Editors’ Note: This is the transcript version of the podcast. Please note that due to time and audio constraints, transcription may not be perfect. We encourage you to listen to the podcast, embedded below if you need any clarification. We hope you enjoy!
This week we are joined by Matha Figaro, CEO, and Founder of Cannpowerment, to discuss:
- Culinary Edibles
- Advancing the industry by helping others
- From legacy to legal
- And so much more
About Matha: With An Associate of Arts and Sciences (A.A.S.) degree in Baking and Pastry Arts from Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts Graduating Class of 2010, ButACake takes the CAKE in 100% handmade from scratch treats. ButACake is a cannabis brand specializing in educating and feeding consumers on the benefits of alternative cannabis consumption. Click the photo above for more.
#Cannabis #CannabisChef #Cannabiscommunity
At Eighth Revolution (8th Rev), we provide services from capital to cannabinoid and everything in between in the cannabinoid industry.
8th Revolution Cannabinoid Playbook is an Industry-leading report covering the entire cannabis supply chain
The Dime is a top 50 Cannabis Podcast
Contact us directly at [email protected] Bryan Fields: @bryanfields24 Kellan Finney: @Kellan_Finney
[00:00:00] What’s
[00:00:02]Bryan Fields: up guys? Welcome back to that episode of The Dime. I’m Brian Fields, and with me as always is Ke Finney. And this week we’ve got a very special guest, Mata Figueroa, co-founder and CEO of Can Empowerment Mata. Thanks for taking the time. How you doing
[00:00:13]Matha: today? So well, so well, really excited to be here.
[00:00:16] Thanks for having me,
[00:00:17]Bryan Fields: guys. Stoked to dive in. Kelin, how are you doing? I’m good. Doing really well?
[00:00:20]Kellan Finney: Yeah. Yeah, I’m doing well. I’m excited to talk to Mata and, uh, another east coaster, I
[00:00:26]Bryan Fields: guess. Right. SS what’s, for the record, your
[00:00:29]Matha: location. I’m in Jersey City, New Jersey. Born and raised in Jersey. First generation American.
[00:00:35] Let’s go, let’s go
[00:00:36]Bryan Fields: another, let’s go another East coast for the map. So mata, for our listeners that un freely about you. Can you give it all a background about yourself?
[00:00:43]Matha: Yeah, so, uh, my name’s Mata figure, Like I said before, first generation. My family came here from Haiti. Uh, just so really lucky, honestly, to be here.
[00:00:53] I started a brand called Butter Cake back in 2015, and I was just slinging really good butter cakes. I’m a pastry chef by [00:01:00] trade. Got to enjoy working for Whole Foods for a few years in management, so that was really fun. But then I just got tired of it, so I tried my own business making butter. Uh, about a few months into doing that, a woman came up to me and she was like, Hey, I gotta go through chemo.
[00:01:14] Can you turn your cake into an edible for me? And I was like, Hell no. Because it’s 2015. I’m not go to jail for your ass. Uhuh, there’s just no way She comes back a few months later and she’s like, Come on, but a cake I really like. I think you should do this, you should do this. And she just really encouraged me and I was like, Okay, fine.
[00:01:31] I’ll practice on you, but we gotta keep this a secret and. She didn’t keep it a secret. She shared with all her friends, she shared with her family and like it kind of just took up and, and blew up from there. And now here I am, eight years later, uh, I applied for a license in the state of New Jersey under my business called Cann Powerment, in which we are really excited to be conditionally licensed.
[00:01:53] We’re gonna be producing ButA cAKE and we’ll be producing for other people with awesome brands that wanna get into the market.
[00:01:58] out here
[00:01:59]Bryan Fields:[00:02:00] Many congratulations. So I guess my, my first question was, was that your first experience dabbling between the intersection of cannabis infused cooking
[00:02:06]Matha: for the public? Yeah. .
[00:02:09]Bryan Fields: And what about for yourself?
[00:02:10]Matha: No, I’ve been a little stoner probably since I was born. And it, And
[00:02:14]Bryan Fields: it was through cooking was how you consumed, or was it through
[00:02:17]Matha: Ry? Oh, I, so I was actually a smoker when I first started. I had herniated three discs in my lower back in my chef life. Yeah. And it sucked and it turned me into a vegetable for a few months.
[00:02:28] And I was just on the couch doing all kinds of opioids that doctors prescribed. And finally my mom and and a friend of mine were like, Yo, we don’t even recognize you. Your personality’s gone. And when my mom disappeared, my friend was like, Try some, Try some of these edibles, try some weed. And then I kind of just was like, All right.
[00:02:44] But I never thought it was gonna be a business. I never thought it was gonna lead me here. Like me and my personal consumption is. It was just like, smoke some weed, my back hurts, smoke some weed, doing yoga. And then I started doing the edibles and now I’m just, I love it for all the health reasons [00:03:00] I’m able to do sugar free, gluten free, vegan, all kinds of cool stuff.
[00:03:03] So eating weed is my preferred way.
[00:03:05] now
[00:03:06]Kellan Finney: What’s your favorite, uh, form factor to bake with? Is it butter or is it a tincture? What.
[00:03:11]Matha: Ooh. Honestly, the more that science continues to develop really awesome ways for me to infuse the more excited I get. Um, I, I recently came across a company called a Zuka, and they do like sugars and, and all kind of cool things like that.
[00:03:25] So, um, I feel like lately these days, that’s been my favorite thing.
[00:03:30]Bryan Fields: And how, how, so how like for, for new consumers that are trying to get interested, but are petrified of, let’s say the infused cursing, how, how do new consumers can feel comfortable kind of adapting the new space? I would
[00:03:41]Matha: say do your research.
[00:03:42] Make sure you like, talk to your chef beforehand if you have access to that person. Always start low and slow. I don’t care how good it tastes. Have some self-control. , take a little bite. Wait 20 minutes, see how you feel and take it. So what other
[00:03:57]Bryan Fields: products are, uh, uh, involved with Butter Cake? [00:04:00] Obviously we, we, we got the grand reveal on the naming behind that, which was definitely one of my questions.
[00:04:03] But what other products are, are, are in the arsenal? Um,
[00:04:06]Matha: so butter cake. Shockingly enough, our number one seller are our gummies. Um, we have a new form factor out into the market right now. It’s just like the, uh, Listerine strips. You put it on your tongue and it starts to dissolve and you get an effect. So that’s just really, really fun.
[00:04:21] We’re doing it with hemp deriv delta to eight right now, uh, while we wait for the license to come through so that we could push it into the market with straight up THC the way everybody wants it.
[00:04:31]Bryan Fields: What,
[00:04:31]Kellan Finney: uh, how
[00:04:32]Bryan Fields: did that idea come to.
[00:04:34]Matha: Uh, so in New Jersey, they decided to make their reg regulations for the adult use market so that we can’t have baked goods.
[00:04:41] Um, I’m on a special task force to change that, by the way. So new rules are on the way. Thankfully, , thankfully, but when they said no baked goods, and I was like, Well, damn. I guess there’s no butter kicks for New Jersey. What else am I gonna do? And I just wrecked my brain back and forth. My childhood friend since third grade, Jimmy, he’s also my business partner and he’s had [00:05:00] incredible experience, um, in consumer packaged goods with a company out in Germany.
[00:05:04] Um, and then when I told him like, Yo, we got no bake goods, but I really love doing my tincture. I really love doing my oil spray. Let’s find something cool that people could do use through the mouth. And that’s how we landed on the strips.
[00:05:17]Bryan Fields: Why, Why no big goods.
[00:05:19]Matha: Uh, cuz then you gotta get the health department involved in New Jersey.
[00:05:24] Every municipality works as its own state. So now we’re talking about the CRC dealing with 500 and something different health departments on top of the health department for the entire state. So it’s just a lot, um, for them to try to handle when they’re just trying to open up the market to begin with.
[00:05:39] So that’s,
[00:05:42]Kellan Finney: I like how understanding you are about it. , I, I’m the one that’s a very cordial
[00:05:45]Bryan Fields: answer. , I’m about to throw a fit in the corner over here. I’m upset that I can’t be getting those products,
[00:05:51]Matha: so Wow. I feel like I’m so understanding about it. Cause I’m a legacy operator. Just because they don’t get it doesn’t mean I don’t get it yet.
[00:05:58] Yeah, that’s So I’m just [00:06:00] gonna help them get it so that we can all lead, do
[00:06:03]Bryan Fields: it , but get it. So I know Butter Cake’s, one of the brands underneath the umbrella. What else is the primary goal of Camp
[00:06:09]Matha: Powerment? Honestly, we are looking for underrepresented individuals. We’re looking for the little guys, you know, the MSOs.
[00:06:16] They could do the cookies and all that good stuff, but we are really just looking to empower. People that thought that they couldn’t do what I’m doing right now, and people that don’t have two and a half million dollars to get a license. You know, we really wanna just lower the barriers of entries so we can make some field gummies or some Kellen cakes, whatever.
[00:06:33]Bryan Fields: I like it. I like it. I know one of your missions is diversify the products on a retails shelf. Can you kind of expand on that?
[00:06:39]Matha: Yeah, I pulled up to California Palm Springs, which I should have assumed wasn’t gonna be the most , most diverse place. But I shot my shot, you know, and I asked, I said, Hey, which one of these brands is women?
[00:06:50] Made no answer. Okay, fine. Which one of these is black owned? No answer. And I was like, Damn, if I’m gonna be a manufacturer, I need to make sure that every [00:07:00] single dispensary can at least answer that question for somebody that walks into
[00:07:04]Bryan Fields: the. I think that’s so important. But I guess my question to you is, for a consumer who wants to support a brand like that but isn’t sure which one is owned by those individuals, how, how, how do they figure that out?
[00:07:14] Cause if a Bud tender doesn’t know there could be a brand on the shelf, but how, how do we kind of align the information with the individual?
[00:07:21]Matha: Ooh, woo. Wow. I don’t know. Maybe we should do something together, Brian, where we just put all the information up where all the black own businesses,
[00:07:30]Bryan Fields: Let me
[00:07:31]Matha: like the directory.
[00:07:32] Yeah, let’s get it. Drop it on the dime every week. We’ll just do a quick list. Here’s five black owned businesses you could support. Five minority owned, women known lgbtq, own all of it.
[00:07:41]Bryan Fields: Yeah. Cuz I think that’s such an important thing, right? Cuz people do wanna support certain types of businesses when they go in and sometimes there’s an information disconnect, especially maybe it could be that one Budd tender that doesn’t know, but four others do.
[00:07:51] And that’s one of the biggest challenges that, that I’ve seen is that there’s like the the missing gap of information transfer between the individuals.
[00:07:59]Matha:[00:08:00] Agreed. I’m, I’m gonna attempt to solve that
[00:08:02]Bryan Fields: sticker. Maybe I’m just kind of brainstorming out loud
[00:08:06]Matha: certification. It’s gotta be different
[00:08:08]Kellan Finney: in every state though.
[00:08:09] You know, It’s gonna be Ellen’s tough one, right?
[00:08:11]Bryan Fields: What? I’m surprised this is true. Um, so a question for you is, I’ve heard you say I’m gonna put my mask on first and then help the others around me.
[00:08:20]Matha: Yeah. Why? So when I say my mask on first, I’m talking about But A cake. You know, I started that. It’s completely legacy operation.
[00:08:29] Um, and not for nothing. Being a legacy operator is hard as fuck. You cannot walk into a bank right now with a duffle bag of $200,000 of cash saying, Okay, I wanna buy a house now. I wanna buy a car now. Like life right now, the way it is, is not what it used to be for, for legacy operators back in the day.
[00:08:45] And so for me, it really just means like, Let me put the framework together to figure out how regular everyday people could get involved in this industry. And once I do that, I’m just gonna pass it on, pass it out, give it out. I’m, I’m not interested in gatekeeping, I’m not [00:09:00] interested in making people pay, uh, me for, for, you know, templates and guidelines and stuff like that.
[00:09:05] I really just wanna make it as easy and equitable as possible for whoever wants to be involved to get.
[00:09:11]Bryan Fields: Yeah, it’s, it’s so important to have someone like yourself trailblazing from the front because some people are just a little more hesitant until they see someone else kind of pushing forward. Not everyone’s meant to be the alpha to top down the trees and say, Hey, like, I’m gonna handle it first.
[00:09:23] You guys can follow me. Uh, I’m gonna help everyone through. That’s right. It also is,
[00:09:27]Kellan Finney: it’s also more genuine that you’re doing it yourself and not charging other people to, to help. You know what I mean?
[00:09:32]Matha: Yeah. Yeah. The first time a consultant hit me up when I decided I was gonna go on this journey, he was like, Oh, $50,000 up front.
[00:09:40] And I was like, What, What? What? To consult me to tell me that I need to get a lawyer that’s gonna charge me another 30, 40, 50,000 on top of that. That’s crazy. Those are
[00:09:50]Bryan Fields: billable hours too. Yeah.
[00:09:56] So social equity needs to be collected on deals on paper, [00:10:00] not just verbally. Uh, obviously that’s a, the massive sticking point for so many to stop saying the words and start doing the actions. Yeah. You know, what can, what can companies do to do that?
[00:10:09]Matha: Shit, when it comes down to revenue splits, it’s not 50 50.
[00:10:12] If you are a business, a manufacturer, an mso, whatever, and you’re in a position where you can help somebody else get in, why are we not doing 51 49 in favor of the social equity applicant? We’re not 50 50s s. No more predatory practices. You know, we just need more, um, legal people as well to really help guide us to make sure that we’re not falling into these practices and business owners.
[00:10:35] It’s time to speak up. Don’t just sign the deal for the sake of doing a deal, because then we make no difference as a collective.
[00:10:41]Bryan Fields: I love it. Stoners make great blood donors. True or false?
[00:10:45]Matha: Hell yeah. That’s true. Very true. Why? So there, for some reason, there’s like this stigma out there that if you are a cannabis consumer, stoner, weed friendly person, that you cannot donate [00:11:00] blood.
[00:11:00] And that’s actually not true at all. With Covid being here, we’re actually finding ourselves, um, in the United States in the first blood crisis ever. We lost a lot of people, um, clearly to Covid d and then with. Putting all of us inside and having a shutdown and being so virtual, it’s hard for blood banks and for, for, uh, hospitals, the American Red Cross, places like that, to really tap into people and start getting more blood.
[00:11:24] So now more people are sick, less people are donating. We have a massive shortage and this is a huge opportunity for the cannabis industry to get in and get into donating. Cuz you know, we’re, we’re fucking great people as stoners. Why?
[00:11:38]Bryan Fields: You
[00:11:38]Kellan Finney: think it, uh, helps with the actual blood donation part that like, you know, like you smoke weed dries get red, it’s a vasodilator, so maybe it opens your blood vessels up, makes it easier to poke
[00:11:47]Bryan Fields: from a possibly.
[00:11:49]Matha: Um, I’m not a doctor by any means. Me neither, Me neither ever associated with the fda, but I’m pretty sure with more research being a cannabis consumer [00:12:00] and a blood donor has to be a positive thing. I
[00:12:03]Bryan Fields: agree. Yeah. Mata, if you were to start over or start a competitor, which part of your business would be most difficult for you to replicate?
[00:12:15] Ooh.
[00:12:18]Matha: If I were to start over, which would, What would be the most difficult thing to replicate? To be honest, I recently thought about creating another brand, and I haven’t actually pulled the trigger on that because I’m realiz. How hard it is to actually start a brand. Butter cake was something I think I got lucky with.
[00:12:38] I was already making butter cakes. Butter cake. The name just fell into my lap. It, it all worked. Um, I don’t know if I could recreate that magic
[00:12:46]Bryan Fields: twice. I think you could, and I think that there’s. Behind every piece of luck, there’s putting yourself in the right positions to be successful. And I think if you continue to place yourself in positions to be successful, luck seems to find [00:13:00] you, right?
[00:13:00] I think that’s kind of one of the things is people kind of attract good luck and that involves putting in the work and hustling and making sure you’re getting things done. Cuz if you weren’t producing the products, probably be really hard to start a brand behind bought
[00:13:11]Matha: a cake. That’s very true. It is
[00:13:13] very
[00:13:13]Bryan Fields: true.
[00:13:14] What is one product request that you get a lot but you’ll never.
[00:13:18]Matha: Oh my God. Like these designer bong cakes or something. I’m not a cake decorator by any means. There’s like this trend going on where people are decorating cakes and physically turning them into bong. So you could smoke your birthday cake.
[00:13:33] Please don’t hit me up for that cuz I’m never doing it. What about a wedding cake? Nah.
[00:13:39]Bryan Fields: I, I did see the, the bond cake that looked just outrageous. Do you share that too? Or is it like a one hitter for like, one person just like hits this?
[00:13:49]Matha: Yeah. I would imagine if it’s my birthday and my cake, it’s a one hitter
[00:13:57] But yeah. Cake decorating is, is, That’s the no, for me, I [00:14:00] don’t like decorating.
[00:14:01]Bryan Fields: What is one factor statistic operating in the cannabis industry that would shock other individual? Shocking.
[00:14:12]Matha: I don’t think I know. I don’t think I know a sta that would be shocking to the industry because I feel like this industry is so new. Everything that we’re doing is either so shockingly good or so shockingly bad. , ,
[00:14:25]Bryan Fields: what’s the future roadmap?
[00:14:28]Matha: The future roadmap. Ah, man. I’m hoping for interstate commerce.
[00:14:31] Near term, interstate commerce would be awesome, especially on the east coast. We see California and Washington figured it out, so it would be awesome to see, you know, Tri-State, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, let’s throw Connecticut in there as well. They’re coming online. If we could get some interstate commerce that would be sick and that would set us up for an even better future when federal.
[00:14:52]Bryan Fields: Agreed. 20 years from now, we’ll look back and say, That was barbaric. I can’t believe we did that in the cannabis industry. What is that? [00:15:00]
[00:15:01]Matha: 20 years from now, I’m gonna be like, I can’t believe I paid a municipality $20,000 for a non-refundable application fee for me to even operate there. That’s crazy. That is crazy.
[00:15:13] Yep. And 20 years from now, I’m probably gonna ask for my money back. . .
[00:15:18]Bryan Fields: The government always gets theirs first. That’s right. Before we do predictions, we ask all of our guests, if you could sum up your experience in a main takeaway or lesson, learn to pass onto the next generation, what would it be?
[00:15:32]Matha: Listen to yourself first.
[00:15:35] Listen to yourself first. I feel like if I had listened. To the people that are the most important in my life, my mom, my dad, my siblings, if I really had listened to them. I would’ve went to college. I would’ve got a four year degree. I’d be sitting behind a desk working some nine to five corporate job that I freaking hate, but I never listened to them.
[00:15:55] I didn’t listen to them. When they told me weed wasn’t an option, I didn’t listen to them. When they told me [00:16:00] culinary wasn’t a career, and I damn sure didn’t listen to them. When they told me But A Cake was the stupidest name they ever heard. So , if I could tell anybody, any kind of advice, listen to your.
[00:16:11] self Follow whatever it is that you wanna do. Everybody else that doesn’t agree they’ll, they’ll either find out later down the line that they should have given you better advice or they just won’t be involved and you’ll be happy anyway.
[00:16:24]Bryan Fields: Love it. Prediction time, maa, what else can be done to help legacy operators feel comfortable converting to the legal market?
[00:16:36]Matha: The thing that could be done is that we need our law enforcement to. Threatening us. That’s really what it is. Like the only reason why I felt comfortable putting my face in my name and my, you know, identity out there was because my law team and advisors. They promised me that they had my back, but outside of me trusting them, I would’ve never done it.
[00:16:59] So if [00:17:00] our, you know, people that make the laws, the rules and regulations could say, Hey, legacy operator, we get it. Please, you wanna con you want to switch over to the legal side, we won’t punish you for that.
[00:17:12]Bryan Fields: Ke I
[00:17:13]Kellan Finney: agree. I also think maybe lowering that, the barrier to make that transit. Uh, model was talking’s 2.5
[00:17:20]Bryan Fields: million.
[00:17:22] Even if you were a legacy operator, like I doubt you show up
[00:17:25]Kellan Finney: to the capital building with 2.5 million in cash and you’re like, Hey, can I fill out my application now?
[00:17:30]Bryan Fields: Yeah, exactly. It’s just not how it’s gonna work.
[00:17:32]Kellan Finney: So I think lowering the barrier to entry is probably the most important aspect
[00:17:35]Bryan Fields: associated with that.
[00:17:36] What do you think, Ryan? I think that there’s so many different things that maybe could be helpful, but it’s so hard to tell because each person feels differently and each government operates so differently. So I think kind of making it easier for people to understand how the situation operates, right?
[00:17:50] Instead of having to pay these massive fines or licensing opportunities to the government in order to submit your application. If we can lower the barriers of entry to make things easier and [00:18:00] cleaner for people to understand how to. I think it’ll help people feel more comfortable. I think one of the reasons a lot of people feel distrust with Gartner is cause they don’t trust them because they, they don’t really operate the way we think that they should.
[00:18:10] And maybe that’s a personal approach, but at the end of the day, I think that’s gonna be a big challenge and hopefully we can find ways to overcome that to allow people to continue to move in the right direction.
[00:18:21]Matha: That’s right. That is absolutely right. Also, I’d like to. There’s no correlation between legacy operating and being wealthy
[00:18:30] So people think that for some reason, that like if you’re a legacy operator, you’ve been selling drugs legally for so long. Weed specifically, that you’re like super freaking rich. It’s not really the case. Only like 2% of us are probably that rich . Yeah.
[00:18:45]Bryan Fields: Yeah. World. So, Martha, for our listeners, they wanna get in touch, they wanna learn more, and they wanna buy butter cake products.
[00:18:51] Where can they? Oh
[00:18:53]Matha: man, I’m all over the internet. Instagram, Twitter, but cake. It’s B U T A cake. We’re on butter [00:19:00] cake.shop for the legacy stuff. Butter cake wellness.com. For the legal stuff you can always Google me mata. Figu out. I’m everywhere.
[00:19:07]Bryan Fields: We’ll could open the shots. Thanks for taking the time.
[00:19:09] Awesome. Thank you
[00:19:10]Matha: guys.
