Buddies Brand is a multijurisdictional titan of a Cannabis company that operates in five different states. Starting with Oregon in 2016, the organization cemented itself locally before expanding across state lines into California, Washington, and soon, Nevada, Arizona, and New York. The biggest goal throughout the growth process is to bring the same quality and consistency in output to every market.
“We like to create the same Big Mac in every state,” lab manager Jorge Fuentes explained. “We like to have the same operating procedures, the same processors … We want everyone to get the same product in every state.”
Considering that the company carries over 200 distinct items between all of the categories it produces, including vaporizers, edibles, dabs, topicals and more, consistency can seem like a daunting milestone. It seems, however, that Buddies is up to the task.
Just looking at the sheer amount of awards they hold between various competitions — like the High Times Cannabis Cup, the Oregon Growers Cup and Leaf Magazines’ Leaf Bowls — it’s clear that there’s something to the formula.
So how do they create that reliability in each drop? It all starts in the grow.
Buddies manages 13 different farms with a combined 520,000 square feet of canopy in Oregon. Their garden in Gold Hill alone holds a massive 22,000 square feet of outdoor cultivation space. As described, if you stacked each row of plants at this location back to back in a straight line, it would go for over 27 miles. At that volume, it takes an incredible amount of organization and management to stay on top of things.
The farm gets genetics ready early in January and has plants out in the field by April.
Starting with the native soil of Sam’s Valley, the crew at Buddies runs tests in every garden yearly to help determine what amendments or supports are needed. Depending on the levels of nutrients present, the approach can be varied relative to each space.
For selection, the team at Buddies typically judges a strain based on percentage yielded in extraction, plant resilience and overall ease of growth and clonability. When growing for extraction, features like visual appeal and THC percentage are much less important. The farm runs a tight stable of 47 varieties, including old-school cuts like Grand Daddy Purp and Double Urkle, CBD flower like Pennywise and Remedy and newer cultivars like Blue Snowcone and Jomo (a cross of GMO and Sugarshack from Oregon-based breeder Shwale of Farmhouse Studio).
When operating at Buddies’ size and scale, harvesting so many plants at once is an almost insurmountable process. The crew prepares by clearing their drying space out, organizing the lab and having freezer trucks ready to ensure that the flower is put on ice immediately after getting cut.
“We pull a truck in, unload, process, then get it in the freezer as quickly as we can to preserve the terpenes because that’s the goal, right?” general manager Jake Burkman explained. “Save those terpenes, save the flavor.”
Secondary to harvest, terpene-rich material is fresh frozen and put through a hydrocarbon extraction process.
“Hydrocarbon extraction is a little bit more forgiving on terpenes,” Fuentes noted.
When the flower doesn’t have terpenes that are considered worth preserving, it is instead dried and then processed via ethanol extraction to create distillate. The product goes through two rounds of filtration utilizing different micron sizes to catch all particulates and then winterization to separate fats and lipids. The final result is crystal clear distillate.
To run an operation of this scale, the utmost care in cleanliness and quality control is needed. The lab and everything from gramming to packaging is kept as sterile as possible, with quality control processes taking place at every step along the way and again before products leave the facility. There’s a noticeable drive among the team to improve processes every run.
“I feel like every time we do it, we can find something we can do better and revamp. We sit down after harvest and say, ‘Hey, how can we get better, how can we make this more efficient?’” Jeremy Brown, assistant general manager, explained.
With a secret sauce that includes organization, consistency and a drive for pushing the bar up on each and every harvest, it appears that Buddies has built a recipe for enormous success.
Buddies Brand:
Location: White City/Gold Hill
Standout strains: Grandaddy Purp, Jomo
Farm size: 13 different farms: 520,000 square feet of canopy in Oregon. Gold Hill location is 22,000 square feet of outdoor cultivation space.
