S4 Ep15: THC-Free, Cannabis-Infused Edibles and Holistic Wellness with Felicity Chen
“Functional food is important and integral to health. We’re using food as medicine to help us feel better and feel more balanced.” — Felicity Chen
Cannabis is controversial. Many support the idea of medical marijuana, while some remain critical because other people tend to abuse it. On the other hand, research shows that cannabis does offer a lot of health benefits.
We learned about the different systems of the body in school. But there is one system in our body that is yet to gain familiarity- the endogenous cannabinoid system or ECS, named after cannabis, the plant that led to its discovery. This system plays a variety of major roles in our body’s development, including the nervous system, affecting important functions including: sleep, appetite and pain management. What if we can harvest the benefits of cannabis without suffering its mind-altering properties?
The inspiration for Potli came to Felicity Chen as she was looking for ways to help her mother, who was suffering from asthma. She started with cannabis-infused honey which truly made a difference in her life and that of her family. Today, Felicity has grown her brand and has helped many others achieve better sleep, feel calm and relief and find greater balance.
Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC is the active chemical found in cannabis that gives users the feeling of being “high”. Potli products are THC-free, which is why it’s safe to consume. The products are also 3rd party-tested to ensure accurate dosing and purity. Potli uses premium, homegrown, organic ingredients and the company also strives to support local farmers.
Felicity understood the importance of food as a medicine as she was growing up. In this episode, she relates how her background has helped her in this endeavor. Justine and Felicity also talk about the importance of functional foods to holistic wellness, how to manage product regulation and distribution and upcoming developments for Potli. Working in the food tech space has given Felicity ample training to grow her own brand organically. Tune in as she shares some tips!
Connect with Felicity:
Felicity is a third-generation sauce and spice maker who launched Potli as a way to promote healthy living. Potli expands upon Felicity’s heritage and passion for functional ingredients by creating high-quality, craftsman kitchen staples for everyday use. Felicity was born, raised, and is still rooted in the Bay Area. She is committed to sourcing delicious ingredients from her home state.
As CEO, Felicity oversees Potli's revenue and operations, and ensures the quality of the company’s ingredients- the primary reason customers choose Potli- is at the highest level. Prior to Potli, Felicity worked in the food tech space at companies like UberEats and Gilt.com where she constantly thought about new ways to bring food to consumers.
Episode Highlights:
01:14 Food that Helps You Feel Better
06:42 Cannabis for Wellness
13:26 Regulation and Growing Your Brand
16:19 Moving Towards a More Open World
Inspirational Quotes:
02:14 “We are using edibles as a way for us as consumers to hack our own health.” -Felicity Chen
03:55 “Functional food is important and integral to health. We're using food as medicine to help us feel better and feel more balanced.” -Felicity Chen
08:48 “ I have a lot of respect for what [Chinese] practitioners go through. And it is not easy.” -Justine Reichman
11:43 “A lot of your health starts with how well you sleep.” -Felicity Chen
12:47 “I find that there's a lot of herbs out there that helped me in many ways that traditional medicine didn’t help.” -Justine Reichman
15:27 “Nobody is alone in their experience.” -Felicity Chen
16:29 “We are now moving towards a more open world.” -Felicity Chen
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good afternoon, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm Justine Reichman, your host. Today, I'm very pleased to welcome Felicity Chen, who is the founder and CEO Potli who makes foods that help you feel better.
Welcome, Felicity.
Felicity Chen: Thank you so much, Justine, for having me.
Justine Reichman: It's great to have you here and have a little one on one time to learn more about you and about Potli, and what you're working on. It's a really innovative space, and there's so much changing minute by minute, day by day, and no time better than now to learn a little bit about you and what you're doing. I'd love for you first to just introduce yourself and tell people a little bit about what you're doing and what Potli is.
Felicity Chen: Yeah. Thank you so much for the platform you share on NextGenChef. My name is Felicity, I'm the founder and CEO of Potli. And Potli, like Justine who's so amazingly welcomed us on to the channel, is all about foods that help you feel better. And we do that through cannabinoids, so weed. And basically, what we've done in the edibles category is create foods that you recognize in your pantry, the staples, honey, olive oil, chilli oil, sriracha, apple cider vinegar, all the basics. You can basically use all of those ingredients to make anything that you want in your kitchen, and we effectively make it such that you can make your own edible and really take control your dose. Everybody has that awful story about eating a brownie years and years ago when there is no such thing as dosing, and no such thing as accuracy, and no such thing as testing, and potency and all these things. You just ate the edible and hope to God you didn't die.
Justine Reichman: Before we go on, I just want to be completely transparent with people because we're using these words edible. Everything's edible in the world, but I just want to be clear. What are you referring to when you say edible? Just for transparency's sake here.
“We are using edibles as a way for us as consumers to hack our own health.” -Felicity Chen
Felicity Chen: Yeah. That edibles specifically as in cannabis infused or hemp infused, and we are using edibles as a way for us as consumers to hack our own health. And so the story all begins with the honey. It's the first product we ever launched. Our Dream Honey, which is a honey that helps you fall asleep, stay asleep and then feel rejuvenated the next day without feeling groggy after tones of taking, for example, melatonin, which is also a plant based off the shelf sleep aid. It is a product that really helps you take control of your life and to help you feel like the superhuman in you. And the honey starts with me trying to help my mother who's an Asian immigrant, super conservative, there was no way that she was ever going to smoke weed with me. The idea all sparked when I had moved home from college from the East Coast back to the Bay Area where my parents and I grew up, and where I was able to grow up. My parents immigrated from Asia to the states. And when I moved home from college, I noticed that my dad had started a completely new hobby, which is beekeeping. And he did this because my mother is an asthma patient. Hyper local honey has antihistamines, it's really good for your allergies. Her allergies are what's setting off her asthma. And you can already see, like I grew up in a household where plant based medicine, holistic wellness, functional foods is really important and integral to health. We're not using this medicine and that medicine, we're using food as medicine to help us feel better and feel more balanced.
“Functional food is important and integral to health. We're using food as medicine to help us feel better and feel more balanced.” -Felicity Chen
Justine Reichman: It's huge right now too, really. And I think that this is really integral to the finger functional food talk--
Felicity Chen: Exactly.
Justine Reichman: one small aspect of it. And I think that really should be clearly stated that this is, in my opinion, part of functional food.
Felicity Chen: Absolutely. So that's what we're doing. And I want to think about Potli, so the story goes, my mother would never smoke weed with me. I put some weed into her honey and she used to have these awful coughing fits, they started to be more controlled. There's no way we're gonna solve the fact that she has asthma. It's an autoimmune disease. She's gonna have it forever for the rest of their life. But at least, it's controlled and it's also powered not just by the cannabis CBD, the CBN, but also by the natural ingredients itself, the honey. The honey is so transparently sourced. It's literally, every single jar that our consumers tried today, all still harvested from our backyard. And yes, we had grown from one little small beehive to now 30, 40, 50 hives. I've kind of lost count, but there's a big range. We're very, very grateful to be sourcing honey from our very own backyard, and this is hyper local honey that has the pollens of the local forestry and whatnot that really helps you boost yourself, your immune system, what you need for your body. And so functional foods is what we kind of think about our national brand, potlishop.com, where you can access these remedies that are food driven, and that's really the ethics of Potli.
Justine Reichman: Wow. So I want to go back to a few things. So you lawn with honey, and I guess I'm putting the dots together. You guys had beekeeping. Your dad had beekeeping. And was that what the impetus was for the honey for you to start Potli with honey to help your mom?
Felicity Chen: Exactly, exactly. I was like, well, we have the resources, it's right there. Why don't we try it? And by golly, especially during COVID, it really took off people. Especially in the beginning of COVID, everybody was stuck at home and people were thinking of ways to do something different with what you had in your kitchen. People were going nuts with making this bread, and that banana, and this, that. So yeah, we're very grateful for having our consumers.
Justine Reichman: Yeah. So you had the honey, the honey was working, you'd seen it with your mom. Were you going directly to the consumer?
Felicity Chen: Yes. So we have two sides of the business. Of course, you can get our cannabis side only in California, and you can access that on getpotli.com, and find your most local and closest retailer to deliver to you. Of course, we have our potlishop.com which allows us to ship nationwide. These ingredients are CBD based only and wellness based. And so how we imagine our wellness side of our business, which is our direct to consumer line growing in the future is, we saw the wave of adaptogens, and that came, and it's still here, and it's going strong. We saw CBD as a way to have people access cannabis, but in a format that is non psychoactive and only for wellness and balanced driving effects. And then I think the third wave is something that is actually very rooted in the whole reason why I started Potli which is traditional Chinese medicine. And traditional Chinese medicine as a way as, for example, an adaptogen to be infused into foods and ways that we can hack our health. Because this is not something new. It has been here for years, and years, and years. And in fact, my father practice and grew up in a household that trained him to be a--
Justine Reichman: Traditional Chinese medical doctor?
Felicity Chen: Yeah. I don't want to call them doctors because it just feels--
Justine Reichman: Literally, when you study, I don't know if he studied TCM or he went to school for, did he go here in the United States or in--
Felicity Chen: In China.
“I have a lot of respect for what [Chinese] practitioners go through. And it is not easy.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: In China. So that education is tremendous pay for so many years. And it's really robust, and it is time consuming. And the study is just overwhelming. There is nothing that I can say, it is so intense, the study. And I say that because I went to school for Chinese medicine and I did not finish. I went for a few hours. I did not want to be a Chinese medical doctor, I went out of curiosity for education to learn. And because I was really curious about the study of Chinese medicine. I have a lot of respect for what those practitioners go through.
Felicity Chen: Yeah.
Justine Reichman: And it is not easy. One thing about it that is easy.
Felicity Chen: So many different herbs.
Justine Reichman: Oh, that's a whole nother ball of wax. You have Chinese medicine, then you have herbs, and you have points. So the herbs education is like a whole nother track. So we could go off on this for a whole, that's like a whole nother thing. So the minute you said that I had a whole level of perspective that I was like ready to just go and ask you, but tell me more. So your father's input on this, given his background must be, I'm sure he's got so much to share. I'd love to know just a little bit more about how that impacted what you're building.
Felicity Chen: Absolutely in all sorts of ways. For him, and especially for some families, and as you can imagine, Asian families are super conservative. And so for the reason why I chose edibles as a format versus there's a bunch of different companies that I could have spun up, I could have made flower pre rolls, this and that which actually, in terms of the market, it's a way larger market size. I was so ingrained in foods and using foods as a way to hack health because cannabis originated in Asia millions, not millions, okay, years ago. Basically, there's 5000 years of Chinese history because of the Opium War. We are now starting to see, well, not starting to see, the whole generation of my parents are just like, no drugs, drugs are bad. You try weed, you're basically like [inaudible] from the family. And so I had to do it in a format in which he understood, and that is how I converted him because I was showing him how. Look, there are people writing in to say, your honey has saved my life. I haven't been able to sleep in months, and this is the first thing that helped me. This great uncle who's very, very conservative Ecuadorian would never have tried cannabis, anything, tried our honey because he was just having trouble with sleep and was at a point where he would try anything.
“A lot of your health starts with how well you sleep.” -Felicity Chen
Someone's grandmother went through major surgery and couldn't sleep for weeks, and then finally fell asleep because he had some of our honey. These are the stories that we're very grateful to hear. We've supported people through very traumatic times during COVID, and we're just a function of helping them feel better. And so that's what we mean. Everything that my father has taught me in terms of, let's go plant based, let's eat healthier, but let's start with the foods that we put into our body and just starting with like, a lot of your health really starts with how well you sleep. Approaching these fundamental issues, simple ones helped us get through and get to this point.
Justine Reichman: Wow. I want to meet your dad.
Felicity Chen: Yeah, dad's hilarious. We kind of share him on our Instagram. He's showing us how to do Qigong and all these different things, and we have tea time with him. That's kind of my ritual with my dad, and he's a hilarious one.
Justine Reichman: Wow, I like that. That's awesome. Well, we'll have to have a share of tea time maybe.
Felicity Chen: Yeah, we'd love that.
Justine Reichman: With NextGenChef, Essential Ingredients and Potli and powered by Potli. No, powered by NextGenChef and hosted by Potli.
Felicity Chen: There we go.
Justine Reichman: There we go. It only took me a minute to figure out what was happening one way or the other thing, and then we'll throw in a few other of our favorite things. A few of our favorite things.
Felicity Chen: Oh, my goodness, it just keeps coming.
“I find that there's a lot of herbs out there that helped me in many ways that traditional medicine didn’t help.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I'm with you. I mean, I find that there's a lot of herbs out there that I find that helped me in many ways, that traditional medicine doesn't help. So I love the fact that you've expanded your product line. I'm excited to hear, just maybe if you could share a few more of the other products. And then the other thing that I'd love to just touch on, because I know that a lot of people are curious about this as we have a lot of entrepreneurs that watch and listen to these podcasts is, how do you grow your CBD online. Wants to sell their product and is challenging, whether it's through their own store, etc. The regulations. If you could just share a little bit about that. It's a question I get all the time from people.
Felicity Chen: Yeah, totally. So the ad space in Facebook and Instagram, not very kind to CBD producers and online. And especially when you're a young brand and you want to really control your margins, CBD is the way. And fortunately for us, there are a lot of different ways to grow your audience outside of just Facebook and Instagram ads, even though that is very, very helpful. And what you can do that is free is collect people's emails. Wherever we go, we're collecting people's emails and work with micro influencers. And these are two ways that you can really grow your brand organically. And through that, build this funnel through your website and convert these customers every single time you send out an email. You're converting a couple $1,000 worth of inventory in that go. So that's super important to build, especially from the beginning before you even have a product. Build your community, build the day wonders, build these people that will ferociously buy your honey. And as soon as they're out there, like, can you overnight some to us? Those are the types of customers that you want to keep looking for and finding your niche. Is it mothers? Is it people like us? For me, I'm looking for people that are makers, people that like to cook in the kitchen, people that enjoy consuming in different ways. And how do you find those people? And so looking for influencers that follow along and fall under that category has been important to us as well.
“Nobody is alone in their experience.” -Felicity Chen
And honestly, in general, it's like everybody needs to feel better. But there is a subset of category of influencers that are specifically talking about, very openly about their mental health, very openly about their issues and how they overcame these things. When they felt like, especially they were really alone. And one of those things that I think has been really powerful with the internet is that nobody is alone in their experience. And how do you create a safe space for people to share their experiences with your products, and kind of feel more resilient, having other people that have experienced the same thing.
Justine Reichman: That's great. I want to try it with our [inaudible] on Saturday.
“We are now moving towards a more open world.” -Felicity Chen
Felicity Chen: Oh, yeah. So yes, the other part of your question was, what are other products. So we got some olive oil. I know it's an important holiday to celebrate oil, and so we have just restocked our partnership with Aster Farms as well as our CBD olive oil. So that's online at potlishop.com. And yeah, Potli has transitioned from just being a pantry driven company to being a snackable company. And we talked about a couple of different things that we've touched on. But one of the things that we have kind of thought about a lot is as people are, yes, there's omachron, and this COVID, that COVID, we are now kind of moving towards a more open world in which we're able to go back out again. And that means that we're able to share things with friends, and able to get things and buy things that are on the go. And so Potli has launched shrimp chips during the middle of the pandemic this year. Our first foray into ready to eat ready to serve. And in the future, we'll continue to innovate on shrimp chips. I think our pantry collection is set, we've really kind of created all the essential ingredients that are needed in the pantry to create anything you want. We're now starting to innovate on different TCM related, cannabis related, snackable bowls that are easily shared with anybody that you care for and that you want to feel better.
Justine Reichman: We love that you focus on the essential ingredients because that's what we're focused on, essential ingredients.
Felicity Chen: Yes.
Justine Reichman: For NextGenChef exactly. So if anybody that's listening or watching this podcast would want to find your pantry, how would they find it?
Felicity Chen: potlishop.com, we sold all of our latest drops that will be available there. You can also find us on Amazon for CBD products. And then finally, if you're in California, you can find us at getpotli.com. And that will take you to our stockists, and also delivery partners for the state.
Justine Reichman: And if anyone wanted to reach out to you and connect, how would they find you? What's the best way to reach out?
Felicity Chen: Just write to us. We're a really small but mighty team of women on Instagram. So that's at @getpotli, and then my personal Instagram is at fels_factory, you can reach out there and I would be happy to connect with you.
Justine Reichman: Felicity, thank you so much for joining me today on Essential Ingredients. I want to thank our guests for tuning in. We're here every week. So every week, we've got a new wonderful founder. This week, it was Felicity with Potli. Thank you again so much. And if you haven't downloaded Essential Ingredients, you can find us on iTunes, iHeartRadio and all the regular channels, Essential Ingredients with Justine, powered by NextGenChef. So thanks so much. Thanks so much for listening again.
