A leader in consulting and strategy practice for the betterment of food, beverage and cannabis, Bootleg Avocado is not your average company. Their process is simple: focus on the food and then implement the concept to create sociability and sustainability within the food realm.
Through successful events like “State of the Union: Culinary + Cannabis,” Bootleg Avocado is facilitating conversations within the cannabis space through emerging startups focused on plant-based alternatives.
Honey Pot Mag spoke to CEO Mario Rodriguez to learn more about Bootleg Avocado and how it’s making waves in the food industry through company strategy and implementation.
What kind of services does Bootleg Avocado provide?
We have different accelerator programs to assess food products to make sure textures and flavor profiles are on point and the product is marketable. We focus on scaling the service to consumerism.
What is Bootleg Avocado’s goal within the cannabis and food industries?
We are looking for the functionality of cannabis and its integration into everyday lives. Plant-based products and food and cannabis-based functional products that are good for you and ethically sourced. We are looking to mainstream the world of food tech. In regards to cannabis, we are looking to focus on edibles and align ourselves with companies that are using cannabis for wellness, stress management and mental health.
What is the role of sustainability?
The buzzwords “sustainability” and “innovation” are popular, but what do they actually mean? Bootleg Avocado aligns itself with food scientists for products sourced responsibly. We look into the authenticity, and research ethically how each product is being made.
Can you elaborate how your last event (“Culinary + Cannabis”) grew so quickly?
Yes! We decided to align food and cannabis, since the growing pains of the food startup world is very similar to cannabis with sustainability. We included everything from topics of scalability and imprisonment with the question, “How are we innovating within food and cannabis?”
If there is more collaboration, it means healthier products. We want to focus on the niche market of additional cannabis benefits aside from getting you high, like for focus and blood flow, and the use of other ingredients to make cannabis more multifunctional.
Any advice for future cannabis/food entrepreneurs?
Don’t lead with CBD, and instead go for a more functional and beneficial aspect. Also, make sure your product has a form of familiarity within its product, like salt and tea. People already know how to use those things on a daily basis. Also, try different webinars to understand and learn in a different realm.
How has Bootleg Avocado dealt with inclusion within this realm?
Being in NYC with a large number of diverse businesses, Bootleg Avocado made sure to include all kinds of people on the panel into this realm. I am bilingual and Columbian and Ecuadorian, so it is imperative we make sure to hire all types of ethnicities and backgrounds to our events; this is always a focus and conversation.
So, what’s new for Bootleg Avocado amid Coronavirus?
Given that we can’t do any events, we are doing a few virtual panel discussions—one will be around innovation. Topics will surround how cannabis and hospitality will look in the future, how to integrate someone new to the world of beneficial cannabis and translation.
Stay up to date with Bootleg Avocado’s virtual panel discussions and what’s next on their website at Bootlegavocado.com.