The Honu Inc. facility is tucked away in an industrial park on the banks of the Columbia River in Longview, Washington. A city that hugs the Oregon border, Longview was founded around timber and logging industries, as the river was used to transport lumber up and down the Pacific Northwest. Longview is a community built on the backs of loggers and mill workers. An edible cannabis producer is far from the lumber and logging, but their hard work is in the same spirit of the loggers and mill workers past and present. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that another meaning for Honu in Hawaiian is “the spirit within.”
Honu’s facility is modest on the outside, walking in you’re greeted by a trophy case full of their awards. They took home a Cannabis Cup and Dope Cup trophy for Best Sweet Edible in 2016, both are proudly on display.
Honu’s facility is huge. It’s been refitted and repurposed multiple times. Through trial and error, they’re still trying new ways to utilize their space and are aiming to grow flower that they’re proud of. While they’re still dialing in Honu’s cultivation practices, it’s Honu’s edible kitchen that has brought in the awards and industry-wide attention.
The edible kitchen is filled with focused humans and is the prettiest room onsite. Most of the workers had headphones on, dialed into the task directly in front of them. All of their candy is handcrafted. I know that term is played out in the cannabis industry, but each one of Honu’s edibles is prepared by hand. We saw them mixing cookies and cream batter, scooping chocolate servings into cupcake trays, rolling marshmallows in liquid chocolate and meticulously assembling turtles. If you don’t know, a turtle consists of three layers: chocolate, caramel, and a pecan topper.
Turtle’s are one of their most popular treats, not surprising for a company that rocks a sea turtle as their mascot. Along with the award-winning coconut snowballs and peanut butter cups, these three treats make up the triforce of their edible lineup and can be purchased year-round. Honu rotates seasonal select treats, for Summer, it’s s’mores season!
Honu let us sample new flavors of hard candies hitting the shelves next year. The blue candies tasted like blueberry Jolly Ranchers. It’s hard to imagine these don’t eat into the market share of other hard candies on the market. After the tour of the kitchens, we stopped by their topical and concentrate portions of the facility.
Honu has rebranded their topicals with a lot of success. They wanted to give them an “at home spa” feel. Honu Naturals is a line of products that pamper and don’t even look like cannabis products to nosy relatives and children. There were stacks of freshly scented bath bombs ready to be packaged and shipped out.
The last stop on the tour was their concentrate lab. We saw them in the process of making distillate and all kinds of golden slabs of concentrates. Be on the lookout for newcomers, Shellshock and Ubana Rama which registers at 67.97 percent THC and 4.39 percent terpenes.
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The Honu Inc facility isn’t going to win any beauty contests, but it doesn’t need too. It’s filled with hard-working individuals that envoke the ancestral memories of the original trappers, loggers, and pioneers that settled in Washington and built the community of Longview many years ago.
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