An American success story grows out of the harsh regulatory environment of California cannabis. The mom-and-pop grow team at Fig Farms is doing something right.
For a small family-owned farm, Fig Farms looms large. The brand has been gifted enough awards to enter the national weed lexicon. Born in a garage in Sebastopol, California and now based in Oakland, Fig Farms was one of the top 5 selling flower companies in the state in Q1 of this year. Operating with less than 10,000 square feet of canopy, every single bud that Fig produces comes out beyond reproach. Its flower is often spoken for before it is even trimmed.
Fig Farms was founded by Keith Healy and Chloe Healy in 2016, a husband-and-wife duo of dynamic cannabis genetic breeders, growers, as well as parents of three. “We are purists,” says the brand’s co-founder and CEO Keith Healy. The packaging for all Fig Farms products honors their three children whose names are hidden within the starry sky in an iridescent glow atop a dark blue backdrop.
“We have such a high standard, we can’t make mistakes,” says Keith. “There’s so much pressure for us to make it perfect every time. Every run counts. If it doesn’t perform every time, let’s say if there’s a failed harvest, well, that’s income. That’s not happening. And right now, because everything’s tightened up so much, there’s not enough room for failure. Especially for someone who built it themselves.”
The Fig Farms owners are hands-on. Chloe and Keith have a 100% stake in their company. They work alongside Chief Sales Officer Mike Doten daily in the cultivation site, offering a unique approach that Keith says may be key to their success. “We work at the grow. We smoke weed from every single batch to make sure it’s good,” says Mike. “Those who care less about the consumer experience, they’ll throw a bad batch into pre-rolls, or they’ll find a BHO person who will take bad batches. We don’t. So that’s the conversation that you might have with somebody who’s not as invested in on a day-to-day basis as we are. We’re smokers. We’re consumers, too.”
What’s most prodigious about Fig Farms is found inside the package. Its cannabis bud calyxes and structures are otherworldly. Fig Farms is cherished in California for its unexpected phenotype selection. Each phenotype selected by Fig Farms exhibits its maximum amount of plant expression. Their flower is sold out for the next quarter to some 500 retail dispensary buyers.
Keith grew up in Santa Barbara County near Figueroa Mountain. The name Fig Farms is an homage to Keith’s younger years beneath the mountain, using “figs” as a pseudonym for cannabis. “In high school when we were going to go smoke, people would be like, ‘Hey, do you have the figs?’ It was slang,” he says. Fig Farms entered Banana Fig #8, which was the crop from one single plant bred by Chloe in their laundry room, in its first High Times Cannabis Cup. It won and changed the game for Fig. The next day, they were offered the space in Oakland they still operate out of today. One major construction expansion made room for their current operation. “It’s a lot of fun,” he says. “We have 10,000 plants that we’re hyper-focused on every day here.”
Fig Farms has expanded into new marketplaces since its inception. Consumers will find its award-winning flowers on shelves in California, Illinois, and Arizona. “We came out there and really didn’t know what to expect,” says CSO Mike Doten of the brand’s foray into the Chicago adult-use market. “The marketplace is really young and bright. The consumers are so interested in it and passionate to learn about every little detail and want all the information about how we grow. The people in Chicago, Illinois are just excited and so much fun to interact with. The Midwest market is passionate.”
2023 has been a Tour De Force year for Fig Farms at awards shows. Winning Best in Show and Best Indoor Flower at The Emerald Cup 2023, it marked the second year Fig Farms took home 1st place in the category among tough competition. In 2023, Fig Farms took home 7 out of the top 20 strains in its category. Fig Farm’s Blue Face went on to win 1st place Indica and 1st place Hybrid Animal Face, which was bred by Seed Junkie, at the High Times SoCal Cannabis Cup.
The mom-and-pop brand was also awarded the prestigious Breeders Cup, which honors a unique cultivar bred during pheno hunts done in-house. The founders say their main goal is finding something unique, that consumers have never seen or tasted before. “In our pheno hunt room right now, we have about 500 plants of all different phenos. It got whittled down a little bit with how many males are in there,” says Keith. “About half of it is stuff that we’ve bred, and then half of it is outside breeders. It’s fun to see what our techniques will do to those cultivars.”
Fig’s meticulous growers are always looking for innovations. “We’re into hunting other people’s genetics as well,” says Keith. “It’s what makes the whole thing fun. It can get very boring if we’re just doing the same thing over and over. If we’re just growing, say, Sour Diesel and OG Kush, like we were back in the day, that gets really boring really quick.”
Fig Farms recently launched a new pre-roll offering, an idea the founders decided to finally add to the product lineup after Keith needed a good quality joint at the end of hockey practice. Normally, he prefers the ritual of rolling it fresh, but gives the consumers what they want.
The brand also added a Smalls bag to its lineup, a popular product SKU that offers an accessible answer to high consumer demand. “We’re going to give it to you in the way that you’re comfortable with, but again, being pure to what those strains are,” he says. “It’s like the same thing with edibles, too. I like the idea of us doing edibles because it’s a product that feels more pure.”
The brand’s expansion into the edibles category debuted a Cookies and Cream chocolate bite earlier this year. The flavor is nostalgic for the CEO. “I was taking my daughters on a walk along the ocean, and there’s a little candy store, and they had cookies and cream fudge,” Keith says. “I thought, we need cookies and cream. They’re so fire because white chocolate isn’t seen a lot.”
This family-first mentality has served Fig Farms. Their team is tight-knit, exhibiting a group of lifelong friends. “I can’t wait to get home and get back to my wife and my family,” says Keith. “Having a support group and a team where I’m excited to come to work and excited to be with my friends. That’s a huge part of it for us.”
Keith has advice for other entrepreneurs in the space: “Stay true to what excites you and just do what you know, as good as you can. Stay in your lane,” he says, underlining his ethos of focusing on quality. “Authentic quality and staying authentic to your craft. In the sea of companies trying to get the cheapest gram per dollar, fuck all that. Do what you like.”
The brand also does a particular form of customer outreach that is working well for them. Fig Farms will go as far as to talk directly with every consumer to replace the jar in rare misses via social media. “This is a big business. Customer service matters. If you make somebody happy, they’re going to tell a couple of people, right? You make somebody unhappy and they’re going to tell everybody. And so we really value just making sure that people are enjoying their experiences,” says Keith. “Respect for the consumer through-and-through. It relates to how we describe the strains or how we tell people about the lineage. We honor the consumer and respect them. We give them honest information.”
Chloe looks back on the challenges when they first started Fig Farms: “It was really a first-year grind for Keith and I,” says Chloe, “Getting our business up and running and establishing our workforce, and also at the same time, having our young family. Luckily, we have a great team now.”
Being a mother in the industry, historically, women growers may not have been as up-front with people that they were in cannabis. Now, Chloe proudly has a Buy Weed From Women sweatshirt. “We don’t go and tell everyone that we meet about it still,” says Chloe. “When I make new relationships with moms at our school, I try to gauge their comfort level before I spill too much. Many are welcoming and, you know, think it’s awesome. But also, it’s hard having young children because you don’t want them to be impacted and treated differently by other parents or by teachers. So there’s still that element of how do other people think about me growing weed? The stigma remains.”
The Healy’s are very cool parents. Chloe advises other entrepreneurs: “Do not let anyone keep you from doing what you love and what you think is right. I fell into this because I had a great partner. Choose your life partner really well, and make sure you find somebody that supports you and has your back through it all.”
“There are going to be really tough times together where the money’s tight or you’re tired or working all night,” she says. “We were picking our kids up late because we had to scramble to get some last-minute plants watered in the mom room. And it was really all on Keith and I.” The founder says they are fortunate to have a small group of people that they’ve kept close. “Any entrepreneur needs a really strong support group. You can’t do it all by yourself,” Chloe says. “It’s not possible.”
Fig Farms stays tapped into its consumer base. For other cannabis industry cohorts looking for advice from the esteemed brand, Keith leaves entrepreneurs with this: “Have clear communication with everybody that’s involved, make sure that people know what’s expected, and have clear communication with your partners and with everybody that you’re doing business with,” says Keith. “Tell me what the consumers are telling you.”
Source: Lindsey Bartlett – forbes.com
