see the consolidation and we're actually seeing that happen at a more rapid pace, I think because of a lot of thesefactors that you just mentioned. Now when you first got into the adult use space I know that you and many others had challenges with finding the appropriate real estate and then getting zoning approval, and I'm sure that was expected based on your experience with the medical market. But were there any challenges you encountered that were unexpected?

Ben Zachs: I think that, look, I think the size of the market has been a little bit unexpected, and so we have to deal with that. But I think one of the things that I love about operating in this industry is like you learn to expect the unexpected.

Because every state, every municipality, every store goes through its own issues and ebbs and flows and cycles.

Or iIn our cultivation facility, we had an issue with the way some of our lights were plugged in basically. And it was an issue that we'd seen in four other facilities across the country under the same building code.

But we run into, it seems like a pretty

Sarah Westby: mundane issue, right?

Ben Zachs: Yep. Like little mundane issue, and then it totally throws you off.

And I think like we've done a really good job as a business, thinking about like our standard operating procedures and our standard plans and our standard metrics and our, the things that we do every single day. Also creating like a corporate infrastructure that allows us to deal with the unexpected and like having a plan to go do that.

And I think it's something like I'm really proud of as we've scaled up from, as I said before, one to 300 ish people and constantly feel like we're moving in rapid pace to deal with problems. And that's something that like I, I worry about and think about every day of how do we still be a startup and be nimble, but also be a scaled business Who does the things they do really well?

And because oftentimes those two ways of managing are in conflict. It's a huge part of what I try and build as a, essentially the CEO of this business.

Sarah Westby: Yeah, that's a, it's a tough space to operate in, particularly from a workforce issue. And there's often, I do employment law and there's often a lot of growing pains that come with that type of rapid expansion.

And it seems knock on wood you've been fairly lucky in that regard. Certainly that's something that may not be top of mind when you're running a company, but that those kind of issues can sneak up and bite you for sure. So having the right policies in place is really important.

Now I wanna shift gears a little bit. I know that you've been heavily involved in efforts to create and amend the cannabis legislation in Connecticut. So can you talk about what some of your biggest legislative priorities have been over the last few years and, what has come to fruition and what has died in the process?

Ben Zachs: So my legislative priorities have never come to fruition. I keep losing every single year in terms of what we think should happen and happens, which is okay. That's fine. Just to comment on that, Connecticut's in this interesting place because I think, there's lots of goals that are a part of having a cannabis program in general, and one of the biggest goals in Connecticut has been around social equity.

And the way that the legislation has worked has been basically a three-tiered approach, which I have de. Called with my social equity partner, Kenard Ray, like the triangle of social equity. And it's very specifically a triangle. So at the top of that triangle are entrepreneurs where you're only gonna have so many people.

And so it's the smallest part. The middle part is how Connecticut defines it as workforce development, which I really think about is creating jobs and doing micro good from those jobs. And then the bottom of the social equity is really supporting and helping the communities overall. And so much of the legislation has been stemmed from how can we impact those three areas.

My problem without describing it, more nicely than that is that the business and the industry in Connecticut is not doing great, as we noted. If I think it's gonna be a four or $500 million market and it's a $300 million market, right? That's a third or 40% decrease based on what folks thought.

And I've been saying from the beginning that if you don't have a marketplace that can succeed, entrepreneurs surely won't. I think we're seeing that, right? We've seen stores already close. We see stores that are up for sale because they're failing.

So it's been just like this very hard market and one of the things that I've tried to do is try and make it successful for the businesses because I think if the businesses can be successful, it's gonna be better for the consumers. And so I've wanted things like potency, increases. I've wanted things like better packaging.

I've wanted things like being able to acquire dispensaries within 20 miles of your own, which they did allow this year. Because while I think everyone wants to see solo entrepreneurs succeed, it's really hard in this business to succeed without scale because our costs are immense. The learning curve is immense.

Things are just really expensive. Taxes are high. And so a lot of those things I think have been pushed off candidly in terms of the legislation, in part because of a semi-conservative legislature about cannabis. But in part because. I think they're really trying to see entrepreneurs succeed. And I think we're putting the cart before the horse because again, like if you set up entrepreneurs to make it easier for them to get into the industry but then you don't have an industry where they can make money, you're actually creating more harm than good.

And then the last thing that I think has not happened is I think that this whole requirement that a social equity entrepreneur has to own their own business for X number of years is like incredibly detrimental to the social equity partners.

And I know that all circumstances are different, and I know that the goal is to have nobody be a puppet in front or anything of that sort. But I do believe that while the iron's hot, sometimes you need a strike. And because of these ownership rules of social equity entrepreneurs not being able to sell their piece, there's going to be somebody who wants to sell their business and can't.

And I think that over the next year when these businesses are in a better operational space, we're gonna see that. And that's gonna be a huge focus for the industry in 2026.

Sarah Westby: And I know that was a big push for this year and many were disappointed, social equity partners and non-social equity partners alike. Many were disappointed that did not go through. Yeah. And I think, you know what, just for background, what we're talking about is that, social equity licenses do not permit the social equity partners’ share in the license to be reduced below a certain percentage, either 50 or 65 for a period of years, either seven or three respectively. And, those limits, I think while the intent was good and to make sure that the social equity partners couldn't be bought out using predatory practices nobody really knew what this market was gonna look like and the realities on the ground being what they are todaythose laws have inhibited people from selling where they might really want to, where they might be able to get a good deal. Yeah, so that, that is a struggle I think, that we've seen with the social equity process in Connecticut. And it's a very good program. It's a very strong program but certainly needs to be fine tuned.

And I think part of the struggle with the industry is we've gotta wait every year for the legislative session to come around and there isn't a lot of there aren’t many mechanisms to change those rules in the interim. Now, one thing you mentioned was potency limits. And I know that was something the industry really wanted to open up different types of form factors and product varieties.

And those limits did increase. So for flower, they went from 30 to 35% THC. And for other products, they went from 60 to 70%. Can you talk a little bit about the effect that change might have on the market? Or not?

Ben Zachs: Yeah. I think basically none. 30 to 35% flower. There's very few strains that hit above 30% THC, and when they do, they sell out in the medical program like almost immediately.

So making that available now to the adult use consumer is nice for them, but also bad for medical and doesn't really actually impact the market overall. It might be interesting if some operators look to dry out their product more so that when it tests there's less moisture content so they can juice the numbers in that sort of way.

There's things that you can go do to get higher THC, but. We actually don't think that's a good smoking experience. If your product is too dry, it burns too quickly. It doesn't taste and smell the way it should. And then on the concentrate side, no one wants to buy a 70% concentrate. And so what's happened?

They want higher, right? They want higher. And so what's happened because of what's happened is we used to have this incredibly thriving medical market. Now because the adult use program can't take those high potency concentrates, which are generally big spenders, heavy users, oftentimes people who really are in pain or have immense PTSD, those products have somewhat come out of the medical market in Connecticut because if they were 10% of medical or 15% of medical, and now medical is25% of the whole program, producers aren't gonna invest huge amounts of money to make something that's 2% of the market. So we have a store in West Springfield, Massachusetts.

We see so many of our former medical patients in Connecticut coming up to Massachusetts, buying concentrates in bulk. And because of these potency limits on the adult use market, which are arbitrary, we are now giving away tax revenue to Massachusetts.

And I actually think it's gonna impact the market zero, because until you can get into those 80 plus concentrates, and we're still, 12% away from that minimum, which it's not just 12%, it's 12 outta 70. So it's almost a 15 to 17% miss. I still don't think people are gonna make those products as producers and cultivators, so I don't think it's gonna make much of a difference.

Sarah Westby: Now, there've also been some efforts to try to open up the restrictions on packaging, branding, that type of thing, to allow for more colors and graphics. Where does that stand in the legislative process?

Ben Zachs: Our packaging can be like a little bit better now, but nothing real, right? So now we can change the color of the actual package, but we can't do anything with the logo and the label. We still have to label every single vape cart as the physical cart. We still have to keep very base fonts and font sizes and not having things bold.

And no, I don't think much has changed there. We also can't keep that packaging in the sort of sales area of the dispensary, so you can't like have it behind the register where no consumer or customer or patient would ever be able to get to, but you can see it. So we have to put out like phony packaging out front and people can't say, Ooh, I like that, or I want that, or Tell me about that.

They can only see it from a menu. And our menus can have hundreds of products on it, like it's so hard to decipher between. And then also, people have been used to buying brands in Massachusetts, some brands that we have in Connecticut, but people don't know unlike packaging with a like product on the inside.

And so we're just shooting ourselves in the foot against what our neighbor is doing. And people in Connecticut are going to buy, even though we have those same exact things in Connecticut.

And so next year, I really hope the question becomes, how do we make this business better? Because when business is better, it's better for the consumer and that needs to be the focus of the legislation.

And I hope that in 2026 that becomes a reality.

Sarah Westby: So we, we covered a lot of ground today and I think to conclude, I'd like to know what are you most looking forward to in cannabis over the next year?

Ben Zachs: So personally and selfishly, I am really looking forward to our grow coming into its own meeting, the consumer and the patient in Connecticut.

Like for us, this has been multi-year finding real estate, getting the license planning, building, operationalizing, and getting to market. We started with just flour. Our view was we need to be able to walk before we run. And the flower in cannabis is the beginnings of everything. So we really wanted to dial in our rooms.

So we've put out pre-rolls and eighths so far, and our pre-rolls are different than everyone else's. Everyone else makes them in a cone and then they're angle shaped. Ours look more like a regular cigarette. They're open at the tip. They're, one with the entire way. They have a filter in the front in a more consistent way, similar to a cigarette.

So it's just like a really high quality product. And then over time, us getting into selling our vapes, potentially doing concentrates if we think the market makes any sense for it. We have a lot of medical stores, so we think that concentrates for our medical patients could do a lot. And then ultimately getting into our kitchen and gummy and edible production.

So for us, I'm like incredibly excited about. What truly being vertical and then also getting our product into the market really looks like. I'm also just like really excited 'cause now a lot of these cultivators, the micros, the equity joint ventures, the social equity licenses have been up and running.

I wanna see a ton more reporting out of the state about what our social equity plans have accomplished. Like I've submitted now six different social equity plan updates. We've gone above and beyond in our donations, our hours of volunteerism, our community impact, and like rather than just saying, oh, Connecticut's market isn't doing as well as it could have, or The business isn't booming, or these stores are getting open, like we need to talk about as an industry how much good we do.

I don't know if there's any other industry in the state of Connecticut that is forced to have a plan of community service built into the business, except for ours. And so we should be lauding that. We should be shouting that from the rooftops. We should be talking to everyone who can listen about the amount of work that our businesses, our employees, our ownerships, our partners have done'cause we're super proud of it. And I think that to help change stigma. You can't just talk about this as a pot business or the guy selling weed. You need to talk about this as an industry. That does good. Those are the two biggest things that I would love to see in this upcoming year, having an impact.

And then on the concern side, look, I want to see the market grow and people have said for a long time, all right, when prices come down and there's more supply, will the market grow? The data hasn't shown us that yet. Since we've launched our own product, we have seen sales tick up, which have been, which has been really nice.

We were also seeing pricing come down, but we can't see like a million bucks and then it flat out per month in the state sales, we need to see like, when does it go from 25 a month to 30? When do we see a 25%, 20% increase of growth? And I'm nervous if that stuff doesn't happen. Then we're gonna see the downside effect, which is stores are gonna close.

You're gonna have bankrupt entrepreneurs, you're gonna have social equity partners who never saw what they were expected to get. And that's gonna create a really negative discussion around our industry versus actually looking at all of the goods that we've accomplished in Connecticut, which is a lack of traffic, a lack of kids getting illegal product, a lack of problems in communities and neighborhoods, et cetera, et cetera. All the things that are the inherent risks around legalization have not occurred in Connecticut. So let's talk about the goods and let's talk about how the bads aren't coming, rather than the things that we can't necessarily control.

Sarah Westby: All right. I think that's a great place to end. Thanks Ben so much for coming on today. Good luck with all of your ventures and we'll see you soon.

Ben Zachs: Cool. Thank you Sarah for having me. Excited to see where this pod goes.