Supreme Organics brings pop art inspired branding to edible cannabis products with colorful, Andy Warhol-style design.

Based in Los Angeles, Supreme Organics is a cannabis edibles brand best known for its gummies and fruit chews. They also make peanut butter cups, gourmet chocolate truffles, peppermint patties, hard sweets in rare flavors like blackberry and grapefruit hibiscus, plus inedible cannabis products like raw flower, oils, and concentrates.

Supreme Organics edibles are made in the company’s downtown Los Angeles kitchen. The company controls every step of the process in-house and calls it seed-to-you, “which is our version of the whole farm-to-table thing.”

Since California legalized recreational cannabis in January, CEO Michael Hurt said the company has been working on getting up to speed with new edibles regulations.

“Los Angeles has been like running an ultra-marathon on no sleep, literally,” Hurt said. “We’re still tying up loose ends with licensing, but orders are going crazy. People are finally receptive to the brand, but we’re fighting an uphill battle with what we can do. We’re taking our Gummies and Hard Sweets from 150mg (15 10mg servings) down to 100mg (10 10mg servings) because of the new California regulations regarding packaging.”

Supreme Organics reached out to customers for suggestions for new product names, as the new rules ban edible companies from using words like ‘candy’ that could appeal to children; their hard candies are now called hard sweets.

The edibles company supports cannabis industry charities like CannaKids and Marine Qweenz by sponsoring The Big Lebongski, a California bowling league with teams from cannabis companies. This Christmas, the bowling league gifted one patient their supply of CBD oil.

Hurt talked to Cashinbis about the inspiration for branding Supreme Organics.

How did you enter the cannabis industry?

I’ve been doing this since 2002 – doing edibles since 2009 – making cookies, brownies, lemon bars, things like that, but I realized it didn’t stand out at all. I started thinking, what were my favorite candies? I guess I shouldn’t name names, but it was popular, mainstream candy bars, and gummies.

Our fruit chews are very popular, but they’ve been out of stock. Fruit chews are coming back, but it’s cost prohibitive to do all the labor required.

What inspired your brand design?

A company in Mexico did our branding. Our logo was done by a gentleman here in L.A. Cameron Harris, our chief marketing guy, and I came up with inspiration boards and references for our vision of the brand.

We were inspired by pop art. We wanted to have fun with it, without marketing to kids at all. It’s a cannabis product, but I wanted to stay as far away as possible from a Rastafarian look. I think we hit the nail on the head. People say it reminds them of Willy Wonka.

I love pop art – the message and the symbolism. We’re working from a very specific state of mind that we can’t define for everyone, but it shows in everything we do.

We’re thinking about with every ad, every Instagram post. We want to have fun and inspire everyone else to have fun. But you have to be safe – you have to be socially responsible.

How are your products distributed?

We have a dispensary. It’s not branded right now because that’s not where our focus is.

People can get our products throughout California, and we’re working on licensing the brand in Oregon, Nevada, Washington and Colorado.

[Some CA dispensaries that carry Supreme Organics include The Green Goddess (Venice), Exhale (Los Angeles), Canto Diem (Hollywood), Cold Creek (Highland), and Pacific Coast Relief (Anaheim).]

What’s new for Supreme Organics this year?

We’re launching a vape cartridges and oil line. It’s definitely art-inspired. We have a high profile artist doing the packaging, who’s internationally known brand collaborations with multinational companies.

We have a license in Uraguay that allows us to export in the coming months. Soon we’ll be exporting to other countries. We’re trying to do it right.

What’s your vision for the future of the cannabis industry?

I think the future of the cannabis industry will have parallels with the craft beer industry. We already have a number of very large brands, but I want to keep it on a craft level with a lot of boutique cannabis brands. That’s where the cannabis industry is going to be – at the end of the day, we have a lot of connoisseurs.

Will you continue to support cannabis charities?

Absolutely. We’re starting a foundation in the name of Supreme Organics to provide scholarships to kids, focused on jobs for the industry – genetics, chemical engineering.

We’ll also continue our homeless outreach, with a focus on the veterans. We’ll keep supporting CannaKids and Marine Qweenz. I’m an army veteran myself, so I want to keep supporting veterans.