Light Up and Chill Out With Mom and Dad Grass
California-based Dad Grass makes CBD joints that are changing the game. Founders Ben Starmer and Joshua Katz speak with L'OFFICIEL about running a weed company and introduce Mom Grass, made with the "mother of all cannabinoids."
“If you're not having fun running a weed brand then you're probably doing something wrong.” That’s the philosophy of Joshua Katz and Ben Starmer, the founders of Dad Grass. But their weed won’t get you high—Dad Grass offers 100 percent hemp flower and pre-rolled joints that have all the benefits of CBD and CBG and very low amounts (at or below the legal limit of 0.3 percent) of THC, making them legal in all 50 states.
The brand launched last year, just two weeks before the coronavirus pandemic hit. By that point, “Dad Grass had been an idea for quite some time, around the simple belief that today’s weed gets you too damn high,” Katz tells L’OFFICIEL. “Getting stoned to the bone is great for some folks, but we found that in the recreational market there weren’t very many options for really relaxing, high-grade weed.”
Starmer and Katz, who met a decade ago while working at Levi’s in San Francisco, wanted to simplify lighting up and chilling out, which has become increasingly complicated considering the dozens of strains and levels of potency you’re met with when stepping into a dispensary. “[There’s] a drastic evolution from us growing up as teenagers where you had a weed dealer and they had one type of weed—called weed,” Starmer says. “It's more complicated and as an experience you feel like you have to go into a higher tier, you must understand your strain and all the different cannabinoids and all this stuff and that's just with flower. Then what about gummies and pens and all that stuff? Also, for us, it wasn’t just about potency and predictability, but keeping things simple. Like how they were in our parents' era and earlier on in our lives.”
These days, you can find CBD added to just about anything—cosmetic products, candy, even dog treats. Oftentimes, however, you’re left questioning whether you can even feel its effects. CBD, or cannabidiol, is derived from the hemp plant and may assist with alleviating anxiety, chronic pain, and inflammation, relaxing the mind and body without any of the psychoactive side-effects of THC. When you consume it in another product, it’s often infused as CBD distillate, which contains 70-80 percent CBD.
“We focus on joints and smokable flower because the truth is smoking it that way is the best way to release the full potential of the plant,” Starmer says. “Mass marketed products are just giving you a distillate of CBD, they're not giving you all the other elements and compounds that work together to make an experience.”
That experience is a relaxed state that might give you a little buzz, but you’re still fully functional. And now, Dad Grass also offers Mom Grass CBG pre-rolled joints, which give a slightly different sense of bliss. CBG, or cannabigerol, is considered the "mother of all cannabinoids” and a building block for THC and CBD. While there have been fewer studies on CBG, so far it’s shown promise for its ability to unwind the mind and body, plus it’s non-psychoactive like CBD. Starmer, Katz, and the farmers they partner with even developed a variety of hemp plants that have a higher concentration of CBG specially for their product. The result is a pre-rolled Mom Grass joint that has a calm and grounding effect that the founders compare to feeling “tuned in” rather than spaced out.
Working with USDA Certified Organic hemp farms, Dad Grass goes the extra step to ensure that its CBD and CBG are the highest quality. The company sends its fresh cut crop to independent third-party labs to test that it’s free from pesticides, mold, fungus, bacteria, and other toxins. The labs also determine the precise concentrations of THC and CBD and can specify the flower’s terpene profile.
At the forefront of the CBG market, the Dad Grass founders see a lot of promise based on the reception that their CBD product has received. Not looking to replace traditional marijuana, they’ve actually found that CBD makes a great companion for those that enjoy high THC weed. Because marijuana that is high in THC doesn’t have much CBD in it, you can really feel the effectiveness of the cannabidiol—some even mix the Dad Grass flower with recreational marijuana for the best of both worlds. “It’s not about dimming down the potency, but instead adding in the calming benefits,” Katz says.
With a laidback, vintage-inspired aesthetic, Dad Grass also makes an approachable entry point for those looking to try cannabis for the first time—but be careful about calling it a gateway into the world of weed: “Being children of the D.A.R.E program, I don't think ‘gateway’ is a word we would use,” Katz laughs. But “newbies” are a large portion of Dad Grass’ demographic, the founder shares, in addition to those that have smoked weed in the past but didn’t enjoy the psychoactive effects or simply smoked so much that it’s difficult to get high anymore. Also, perhaps ironically, the brand has more female customers than male customers despite its patriarchal name.
But Dad Grass has been built on inclusivity and community from the beginning; even though their product is named after Mom and Dad, it’s for everyone. One of the first initiatives the brand launched was inviting anyone affected by the pandemic—people who had been laid off or furloughed, frontline workers, etc.—to have a free CBD joint on them. It’s always been about helping people find a way to chill out.
