Best known in its home state, Lafayette, New York-based Beak & Skiff Apple Farms has been making and selling apple-based products for over 110 years. Now, as the U.S. hemp industry opens up and expands, the family-owned company is turning to the once prohibited cash crop as a major new avenue for growth.
In January, Beak & Skiff launched a line of organic CBD-infused seltzers, one of several hemp-based product lines now produced by the company. Available in Black Cherry, Blood Orange and Mango Lime flavors, each 12 oz. can contains 20 mg of full spectrum hemp extract and is USDA certified organic and Whole30 Approved. The line retails for $14.95 per 6-pack or $2 to$2.50 per unit. Initially available in about 100 independent stores in New York state, the drinks are now launching in Wegmans stores in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Virginia.
Speaking to BevNET this week, Beak & Skiff president Eddie Brennan — a fifth-generation leader of the family-owned farm — said the company has been building out its hemp and cannabis business since 2019 when it was awarded a dual growing and processing license by New York state. The farm currently dedicates about 20 acres to hemp cultivation and has opened an extraction facility where it produces CBD for its own products and supply partners.
The seltzer launch reflects not just a push into the hemp and cannabis sector for Beak & Skiff, but also a deeper move into the ready-to-drink beverage industry. The farm currently sells its apple ciders and juices in the Northeast, but over the past decade has expanded into alcohol with its 1911 line of hard ciders, spirits and wines, currently sold in 25 states. To support 1911, Beak & Skiff has built out its own production facility, including canning lines. The company also produces private label cold brew coffee for several retail grocery chains.
That infrastructure is now being put to use on the CBD business. Brennan said Beak & Skiff is able to control every step of production for its CBD beverages from supply to canning. But not everything about the product was crafted in-house: Beak & Skiff partnered with cannabis infusion tech company Vertosa (also a partner of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Cann and other beverage brands) to help formulate the drinks.
“Everything we do we try to be able to vertically integrate and integrate into our farm,” Brennan said. “So for us, [hemp] was the perfect combination of allowing us to create a sustainable crop in our farm and also integrate it into beverages.”
Beak & Skiff is by no means the only branded beverage producer to embrace the category, in 2018 Millerton, New York-based tea grower Harney & Sons launched The Hemp Division and also began growing hemp, before debuting a line of CBD-infused teas last year.
But as the CBD beverage space has seen no shortage of seltzers and sparkling waters, Brennan noted that Beak & Skiff’s line is one of the few USDA organic certified options on the market. As well, the company is also banking on retaining its loyal consumers in the New York and surrounding markets, which will allow the company to quickly establish itself. Outside of its own products, the farm is also opening up its facilities for CBD co-packing partnerships with other beverage companies.
Beak & Skiff’s hemp business is not solely tied to beverages, however. The company also makes CBD tinctures and balms (as well as a single SKU CBD-infused cold brew coffee that is sold on the brand’s website).
Brennan acknowledged that a lack of federal regulation surrounding CBD in food and beverage has made it difficult to quickly grow the beverage business, citing the FDA as a major hurdle towards Beak & Skiff pulling out all the stops on scaling the seltzers. But even as federal agencies have been slow to give CBD the green light, state governments are picking up the slack. This fall, California cleared the path for legal CBD food and beverage sales and this month the New York State Department of Health did the same.
The new rules in New York clear the path for the sale of most ingestible CBD products, though they remain controversial among farmers as sale of smokable flower is still prohibited. The agricultural hemp business has shifted significantly in the past few years however, as Brennan noted the price of hemp has dropped from around $30 a pound when Beak & Skiff began growing the crop in 2019 to $1 a pound today. After New York legalized recreational marijuana in March, a report in the Associated Press highlighted an eagerness among the state’s hemp farmers to begin growing cannabis as well.
As hemp becomes a bigger part of Beak & Skiff’s overall business, Brennan said the company does hope to break into THC and recreational cannabis once cultivation is approved in New York. And, he was quick to point out, beverage is currently the fastest growing category within the dispensary channel, so Beak & Skiff won’t be standing around waiting to get in on the action.
National beer and wine distributors have also begun to partner with CBD brands and more chain retailers are cautiously taking on products, helping to charge up a category that had struggled to grow outside of independent and online accounts. Beak & Skiff itself is beginning to expand its footprint by focusing on retail chains it has had long standing business relationships with, such as Wegmans, either through its juice and cider businesses or its private label partnerships.
“Being the only organic CBD beverage, we find, is a big point of differentiation for us,” he said. “That may change over time, there will be more entrants, but being the first helps and I think that means something to people. And our other big differentiator is our authentic story. We’re a 110 year old family business focused on quality and vertical supply chain, we grow our own organic hemp, we extract it here in our facility…. I think as people dig into it, that matters.”