Brands to Watch: Midwest Magic
2021 was an exciting year for cannabis nationally, but in Missouri 2021 was the first year of being fully open for business for the state’s medical marijuana industry. With more opportunity and expansion, operators and brands are growing bigger than ever. With that in mind, Greenway has put together a list of the Brands to Watch for 2022. From homegrown talent and design to out-of-state players looking to make a big impact, these are the brands to know in 2022.
Midwest Magic is a true Missouri cannabis company from top to bottom. An established hemp brand now making the crossover to marijuana, the team brings established practices, proven products, and the kind of active market feedback that many marijuana brands wish they could achieve.
The brand, available in restaurants and retail locations around the Midwest, has built its reputation on sugar-free seltzers, vape pen products, and gummies – hemp-derived products in virtually all its forms. Now, Midwest Magic brings that foundation to Missouri’s medical marijuana market as the first of the company’s THC products are expected to hit dispensary shelves in April.
Greenway recently spoke to Midwest Magic’s Founder, Ted Maritz, about the secrets behind the magic and what he has up his sleeve for 2022.
“Midwest Magic is first and foremost here for patients,” Maritz explained. “We are a brand built entirely by patients who genuinely appreciate this plant and this industry. As owners, we are constantly critical of our work and others we work with to ensure top-quality products are made available for patients while always striving to improve quality consistency and while always supporting our customers!
“We have learned so many amazing things about this plant during our journeys along with it. We hope to bring a higher level of education to patients to make informed decisions on what products are best for them. We support our cannabis products with hemp products so that people can learn the actual interactions of cannabinoids and terpenes and find the combination creating the entourage effects that best meets their needs. We have broken this plant apart so the patient can find their most effective cannabinoid tools.”
What went into building your brand’s identity?
We want to give Missourians – and all midwesterners – a brand to be proud of. We started with another brand – and quickly realized that there was nothing on the shelf that spoke to Missourians – nothing that made us proud while also putting the midwest on the map in the cannabis game. It broke our hearts the first time we walked into a dispensary here and only saw brands that we could buy in Colorado or Illinois. Missouri deserves better. As one of the leading states in the ag-tech industry, Missouri truly does have the opportunity to be a leader in cannabis, but that can only be fulfilled by having a highly regulated and open market focused on utilizing our natural resources.
What went into the design and execution of your packaging and presentation?
We put a lot of thought and time into the brand. First, we wanted to start with the color purple – it’s such a beautiful color in cannabis and almost no brand celebrates that. We see so many green brands, but green to us just screams generic cannabis, and that’s boring. We wanted something that would stand out to customers and be relatable to the plant. We also have a geometric bunny logo that you can find on any of our hemp products, to help differentiate them from products bought in the dispensaries. We also use packaging suppliers that use recycled ocean plastic to create our plastic containers. We want to be as efficient as possible with the least waste.
What are some of the products MWM has available, and what will we see this year?
We will start by offering a variety of concentrates, both live and un-live, and true live resin whole gram vape pens. We are amazed that there are so few full gram options and want to offer something other than just distillate and added terps. We will be offering live resin diamonds and sauce to kick off our concentrate line. We are super pumped about our beverage line and can’t wait for everyone to try our drinks. Midwest Magic’s entourage drinks are available in retailers, bars, and restaurants around St. Louis, Columbia, and Kansas City, and online at https://midwestmagicofficial.com/.
In a crowded manufacturing space, what differentiates MWM from some of the competitors in the market?
That’s an interesting question, and the answer isn’t so simple and depends on the industry’s current status. Missouri companies have mostly treated cannabis like software tech companies, where the model is to go out, raise a ton of money- hire and look for the best people you can find. And some of these companies will pull it off and prosper, but most won’t. What most operators don’t realize is that cannabis is not a tech business, and the commonly used model is one of the worst models for the industry. Cannabis is not tech – it is an agricultural product that can grow better in our Missouri soil than it can in an indoor facility built to replicate what is just outside its walls.
We didn’t have to raise money, which allowed the team to focus on operations and making great products wholly. We live for this plant – all of us have special ties to this plant and have been working hard over the last two years to make sure we can offer the best top-shelf products, and we are offering products that, first and foremost, we want to consume ourselves as patients.
We want the consumer to know we have a profound understanding of the extraction of plants in general, allowing Midwest Magic to design and engineer our extraction equipment to ensure top quality, yields, and ease for our operators.
We’re here to have fun and ensure all our friends, partners, and business employees are treated fairly and adequately. Bob Marley often said, “Don’t worry, be happy!” We think he was right.