When you step into a Cookies store and pick your favorite bags off the shelf, you can be sure that flower was no accident. Cookies is a house of genetics built on a love of the plant and dedication to innovation. Along with our partners across California, we spend years pitching pollen, popping seeds, and filling rooms with pheno hunts in a neverending search for what’s next.
Cookies micro-batch R&D program is our way to pull back the curtain and bring that behind-the-scenes cultivar selection process to the people. This March, we are releasing small batches of our favorite pheno hunt winners at California Cookies stores, and letting our dedicated Cookies fam be the judge and help us curate our next menu.
Finding new game-changing strains is a long and arduous process, taking time, energy, and facility space that could be used for already proven genetics, but our partners are the best growers in the industry and they know the R&D hunt is just as important as growing longstanding menu staples. The most innovative genetics and freshest flavors are what set us apart.
Tucked away in Santa Cruz, California where the mountains meet the ocean, Earth Rhythm is the epitome of legacy, continuing old-school traditions mixed with new-school exotics on the hunt for unique cultivars at every level. Built out of California’s longstanding medical market and securing the smallest cultivation license possible in California’s legal market, Earth Rhythm is obsessed with the hunt, constantly running fresh phenos under 12 lights and a custom dirt blend at a pace that keeps Berner and the team drowning in new flavors.
For Microbatch Madness, Earth Rhythm is hitting shelves with two phenos of Black Cherry Gelato x Medellin, Venus, and the farm favorite Pancakes x Runtz 8 AKA Cinnamon Roll. Pick up all four - if you can find them.
A sister brand to Earth Rhythm, Fuego Farms is a Santa Cruz staple, working closely with Earth Rhythm to bring the best of the best into a larger facility where small batch is still king, but production levels are increased to a slightly larger scale, with 100 lights split into four rooms of rotating flavors. Between Earth Rhythm and Fuego, Cookies California partners have the space, knowledge, and dedication to bring breeding projects to life and find the best weed the world has never seen. For Microbatch Madness, Fuego is releasing a limited batch of Pink Gumball that hits with exotic vanilla cherry bubblegum terps like you’ve never tasted before.
“Every single nug we put out is perfectly grown with intention,” Earth Rhythm and Fuego Farms cultivator Todd George says. “We want to give you the perfect flower.”
Madcow is one of Cookies’ closest cultivation partners in California. Producing boutique flower at their state of the art facility in Hollister, Madcow puts the cuts from Cookies’ vast network of pheno hunts to work, turning as few as five clones into trays of plants to bring brand new flavors to the market.
Working with fresh genetics is a tough job, but the team at Madcow plans grow rooms strategically to balance new phenos with proven producers in a neverending cycle that sees fresh flower constantly coming down. “You can never put your ego in front of the plants and the team,” Madcow cultivation lead Fernando Marquez says. “If you put your ego in front, the plants will kick your ass.”
Cookies’ OG home in LA and the California rec market, Maywood is the SoCal nucleus producing fire flavors from seed to sale, with an in-house grow producing some of LA’s best flower right next to the dispensary where it’s sold.
When it comes to pheno hunts, the team at Maywood takes R&D seriously, quarantining small rooms to breed, clone, and flower new heat, experimenting with genetics on the search for something that will continue to separate the Cookies menu from the rest of the industry. This March, Maywood is rolling out R&D batches of AMF x SherbZ #14 that mingle vanilla, lavender, orange, and sweet sugar pine into one crazy unique pheno.
One Log is Cookies’ NorCal nucleus. Sitting in the heart of the Emerald Triangle, One Log is home to a fully custom R&D system made out of converted shipping containers turned into micro grow rooms perfect for cycling pheno hunts and searching for the future of the Cookies menu.
One Log is also home to the Cookies genetic library, where tissue culture guarantees a future for the strains you love, old, new, and yet to be tasted.
The modern weed industry was built on the backs of illegal botanists and expert plant scientists working in secret garages and hidden gardens. As we’ve moved into the legal landscape, an arms race for weight and potency has put expensive, time consuming, unproven pheno hunt research and development on the back burner for a lot of brands.
We can’t forget the past as we move into the future though, and the hunt for new new has always been what sets Cookies apart. As we expand, so does our R&D, with pheno hunts already underway in Maryland, Illinois, and Michigan, with a brand new R&D facility in Nevada on the way.
“Microbatch R&D is us to the people,” Earth Rhythm and Fuego Farms cultivator Todd George says. “And the people get to help decide what the best quality weed in the world is, what stays in the garden, and what goes. Everyone gets to be a part of it.”
Stop by your local Cookies or Lemonnade store to pick up the entire Microbatch R&D lineup and make your voice heard.