TAUNTON — Massachusetts’ first delivery marijuana business is finally up and running, and it’s Taunton’s own Freshly Baked Company!
The microbusiness, located in the old Reed & Barton complex, makes their own marijuana gummies and other edibles, and can deliver those and other marijuana products right to your door.
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It takes a lot of creativity, precision and labor to make it all happen — so we took an inside look at their process and found out what you can expect if you place an order.
Production of gummies, other edibles
It all starts in their kitchen on West Brittania Street, where their operations specialists create the gummies and other products.
Much like with normal cooking, they begin making the gummies by weighing out the dry ingredients, like gelatin and citric acid. Then, they add wet ingredients like agave and fruit juice.
Next, they mix and set the ingredients for about 15 minutes before cooking it on a stovetop. Once it reaches a certain temperature, they infuse it with cannabis oil.
They let the gummies sit for about 10 minutes before putting it through a machine which dispenses the liquid into their mold. The gummies are then put in the fridge for 30 minutes.
After being taken out of the fridge, the gummies sit for 12 hours before going through a quality check and being packaged.
Each gummy should have 5 mg of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis — which is the legal limit in Massachusetts. Each package has 20 gummies, so as not to exceed the legal limit per package of 100 mg.
The gummies come in many flavors, including blueberry, grape, raspberry, strawberry, watermelon, blueberry lemonade and strawberry lemonade. Director of production Mel Campbell said the blueberry and strawberry lemonade gummies have been the most popular so far.
Freshly Baked also makes marijuana speed tabs, which were created by Mansfield-based marijuana company Manna Molecular but are produced and sold by Freshly Baked.
Unlike normal marijuana edibles, which are eaten normally and take one to two hours to kick in, the speed tabs are meant to be dissolved under the tongue, so their effects are felt within 15 minutes. The effects also don’t last as long, persisting for an hour to an hour and a half as opposed to several hours.
When making the speed tabs, the operations specialists mix food distillate, cannabis oil and other ingredients to create a water-soluble powder. The powder is then put through a machine which compresses it into pill form.
The tabs are quality checked for hardness, mass and dissolvability before being put into tubes of 20 5 mg THC gummies. They come in three flavors: zkittlez, the cannabis oil of which is meant to give a euphoric feeling, wild orange, which is meant to help you focus, and unflavored, which is a mix of both.
As with all marijuana products made in Massachusetts, all of Freshly Baked’s products are sent to a lab to be checked for issues like unsafe ingredients and too much or too little THC before they are distributed.
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While production of the products only takes about two days, it takes the lab, which tests the products by batch, an average of two weeks to give its approval.
Freshly Baked Company’s products are sold via the company’s delivery service, as well as at dispensaries all around the state.
How delivery works
Freshly Baked delivers to all municipalities within 15 miles of Taunton, minus those which chose to keep marijuana illegal, as well as college campuses and federal housing complexes.
The company is planning to soon expand delivery service to Boston and other municipalities as well.
Customers order the products online from the company’s website. They begin by selecting products, which can be filtered by strain lineage, price, brand and THC and CBD potency.
In addition to the products they make themselves, Freshly Baked also sells marijuana flowers and pre-rolled joints and blunts from Massachusetts-based cultivators, marijuana extract, and smoking accessories.
Once customers have selected their products, they put in their address and select an hour window for delivery. The website will alert them if they are not within delivery range.
Customers must upload a photo of their ID to ensure they are 21, and agree to being recorded on the body cameras the delivery people must wear by law to prevent theft and other crimes.
Customers can choose to pay online or by debit card during the delivery. There is a $5 delivery fee and $50 delivery minimum for those living around Taunton, and a $10 delivery fee and $100 delivery minimum for those living in Boston.
To help separate themselves from their competition, Freshly Baked has begun instituting a 60-minutes-or-less delivery guarantee if products are ordered within delivery hours.
Freshly Baked Company’s delivery vans are purposefully discreet — just plain white vans with no branding — to help prevent theft and allow people to purchase products without backlash from neighbors.
The vans are also tracked and monitored from Freshly Baked Company’s headquarters, as state law requires, for the safety of employees and customers.
When they arrive, the delivery person goes over the order with the customer, who signs for the order, and then the products are taken out of a lock box in the van and handed to the customer. The interaction only takes a few minutes.
Looking ahead
Operations and delivery specialist Jackie Elias said that the company is only doing five to 10 deliveries a day right now. She said it’s been hard for the company to get its name out due to marijuana being illegal federally, which causes Facebook and other social media treat their posts as selling illegal products.
Instead, Elias said, the company plans on putting up advertising posters around the area in businesses like liquor stores and tattoo parlors where the clientele is largely over 21.
While some locals are still nervous about what impact marijuana legalization might have on their community, she said, she believes Freshly Baked is having a positive impact.
In addition to the medicinal benefits of marijuana, which are well-documented, Elias said marijuana delivery businesses may prevent consumers from driving high to buy more products.
“We’re trying to provide access to people who may not have a car to go somewhere or people just trying to be safe during this pandemic that’s still going on,” she said.
Elias said she also thinks the company’s products are of stand-out quality. While some marijuana edibles have a grassy taste, she said she’s been impressed with the care Freshly Baked Company’s team has put into creating delicious gummies.
“Us just being a small company and a lot of us being passionate about cannabis, we make sure the quality is top here because we want people to see that we appreciate cannabis and we want them to appreciate it as well,” she said.
To find out more about Freshly Baked Company’s products and try them yourself, visit freshlybakedcompany.com.
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