W*ndering What’s Next
Tanisha Robinson is leveraging her unique background in entrepeneurship, beer and more to craft a distinctive CBD beverage
The CBD beverage space is quickly crowding with different concepts, but few brands boast a founder with a resume like yours. Can you tell me about your early career?
I’m a U.S. army veteran, where I served as an Arabic linguist before getting into entrepeneurship. I’ve been building businesses ever since — built some tech stuff and e-commerce companies, and I’ve even burned a few things to the ground.
I still have two other great companies running. I co-founded TicketFire, which is a mobile app that allows you to convert paper tickets into digital ones. You wouldn’t think it’s that necessary in 2020, but you’d be wrong.
My other business is called Print Syndicate, where we sell apparel and products to underserved social identities — think introverts, alien believers, cat ladies, etc. We helped make Ruth Bader Ginsburg a pop culture icon with the Notorious RBG image with tilted crown.
“BrewDog was attractive to me because I am entrepeneurial and willful. I’m not a person to just run as someone else’s proxy. I can take an idea and make it real.”
Clearly you’re hooked on the entrepeneurial life. How did you get involved with BrewDog USA?
I was introduced to the founders of BrewDog, who were conincidentally looking for an entrepeneur to help get their USA operations really running. Craft is competitive, and I think ultimately they realized they couldn’t find what they were looking for in the beer industry.
So I was hired as the USA’s first CEO when the taproom was still just selling beer imported from Scotland. BrewDog had a great reputation as the largest craft brewery in Europe, as well as a beautiful $30 million brewery, but beer wasn’t flowing and we had no distribution. We went heads down and got to work to turn the ship from losing money to EBITDA positive in nine months, and it continues to grow.
If people think CBD is crowded, they should try out craft beer. You did some really interesting things to stand out.
When I was promoted, we’d expanded distribution to nine states and opened three taprooms. But we’d also been more innovative — we launched The Doghouse, the world’s first craft beer hotel where you can wake up in a brewery and even have a beer in the shower.
At that point, I moved into a Chief Disruption Officer role — where the point is to assume that the things you’re doing now might not work in the future. We launched an idea called Kennels, where we mashed some of the Doghouse amenities with AirBnb.
Given the success, why’d you leave BrewDog to start W*nder?
One thing that nobody in craft beer, including us, really saw coming was hard seltzer and it created some unforeseen compression in the craft beer market. As I was thinking about the future, CBD and THC’s potential was a far larger impact with probably a more compressed timeframe.
I took this notion to James and Martin, BrewDog’s founders, who both agreed the categories could be huge, but also felt it wasn’t a direct fit in BrewDog’s wheelhouse. They knew I was an entrepeneur at heart and were supportive both conceptually and financially when I wanted to leave and start a cannabis beverage company.
“Coming in from a pretty hypersaturated craft beer market, I knew the liquid for a beverage company should be the center of its universe.”
How did you conceptualize and develop W*nder? How do you see it fitting into the cannabis beverage landscape?
Flavor is so important. While there’s some really cool brands out already, I also felt that a lot of the players… didn’t taste very good. I worked with a few chef friends, picking up seltzer waters, cold pressed juices, simple syrups infused with herbs, flavors, and spices to develop the “mason jar” versions.
After a few iterations, we moved to scale up and produce. We even held a “W*nder vs. the World” tournament, where we made a bracket competition with our products in a blind taste test against all the front-running brands, and won.
The second piece is transparency and education. It’s my view that a lot of brands are focused first on “cool factor”. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the market is going to be cannabis curious, where you need to take the customer seriously and focus on education. People don’t know when to take CBD or how it will make them feel. So we created four different formulations with vitamins and adaptogens for different functional experiences, and packaging where the consumer can really see what they’re getting into.
Third, I think it’s really important that, if we pick one industry where we really fight for equity, it needs to be cannabis. The War on Drugs has ruined so many communities and lives. As we’re on the precipice of full legalization, people are still facing and living these consequences. So we have something called the 420 rule to support entrepeneurs from communities harmed by the prohibition of cannabis with 4.20% of our profits.
Who is the ideal customer for W*nder? Where are you hoping things are heading?
Our consumer is more psychographic than demographic. Overall, a lot are typically interested in or more open to plant-based health and wellness. Long-term, we see this embedding into daily routines, with some having a Breakfast Club (with CBD, Vitamin B12, Panax Ginseng, and L-Tyrosine) in the morning or Night Moves (with ashwagandha and chamomile) at night. If you’re part of someone’s daily ritual, that’s when you have a real business.
Maybe a little unexpected, but we’ve already seen a lot of traction through our on-premise channel (pre-COVID). Our bar partners are using W*nder as a base for cocktails, especially zero-proof, while other locations like W*nder is fitting in really well at cafes, spas, salons, and yoga studios. Customers ultimatley want to experience brands, so we’re excited about what we’ll eventually be able to do here building partnerships to create more immersive experiences.
“Ultimately, when you have great flavor and clear functions, it makes for a balance that attracts a lot of people.”
Interested in canna-beverages? Check out previous stories on why canna-beverages could change the game, how Cann is trying to reimagining how we drink, what it takes to create a great CBD beverage, why low dose matters so much, and how Oh Hi! is combining beer expertise in building a THC seltzer brand.
At Cannablurbs, we’re excited to share the varied perspectives of different leaders across the industry through profiles, interviews, and Guest Articles. If you’re active in cannabis and think you have an interesting viewpoint to share, shoot us an email to talk about collaborating.
