We recently connected with Roberta Wilson and have shared our conversation below.
Roberta, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
Dr. Norm was my father! He was a medical doctor in Los Angeles for 30+ years. He had amazing bedside manner and he truly cared about his patients in that old school way we don’t see much these days. His patients adored him and we marveled as generations of families sought his unique and heartfelt medical care. We wanted to honor his healing spirit and legacy through this line. But it started even before Dr. Norm’s was born. Our mom, Audrey, was also a healthcare professional. She was a pharmacist by day and a rockstar baker by night! She baked her legendary Chocolate Chip cookies every day and brought them with her everywhere she went. These cookies were how she showed her love to those she cared about. Our mom swore that her chocolate chip cookies were better at curing life’s ailments than anything she dispensed in the pharmacy! My brother Jeff and I are co-founders of Dr. Norm’s and we grew up seeing the transformative powers these cookies had on people. When our mom passed away suddenly a number of years ago there was a true void in the universe. Not just for her incredible nurturing and the fact that she was an angel on earth, but I felt a visceral need to carry on her legacy of spreading love through cookies. This posed quite a challenge since I had spent 21 years in Corporate America working for MTV Networks. I had never baked a day in my life prior to my mom’s passing. But somehow, the day she left the planet, I got the baking chops! I started a cookie company in her honor (Audrey’s Cookies) and at first sold online and at my kids’ bake sales. One thing led to another and eventually we were distributed in many traditional retail grocery stores including Whole Foods, Sprouts and Costco. It was an incredible experience to see our mom’s legacy living on. We donated a portion of all sales to her favorite charity “Starlight Children’s Foundation” which helps sick children and their families. In 2015, prop 64 went on the ballot to make cannabis recreationally legal in California. I jokingly said to my brother (who was helping me at that time with Audrey’s Cookies) “We Should Do Wed Cookies!” I was 100% kidding but he said “that’s the best idea. you’ve ever had!” I spent several months learning about the cannabis plant and was absolutely shocked to learn about it’s tremendous medicinal properties. I made the decision to shut down Audrey’s Cookies, my brother Jeff shut down his music production company and ALL IN we went. We knew we were going to start with cookies as we had just learned how to scale a cookie company. It was a no brainer that we made the decision to shift from using Audrey’s name to using our dad’s name and adding Dr. to indicate the medicinal nature of our brand. Thus Dr. Norm’s was born. It is an amalgamation of the best of our mom and dad’s legacies – amazing baked goods products and more recently an entire line of wellness products. We believe both Audrey and Norm would be thrilled that their legacies are being carried on in a way that brings so much relief to so many in such meaningful ways.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I covered in the previous question how a woman in her 50’s got into the weed business in 2015! We knew that our transition from Audrey’s Cookies (a traditional cookie company carried in traditional grocery store chains) to Dr. Norm’s (a cannabis infused edibles company carried in California cannabis dispensaries) would require extensive knowledge that was not required for Audrey’s Cookies. We now had to learn how to infuse our cookies with cannabis! We did a ton of market research and R&D and we found two major issues existed at that time: 1) all edibles on the market tasted like weed (like you were biting into a joint!) and 2) there was zero reliability or consistency on dosing. It was the wild west with no regulations guiding the companies that entered the market. As a result of both of these issues, edibles had the worst reputation as tasting awful and being super unpredictable. Everyone we met had a horror story about themself or a friend who had a terrible experience taking an edible. We knew immediately what our goal was and how we felt we could truly impact the cannabis industry (in honor of our parents) by creating GREAT tasting and CONSISTENTLY/RELIABLY dosed edibles products. We were the first brand in California to use THC Distillate which eliminates all the terpenes and cannabinoids in the cannabis plant during the extraction process. The terpenes and cannabinoids are where the taste and smell of the plant reside so without them we could actually make cookies that tasted like COOKIES! It was a revolutionary concept at the time as until then, the only products that had been available tasted super weedy. We were the first to make product that tasted delicious! In addition to the THC Distillate, and in further honor of our mom’s baking prowess, we use only the highest quality ingredients: real butter, pure vanilla extract, best quality of chocolate , etc. These ingredients again set us apart from other companies who were not spending the money to have the best quality of products. In addition to taste, we felt strongly that we wanted to transform the edible (baked good) into a responsibly and consistently dosed product. We were the first company in California to offer miniature/bite sized cookies that were dosed at 5mg or 10mg of THC. The entire dose was in one bite. This way the person eating it could learn right away what their dose was and not have to guess how much cannabis was in the product they purchased. We were also the first brand in CA to put the dosage of our product ON our packaging along with directions that said to take 1/2 to 1 cookie and wait a full 2 hours to determine it’s effect. This education was critical to helping change the perception of edibles. We also learned to homogenize our dough during the manufacturing process to ensure that every cookie had the exact target amount of THC and that if you cut it in half, you’d get exactly 1/2 the dose. We weigh every cookie, brownie, rice krispy treat, gummy, etc we make to ensure that it is our target weight as weight = dosage in manufacturing edibles. For example, with our 10mg cookies – 8 grams = 10mg of THC. So every cookie is weighed before baking and after baking (prior to packaging) to ensure that it is the correct weight. This is what has led to our reputation in California for being the BEST tasting and MOST reliably and consistently dosed baked goods/edibles products in the market. We felt strongly that if we were going to go into the cannabis business, that we had to provide products that could be used not just for recreational benefit, but even more importantly for medicinal benefit. Since our official launch in 2017, our product line has grown to include many additional baked goods categories as well as an entire wellness line of non baked goods products. We receive countless testimonials from our customers letting us know that they have been life changing in terms of providing pain relief, sleep relief, relaxation, stress relief among many other powerful benefits. We are very proud of the products we create and the benefits they provide to our customers.
Have you ever had to pivot?
We had to pivot BIG TIME when we transitioned from Audrey’s Cookies to Dr. Norm’s. We saw the writing on the wall that we were going to have to get investors if we were going to continue on with Audrey’s Cookies. Trying to compete with the likes of Pepperage Farm, Nabisco, etc. was not sustainable without outside investment to spend on marketing. We could get INTO the grocery stores, but could not affect sell through without huge marketing budgets. At that same time, Prop 64 went on the ballot in CA which, if passed, would make marijuana recreationally legal in CA. When it passed, we made the decision to pivot from traditional cookies sold in traditional grocery stores – to cannabis infused cookies sold in cannabis dispensaries. We knew how to scale a cookie company, but had NO idea how to do it with cannabis! We spend the better part of a year doing R&D and testing out everything available on the market to date. We also talked to everyone we could to learn about the “edibles” business in CA in 2016. We found out there were 2 primary negative perceptions about cannabis infused edibles at that time: 1). Everything tasted super weedy; and 2). There was ablsolutely NO consistency on dosage. It was the wild west and this unpredictability in product dosing made people really scared to every try an edible again. We had to pivot to learn how to infuse our cookies with Cannabis in a way that didn’t taste weedy AND that allowed for predictable, consistent and educated dosing on all of our products. Was a huge learning curve for us but the efforts we made and steps we took in 2016 have helped us to become the “Best Tasting Cannabis Baked Goods” in CA and the most consistently and reliably dosed ones as well!
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
One of my favorite sales stories is a an example with one of our largest customers. A multi-store retailer. They were trying to grind us down on pricing so low that it felt unfair to our value as a brand and also to our other customers who had agreed to our pricing terms. The buyer was a bit of a bully (has that reputation in the industry) and was threatening to remove us from shelves in all their stores if we didn’t agree to their terms. Of course we didn’t want to lose the business as we were a company trying to grow our business and revenues. But I felt really strongly from an integrity standpoint that it was worth standing my ground in the negotiation. I had given concessions as far as I felt comfortable doing but would not agree to go the distance of their “demand.” The buyer/business owner said he needed to review with his team where we were at and would let us know where they stood. A short time after, he got back to me and said that they would be taking us off their shelves and adding a competing brand who had agreed to their pricing. I stood firm and confident that it was the right decision even though it was a big loss to our company (and to my morale!). About 6 months later, the buyer/owner called me and said that their customers had been requesting Dr. Norm’s in all their stores and that they were going to bring our product back on shelves at the price I had offered. It was a HUGE win for us in so many ways – not only in getting the business back, but in demonstrating the strength of our brand to him and his employees. It also created a lasting and strong business relationship between our companies. He had tremendous respect for our decision to walk away. Not many do from him. And as a result, he takes what I say we can and can’t do at face value and knows I’ll always to my absolute best to find compromise and common ground but can’t be pushed beyond boundaries of business ethics and fiscal responsibility.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.doctornorms.com
- Instagram: drnormsofficial
