Pot Spotlight: Pure Edibles Brings Its Founder's Culinary Ethos to Its Gummies

Ryan and Brandon Hermansky, the founders of Phoenix-based company Pure Edibles, frequently receive feedback from customers who use their cannabis-infused chews and gummies in surprising ways. Some dissolve their caramel or chocolate chews in coffee. Others use Pure Edibles to infuse or garnish mocktails. 

“It’s been really fun to see the more elaborate stuff, too, like chocolate fondue with different fruit flavors, caramel apples, and chocolate-covered bananas,” Ryan says.

The culinary arts aren't entirely foreign to the brothers. Brandon was the chef and owner of Floyd’s Kitchen in north Phoenix from 2008 until 2013, when he decided to close the restaurant and move to Flagstaff to run a dispensary. He says his time as a chef taught him the importance of cost management and quality ingredients.

As at a farm-to-table kitchen, the ingredients in Pure Edibles are locally sourced, including the marijuana, which is harvested on the company’s farm in northern Arizona, where sustainability practices are standard, including using high-pressure steam to kill weeds instead of chemicals.

“We have a big farm in Camp Verde where we’re completely organic," Brandon says. "We use no pesticides on the plants and not even on the surrounding farm around it. Our property butts up to the Verde River, and it’s extremely important to us and our staff that we’re good stewards of all that.”

They have a dispensary in Flagstaff — Greenhouse of Flagstaff — and the company’s products can also be found on shelves at dispensaries throughout Arizona. Pure Edibles makes a line of chews in five flavors (caramel, sour green apple, strawberry, horchata, and sour blue razz), and three kinds of gummies: watermelon, mango, and tropical fruit. Everything is handmade in small batches, most with full-spectrum oil extracts, which maintain the flavor of the flower and present more potency.

Dosing is data-driven and carefully labeled, Ryan says. “Testing has been very important since day one. It’s crucial for edibles. It’s really the only way to really know your consistency,” he says.

“Our gummies are made in a mold where the dosage appears on a gummy, and they’re made to be able to easily dose,” Ryan continues. “A 10-milligram gummy comes as two 5-milligram gummies attached together, and we do the same with our 30-milligram gummies – they’re two 15-milligram segments. It makes it easy for safe dosing. Dosing is really key, and being able to control how much you’re getting on each bite is very important.”

The packaging is also child-proof, Ryan adds, and the gummies come in tins that make them convenient for sharing and traveling.

But one of the biggest things the brothers pride themselves on – and a popular factor with buyers – is the price of Pure Edibles compared to many other edibles for sale in dispensaries. Being locally rooted and sourced helps keep the costs of their products down, says Ryan.

“We pride ourselves on making a top-quality, consistent product at a very affordable price. We do not forget that we started as a medical company providing medicine to patients, and pricing will always be important to us. We will always be 25 to 40 percent less than competitors in our space.”