In celebration of International Women’s Day, we’re excited to highlight some of the wonderful women who make Coast Mountain Cannabis a reality. The majority of our departments are headed by amazing, confident, and strong women passionate about quality cannabis and the traditions of the legacy market. All of them are long-time Pemberton locals, and are the glue that holds the team and the dream together.
Mallory is our fearless zoo-keeper, also known as Chief Operating Officer. Mal wears many hats, helping to plan, coordinate and execute many day to day business operations, wrangling team members and providing leadership across the board.
Why is working in the cannabis industry important to you?
So many reasons! I love being a part of a challenging industry with so many moving parts. It’s a constantly shifting and evolving landscape, and it really keeps me on my toes, keeps me growing, and solving new puzzles. The people are also incredibly passionate – our clients, partners, and staff are so excited to be a part of the mission. It’s a real pleasure to work in a space like that. I think the most important piece for me, though, is that we’re actually, tangibly helping improve people’s lives. Whether you’re using cannabis recreationally to relax or to enhance your experience, or you’re a medical client who has real struggles that cannabis helps with – it’s really fulfilling and exciting to be able to share that with people.
Brittany is our logistical lioness, also known as our Distribution Manager. With much demand for our product and only limited supply, Brittany elegantly plans and negotiates how our product reaches the shelves as quickly and freshly as possible. In addition, Brittany leads the powerhouse packaging team, making sure that only the very best flower makes it into our perfectly sealed glass jars.
What most excites you for the future of the cannabis industry?
One thing specifically which excites me is the opportunity to participate in “Farm Gate”. The Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch (LCRB) has referred to their program as a “Production Retail Store” (PRS) licence which would allow micro cultivators, standard cultivators, and nurseries to sell their own products at their own production facilities or sites. Currently the only way to purchase our product directly from us is with prescriptions and as a registered medical client; otherwise it receives mark ups as it travels through wholesale distribution centres and to retail stores. We’re looking forward to supplying our product directly to our community at a reasonable price directly from our facility; the supply chain is rather extensive!
I am excited about all our future customers! One thing we have seen is that those who have tried our product really love it and are showing growing levels of education across the market. Our customers have paid for quality and now have an appreciation and a standard of what high quality cannabis tastes and feels like. We grow with love and consciousness so our customers get to experience that. The feedback has been great and I can’t wait to hear more!
Brooke is our queen of Quality Assurance (QA). With a diamond eye for detail, Brooke develops highly specific SOPs and best practices for the team to follow, while ensuring what leaves our facility is only the best of the best.
Why is being detail oriented important to you?
Detailed oriented skills are important in my QA role to create procedures that capture the required data in a timely and organised manner. The art lies in finding the balance between time invested and the time saved by having all the details readily available when you need them. Taking the time to set up a process flow to capture all the required data accurately and in collaboration with the team members running the task is vital to being able to see the full picture of what occurred – even if its days, weeks or months after an event. A main objective of QA is to ensure all products are produced in compliance with required internal policies and procedures which can often also be dictated by government legislation. Such procedures aim to capture the manufacturer process to ensure product safety and efficacy tracking over time.
For licensed producers of cannabis in Canada, that also means compliance with the Cannabis Regulations. Compliance is verified by Health Canada via audits of our manufacturing and processing records. Being detail oriented helps to have those audits run more smoothly and efficiently. It also allows our committed crew to keep on doing what they do best in their important roles. Just know that us QA folks will be asking a lot of well-meaning and inquisitive questions along the way – all in the name of continuous improvement.
Rachelle is our rockstar Trim Manager, responsible for overseeing our finest hand trimming processes. What started off as a team of three, Rachelle now leads a thirteen strong team of legacy market, local professional trimmers. When not trimming, you can find Rachelle in our client services department assisting our medical patients to get exactly what they need.
How has trimming changed between legacy and legal? Why still hand trim?
Well for start – in the legacy market, we would spend our days trimming like our hands were on fire, drinking tea, and passing blunts from sunrise to sundown. Those were good days! In the legal market, especially when crafting cannabis for legal medical prescriptions, there is a big focus on sanitation and cleanliness. I mean you wouldn’t see anyone trimming in a lab coat in the legacy market, and at CMC we’re fully gowned-up, with precise procedures for cleaning and sanitising each piece of equipment that we use, with a hyper focus on anything that comes in contact with cannabis. [And definitely no tea or blunt passing in the room.] I can’t say that trimming in the legacy market was approved in family conversation when the “what are you doing with your life” question came up, but it’s interesting to experience the transition from then to now. I definitely never thought I would talk about this in the open! We continue to trim by hand at CMC because a machine can’t produce the same preciseness as the human touch. Our trim team (and everyone at CMC) has a genuine love for cannabis, and we put a lot of professional care into trimming each bud. We are proud that 90% of our trimmers at CMC are super-skilled women. No machine can ever replace them!
