KCRA celebrated adult use going live in our neighboring state of Ohio by visiting Standard Farms' facility just outside of Cleveland. There, the SF Ohio team crafts culinary-inspired edibles with a focus on high-quality, all-natural ingredients.
We caught up with Standard Farms Director of Operations Chef Eric Major to learn how his culinary background influences their recipes, the importance of using high-quality ingredients, and the process of producing edibles the team can be proud of as Ohio patients themselves.
Watch the video below to get a look inside the kitchen and keep reading to learn more about Standard Farms Ohio.
Standard Farms Ohio Facility Snapshot
The Standard Farms facility opened in 2019 in Cleveland, Ohio. It is 11,000 square feet and has a fully functional commercial kitchen and an ethanol and CO2 extraction lab. There is no cultivation on-site.
Standard Farms is owned and operated by TILT Holdings. They employ 20 people in Ohio and offer a complete portfolio of processed goods from vapes utilizing Jupiter Research hardware, packaged flower sourced from licensed Ohio cultivation facilities, and infused edibles made in-house.
Chocolate bars, gummies, cookies, chocolate drops, peanut butter, vegan peanut butter cups—the Standard Farms menu of infused options for Ohio consumers is extensive. With that many offerings, it’s easy to picture an assembly-line kitchen mass-producing infused gummies and chocolate bars, but Standard Farms takes the opposite approach by crafting small-batch edibles with inspiration, love, passion, flavor, and high-quality ingredients.
The SF kitchen leans heavily on the background of classically trained chef and Standard Farms Director of Operations Eric Major. Before joining the SF Ohio team, Eric’s resume included experience training at a five-star resort in Colorado and time spent under a James Beard award-winning chef in Philadelphia.
He brings his expertise to introduce culinary concepts like mise en place (French for “everything in its place”) to the kitchen and curate a menu built around the philosophy of producing culinary-inspired, tasty edibles that use the highest-quality ingredients.
The result is a menu that marries static offerings like the SF line of premium chocolate bars made with different varieties of Valrhona chocolate and gummies like the daytime green tea gummies crafted with culinary-grade stone ground Oku Midori matcha alongside rotating seasonal options that use fresh, in-season ingredients.
The seasonal edible approach lets Standard Farms consistently bring new products to the market for patients and consumers to try by introducing a new edible lineup for winter, spring, summer, and fall.
This year’s fall seasonal edibles feature a sugar-coated, chewy molasses cookie, apple cider gummies that taste like the leaves are falling, brown sugar butterscotch chocolate drops made from rich, sweet-flavored Valrhona Blond chocolate, and a chocolate chip cookie—a classic treat that the team is proud to be the first to offer in Ohio.
“The seasonal approach not only lets us bring new products to the market for patients and consumers to try but also leans into our core philosophy of using the highest-quality ingredients by ensuring that we’re using ingredients in their freshest state.” Chef Eric Major—Standard Farms Director of Operations
Developing new recipes to bring different edibles to market for each season comes with challenges, but Chef Eric leans on his background and the team in the kitchen to bring new ideas to life that appeal to what Ohio consumers want.
Eric is quick to point out that the team behind the scenes is what makes the kitchen go. That team includes Kitchen technicians Jerri Massey and Joe Chalupa. Joe and Jerri work to put passion and care into every step of the process. They focus on every detail—from getting the proper temper on the chocolate to hand-coating every gummy in vegan sugar to ensure the product is one they would consume as patients themselves.
Chef Eric said he views the team being patients in the Ohio program as an essential part of their process: “We have an investment in what’s out there for us. We’re in a unique position to make what we want to see as patients and put products we are interested in and passionate about into the market for others to enjoy.”
That spirit is behind Standard Farms' refusal to follow a cookie-cutter, mass-produced approach to their edibles. Instead, they use their insight to bring the market what it wants—like being the first to offer a chocolate chip cookie perfected from a recipe Jerri had—or craft something unique for Ohio, like the Standard Farms ube coconut crunch chocolate bar.
“The idea for the ube bar was inspired by a really talented chef I worked with who introduced me to Filipino cuisine and pallet and just how beautiful those ingredients could be.”
The ube bar showcases the range of ingredients that can make up an SF edible. It blends all-natural ube extract, purple sweet potato powder, toasted cashews for a textured contrast, and Valrhona white chocolate to create a unique, tasty experience of white chocolate and accented coconut flavors with the beautiful visual of the light purple color ube has become popular for.
Developing the recipes is the start, but to bring out the flavors, Chef Eric leans on his past experience to source only the finest ingredients. As he told us, “We get a great final product when we put good stuff into it,” and everything in the SF kitchen begins with only using the good stuff.
The list of ingredients includes pectin as the gelling agent in the gummies. "It’s plant-based, so we use it instead of gelatin to stay all-natural everywhere we can.”
Amoretti for all-natural flavoring, “They lead the way with all-natural extracts.”
French brand Les Vergers Boiron as the fruit purees used in the SF gummies, “100% a puree of the fruit, no additives or anything,” and for the chocolate according to Chef Eric there was only one choice, "Amongst the best chocolatiers I know, Valrhona is considered the premier brand.”
Valrhona is a French premium chocolate manufacturer focused on creating high-grade luxury chocolate. It holds the status of one of the world's premier producers of gastronomic chocolate. All its chocolate is fair-trade and sustainably sourced from Cocoa beans that can be traced straight back to the producer.
“Valrhona has a diverse portfolio of varieties, and you get a consistent, high-quality product that melts nicely, tempers nicely, and most importantly, tastes great.”
All these ingredients play their part in getting your taste buds involved to create a full-spectrum experience, but a clean, quality cannabis distillate oil is the essential ingredient, and as Chef Eric told us, “It’s not just food, it is cannabis-infused edibles, so I’d be remiss to not talk about our lab and how clean and wonderful the product that they produce in the lab that allows us to make good edibles.”
SF partners with Ohio cultivators to source flower to create the distillate in-house and the lab team maintains a high standard for the oil they produce. They focus on consistently producing a clean end product for infusion and to fill Standard Farms vape offerings. Standard Farms partners with Jupiter Research to utilize their industry-leading, patented CCELL technology to offer devices like the Infinity All-In-One, the Palm Battery, and Luster Pods in both strain-inspired and flavored vapes.
Meet Chef Eric and the Standard Farms Ohio team, and you quickly pick up on the passion and care that goes into the product. It’s not about melting down Haribo gummy bears in bulk and infusing them with distillate to mass-produce gummies for dispensary shelves. These are culinary-inspired edibles pumped full of passion, not preservatives, with a menu that can provide something for everyone and every pallet.
There are no corners cut—only high-quality ingredients go in, and every detail counts towards crafting quality in the kitchen. These are edibles made by Ohio patients, for Ohio patients and consumers.
“Standard Farms edibles are made by patients themselves. We are experiencing the products we’re putting into the market, and we want our products to be high-quality, tasty, and not pumped full of preservatives. High-quality ingredients go into the product, and we get a high-quality product as a result.” Chef Eric Major—Standard Farms Director of Operations
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