When hemp food developer Richard Rose wanted to get a competitive edge back in the 1990s, he bought stock in one of his publicly traded competitors, gaining access to valuable financial records and a tour of the company’s operations in Florida.
“They saw me and just about shit a brick,” Rose writes in a new book.
“There was nothing they could do except let me join the others touring their plant, seeing which ingredients they use, the suppliers of them, how much of what they had on hand, who they use for flavorings, little deets like that which are nice to know. And all because I bought just $100 in stock,” Rose recalls in “Seedy!,” a colorful yet practical guide to getting going in what he calls “Hemp’s First Billion-Dollar Segment.”
In the wake of the CBD boom-and-bust as hemp comes back down to Earth, Rose makes a convincing argument that hemp food, particularly the kind of seed-based products he started producing late last century, is a logical – and real – business opportunity.
“With 25,000 possible products from hemp, which should you do first?” Rose asks, noting prohibitive costs associated with CBD, huge investments needed for fiber processing and an imbalanced business equation in fuel production from hemp.
“So then, what’s a safe and easy way to enter the hemp industry?” Rose posits. It’s hemp foods, which existing food companies can add to their product lines and is a relatively inexpensive sector for independent startups, he observes.
Real business
Rose helped pioneer hemp foods in the USA beginning in the 1990s. He developed HempNut Inc, the first hempseed brand in North America in 1996, as he recounts in a sometimes rollicking series of recollections from the early days.
Through 177 tightly packed pages, Rose covers such topics as which form of company to set up, capital raising, food safety, compliance, copyrights, contracts and warranties, among practical tips offering:
On production: While you can start by making products by hand, at some point you will want to be able to handle more orders and sales than you can hand-make. Keep an eye for out for how to do the next step in your growth, perhaps moving to a co-packer or to a bigger space.
On food safety: Your local county health department likely not only offers classes, but might even mandate them to get a health permit to make or store foods. Learn the concept of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), again the health department might even require you write one for your products or manufacturing.
On compliance: The Art of Compliance isn’t in slavish devotion to every syllable of every word every bureaucrat utters done just the way that agency wants it done down to the letter. Instead, it is triangulating between the law, its enforcement, costs of noncompliance, and your business goals.
On trademarks & copyrights: Keep in mind that the reason lawyers so scrupulously attack any trademark infringer is that to not do so would allow the infringer to gain derivative rights, and then later be able to stop the originator of the mark from using it.
Soft side
But it’s when Rose weighs in on the soft side of business – management, entrepreneurship, ethics – that he’s at his most entertaining in the book, which he calls “a roadmap for passionate, innovative, values-based leadership in business and society.”
Now 68 and retired, “these days I’m just trying to pass it on, raise up the next generation of hemp food entrepreneurs,” writes Rose, who edits a rich, open-source web site, the The Richard Rose Report, and is a constant commentator – and frequent critic – on today’s hemp scene:
“Don’t be naïve: for 95% of the businesspeople out there it’s a dirty nasty zero-sum war which takes no prisoners and eats its young,” Rose writes in an introductory section on “Hempreneurs,” then adding the advice: “Therefore, find the other 5% who aren’t that, and collaborate. The sooner you discern one from the other, the better; the ability to discern character might be the most important skill of all in hemp!”
Brokers & lawyers
Urging a sales-driven business model – “hemp foods don’t just sell themselves” – Rose further observes: “A broker you retain for a percentage of sales counts as a qualified salesperson, for sure.
“The best ones can make your company successful,” he writes. “Lame ones could put you under.”
Aspiring food entrepreneurs should also tread carefully in dealing with attorneys, according to Rose. “Lawyers routinely flood the world with intimidating emails designed solely to shake the trees for money for their clients, all at $500/hour. Ignore those types,” he advises, before getting down to a fundamental question highly relevant after the clown show in the CBD sector: Who’ll make it in the hemp food business and who won’t?
“The one thing that will bias you for success is professionalism,” Rose writes. “You can have the longest hair, if you’re also the sharpest dressed.”
“Shoes are critical, clean or shine them,” he adds.
“Seedy! How To Start A Hemp Food Business,” by Richard Rose. Doing Well By Doing Good With Hemp Foods. Seedy! is 177 pages, 52,000 words, 200 images, and thousands of links. Cost: free. Value: priceless. Never before has an industry insider pulled back the curtain on the successful strategies used to create hemp’s biggest industry segment. Part how-to, part hemp history, part self-help.
Get it free at: https://therichardrosereport.com/seedy-or-how-to-start-a-hemp-food-business/