We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachael Dillon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Rachael thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

The concept for Mary & Jane initially was going to be a marketplace of curated hemp-derived THC products. However during our testing phase, we quickly found that the “standard dose” (generally ~5mg or more) was too much for us. With the widespread availability of these products (in Minnesota, you can purchase THC beverages at the grocery store with a 21+ ID) we knew we couldn’t be the only ones experimenting and having a bad experience with what was out there. We wanted to create a product to help people understand their cannabis dose, to help them get the benefits of the plant without the trial & error period. So we set out to create our “Dose Discovery Kit” which is comprised of a how-to guide and 1mg cannabis melts, giving people the ultimate control over their experience.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I spent my entire career working in PR/communications, working agency side as well as in-house for the UK’s fastest-growing tech startup (Deliveroo) as well as Aveda, the global hair care company. . I lived and worked in New York City, Hong Kong and then relocated to Minneapolis for the Aveda role.. After 5 years there, I was looking for a change – I wanted to go back to a start-up and was searching for a role in the wellness space.. Then in a crazy turn of events, Laura Roos reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in joining her next business venture, Mary & Jane!

Laura Roos is the founder of Minny & Paul, a corporate gifting company based in Minneapolis. Laura had the idea to start Mary & Jane after getting requests from her corporate clients to add hemp-derived cannabis products to their gift boxes. After her website got shut down (you need a different payment processor for hemp products), she thought it might be worthwhile to start a sister brand – a marketplace focused on cannabis. She purchased ourMary & Jane domain and started looking for her co-founder.

As we were working on curating the a marketplace, we  quickly discovered that the product we wanted didn’t exist. So we started working on the formulation for our melts, which are low dose and fast-acting to give users the most control over their experience. After we tried Sunny, our “happy hour” formulation that contains kanna + cannabis, we knew we had something special. We decided to not launch the marketplace and only focus on our product. Sunny launched in November 2023 and so far, it’s really resonated with our target audience. We’re focusing on our franchise extensions now, which will be launching later this year.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We had never created our own product before so we spoke with a lot of people before finding the right partner. We knew we wanted to create something that didn’t exist on the market (i.e. a gummy or a beverage) and we wanted it to be both low dose and fast-acting. Many people told us not to create something with only 1mg –they believed it wasn’t enough for anyone to feel the effects. But we knew it had to be 1mg to give people a sense of safety and also control — never having to measure out a portion of a beverage or bite a gummy in half trying to guess if they got the dosing right. 

Finding the right partner was a challenge. We met with several who didn’t have the capabilities to scale with us or  couldn’t innovate on the type of formula we were looking for.

Finally, we found a vitamin manufacturer who recommended that we formulate an ODT, or “orally dissolvable tablet” (aka, a “melt”!).Based on his experience with other clients he knew he could get the dosing 100% right, and that it would ensure the fastest uptake. It took some trial & error to get the melt to be hard enough to not break and still dissolve quickly. We also had to tweak the flavor quite a few times to get it right — we wanted it to be pleasant but earthy and not too sweet.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We’ve been really focused on transparency with our brand. Laura and I are both moms of young kids and we weren’t sure what type of criticism we might face entering the industry. But that’s really helped us to relate to our customer — we’re passionate about sharing how we use the product and how it has helped us. Both of us drink a lot less alcohol now and we feel healthier — there’s a trend toward people drinking less so we are leaning into that but also acknowledging that sometimes it’s nice to have something that takes the edge off. When we microdose with Sunny, we feel more present, patient, happy and relaxed. It’s been a great tool for us and our customers share the same sentiment.

The other thing that has helped us build trust is driving credibility through PR. When we launched, we landed a big feature story and that got a lot of people interested in our product who otherwise might not be. Many of them called us after reading the article to ask us questions and told us that they felt comfortable ordering the product thanks to the story.

Contact Info:

• Website: shopmaryandjane.com
• Instagram: @discovermaryandjane
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/maryandjane/

Image Credits
Headshot of Laura & Rachael – Jo Buckellew First 4 Product Images – Bethany Schrock