When Canopy Growth Corp. founder Bruce Linton was fired out of the blue this month, it might have shown the behemoth Canadian pot producer had lost its appetite for his high-flying business style.

Despite the abrupt ouster, however, Linton had already helped to forge a merchandising legacy for the industry that cannabis consumers across Canada will likely have to swallow for the foreseeable future.

When the market for marijuana-laced edibles opens across this country in December, a lot fewer products will be on offer than many had anticipated, industry experts say.

Far from the cornucopia of pot-wares sold in legalized U.S. states — where everything from dissolving breath strips to cotton candy can be had — Canopy and many other licensed producers here have chosen to concentrate on a small core of offerings.

Linton’s former company is valued at more than $18 billion. He said Canopy would be concentrating on just three product lines to begin with: vaping juices and devices, alcohol replacement beverages and high-end chocolates.

“We’ve been working on the theory that much of what is going to transform the cannabis market is creating ... (a small line of) really desirable ingestibles,” he said in an interview just before he was terminated.

If the market should clamour for gummies or breath strips, Linton said, room has been left at the company’s Smith Falls, Ont., plant to quickly install production lines.

But Linton’s start-small gambit for edibles is one the company will continue to follow in the wake of his departure, Canopy officials say.

“A handful of things change when you change CEOs, but those are big rocks that cannot be slowed down,” says Jordan Sinclair, vice president of communications with the company.

“The momentum is probably too much at this point,” Sinclair says.

Edibles — an amorphous category in the pot business that includes beverages, vape products and topical solutions — are expected to quickly consume as much as 60 per cent of the legal cannabis market in Canada. A recent Deloitte report estimates this next generation of cannabis products will be worth $2.7 billion a year in Canada.

And as part of an official, national rollout, the Ontario Cannabis Store last month issued a call for proposals from licensed producers to let this province’s only legal-pot distributor know what they intended to sell in its street-front and online stores.

Those products will be submitted to Health Canada Oct. 17 — a year after the legalization of their combustible counterparts. They will then undergo an approval and procurement process that is expected to last between 60 and 90 days.

But the number of products each company puts forward will likely be more in line with Canopy’s concentrated model, rather than a scattershot of submissions, says Rod Elliot, an industry watcher with the Toronto consulting firm Global Public Affairs.

“I think that’s exactly how it’s going to emerge,” says Elliot, a senior vice president with the firm.

“Rather than a state like Colorado or California, where there are dozens and dozens of different types of edible products, they (Canadian producers) will probably cherry pick the top sellers in those states and present those to customers first,” he says.

Matei Olaru, CEO of the cannabis resource and information company Lift & Co., says edibles are expected to increase the number of cannabis users in Canada by 1.5 million people — a population that has generally been too timid to smoke pot, or been too turned off by the prospect.

Appealing to these “canna-curious,” Olaru says, is made easier by presenting them with tasty, safe and familiar products.

Elliot says infusing cannabis into track-record products like chocolates or sodas would also make the offerings more palatable to Health Canada regulators than some of the funkier fare on U.S. shelves.

“At the end of the day, Health Canada’s mandate is to protect the health of Canadians, it’s not to make it as industry friendly as possible,” he says.

“The last thing you want to do is produce a product which is not compliant ... off the bat so I think it does make sense for industry to start with a more conservative and cautious approach.”

Olaru adds that Health Canada regulations designed to make some edibles — like gummy products — less attractive to children also make it harder for producers to create distinctive lines.

This inability to differentiate their products from a competitor’s makes the idea of even creating a line less attractive, he says.

Keith Dolo, CEO of Sproutly Canada Inc., says producers in this country may have been too optimistic in their estimates of the numbers and varieties of edibles they’d be able to offer on day one.

“I think the issue with the whole industry is that people have over-promised not only what they were going to do on the (combustibles) side but also what they thought they could potentially produce on the edibles side,” says Dolo, whose company is one of the country’s largest licensed producers.

“I think there’s a lot more companies taking a more cautious approach to it, looking to put out only a couple of products on the shelf now and see how they do before going gangbusters with 30 to 40 different products,” he says.

Dolo says regulatory restrictions will help to limit product lines to begin with as producers seek Health Canada approvals for their wares.

But he also agrees that safe and familiar products will best serve the more timid tastes of an incipient market.

“Until people actually start to understand ... edibles, I think companies are going to take a more conservative approach to what products they put out and they’ll roll out the ones that make sense,” Dolo says.

“They’re not going to be the exotic products ... they’re going to be the more stable products that they know people are looking for,” he says.

Will Hyde, a pot sommelier with the cannabis resource company Leafly Canada, says the possible forms cannabis edibles can take is almost limitless.

“The cool thing about cannabis is that it can be used just like any other ingredient when you’re cooking with it or making confections and candies and all other sorts of forms,” says Hyde, a senior subject matter expert with the Toronto-based outfit.

“So, it’s really like a bit of an open-ended question as far as what the possibilities for edible cannabis are, you can infuse just about anything,” he says.

Pot standards like cookies, brownies and marshmallow rice squares — replete with the fats and oils that hold the active ingredients of cannabis so readily — will likely dominate shelf space when the Canadian market opens, Hyde says.

New beverage lines that include sodas and sports drinks — as well as alcohol alternatives — should also prove popular, he says.

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As well, with new Health Canada regulations limiting the psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) component of cannabis to 10 milligrams per product, Hyde says mint and hard candy packages — with each piece bearing a micro-dose — have become increasingly popular in legal U.S. centres.

“People really like that small dosing option because it gives them the ability to meter the effects a little bit more,” he says.

“The commitment to taking an edible that’s maybe 2.5 milligrams (THC) versus the commitment of taking an edible that’s 10 milligrams is much smaller and they’re able to eat another small dose if (the first) doesn’t give them the effects they are looking for.”

Hyde says the number and varieties of edible products will doubtless balloon here as the idea of legal weed becomes increasingly accepted in the country.

“We’re going to see a lot more innovation as cannabis continues to be normalized and more and more flavour scientists and chefs and people from the culinary space start using it as an ingredient,” he says.

“Once the market is more mature there will definitely be thousands of products.”

Linton said Canopy’s Smith Falls facility — a former Hershey’s Chocolate factory — will house its vaping plant, which will create both cannabis-infused juices and the vape-pen devices to consume them.

It will also incorporate a new, $80-million bottling plant to produce the alcohol alternatives on which the company is basing much of its edibles strategy.

“We think we can make really novel, desirable and brand-able beverages,” said Linton, who pictured these zero-calorie products going toe-to-toe with their alcohol counterparts at social gatherings.

“If you’re making a gin and tonic, why not a Tweed and tonic,” he says, referring to the company’s signature cannabis brand.

He says the company will also be marketing low-calorie, pre-mixed drinks in the Mike’s Hard Lemonade vein.

Canopy will also bring chocolate back to a town that was once the candy-bar capital of Canada.

“We’ve put a chocolate factory inside a marijuana factory that used to be a chocolate factory,” Linton said.

The “ethically sourced” brand, known as Hummingbird, will feature high-end, “non-junky” chocolate products, he says.

Linton said Canopy’s products — and the alcohol replacement beverages in particular — can also be seen as key to busting the industry’s true competition.

“This is the big disruptor to the illegal market because you’re not going to be able to get these in the illegal market,” he said.

“Which means you’ll go to the government-sanctioned stores and once you’re there you might realize, ‘Oh, I can actually get pre-rolled products here’ or whatever you were buying from the illicit market.”

Elliot agrees, saying the black market is replete with gummy bears, but has no capacity to bottle booze replacements.

Dolo says his company will initially target specific market segments with niche products that might not have widespread appeal.

“So (we’re) not making just a generic candy bar that’s going to go out that we hope the general masses tend to pick up,” he says.

“We’re really focusing on a high-quality, specific-niche market of consumers that are looking for premium branded products as well as a health and wellness category.”

Aside from a chocolate bar, Sproutly will also be offering a gummy and a caramel product come December.