Shane Gallick has been growing cannabis commercially since 2015. He started as a cultivation technician in Colorado when recreational had just gone legal, spent years diagnosing problems across eight different Denver-area facilities, ran a 20,000 square foot greenhouse as a supervisor, and eventually made his way east to Massachusetts. He has been the farm general manager at mello's Amesbury facility for just over a year. In that time, mello has taken home hardware at the NECANN Cup across six award-winning strains.

This episode is different from every other episode of The Blunt Boardroom. No tech partners, no industry executives, no policy conversations. Just Matt and his head grower, sitting down to talk about what it actually takes to run a commercial cannabis greenhouse and why most people who think they understand cultivation have no idea what they are actually looking at.

Matt opens with the number that matters most to him as CFO: the power bill. mello's hybrid greenhouse runs approximately 30% cheaper on electricity than a comparable indoor grow. Shane explains why. An indoor grow fights the weather.

A greenhouse works with it. In the winter, cold Massachusetts air cools the facility for free. In the summer, the sun overhead means supplemental lights go off entirely. The tradeoff is complexity, and Shane walks through every piece of it: the louvers, the pad walls, the boiler, the underbench heating, the blackout system, and what happens when any one of them fails at the wrong moment.

They get into the data side of cultivation, including why Shane tracks which strains perform best on which specific tables inside the greenhouse, how temperature gradients across 6,200 square feet of canopy affect yield and cannabinoid production, and why the only way to make reliable decisions in a greenhouse environment is to build years of consistent data before drawing conclusions. Matt connects this to where AI and machine learning are going in commercial cultivation, including drone-based plant inspection, computer vision for early disease and stress detection, and the question of whether predictive yield modeling will eventually replace much of the guesswork that currently drives strain selection.

They also walk through the full phenotype hunting process at mello, from popping seeds to running pheno trials to narrowing twenty candidates down to two or three, and ultimately to one production strain. Six award-winning strains later, the process is clearly working.

Topics covered: Hybrid greenhouse vs indoor grow cost comparison, cannabis cultivation power costs, greenhouse mechanical systems and maintenance, humidity and environmental control in Massachusetts, data-driven cultivation decisions, AI and machine learning in cannabis growing, drone and computer vision for plant inspection, phenotype hunting process, strain selection and genetics, mello farms award-winning strains, harvest scheduling, the future of cannabis cultivation technology.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Shane Gallick is the farm general manager at mello Cannabis, overseeing cultivation, production, and logistics at the mello Amesbury facility. He has been in commercial cannabis cultivation for nearly 12 years, starting as a cultivation technician in Colorado in 2015 and working his way through cultivation lead, IPM specialist, and director of cultivation and operations roles across multiple states before joining mello. Under his management, mello has won awards across six strains at the NECANN Cup.

ABOUT THE HOST

Matt Richman is the CEO & CFO of mello Cannabis, an award-winning vertically integrated cannabis company based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. A former Deloitte auditor, he entered the cannabis industry in 2017 after two decades in corporate finance, public and private company CFO and COO roles, and M&A advisory.

Connect with Matt:
linkedin.com/in/matthew-richman-508aa413

mellocannabis.com

New episodes of The Blunt Boardroom drop twice a month.

#TheBluntBoardroom #CannabisCultivation #CannabisGreenhouse #CannabisGrowing #IndoorGrow #CannabisFarm #CannabisOperator #MassachusettsCannabis #CannabisBusiness #CannabisAI #CannabisScience #CannabisTech #CannabisBusinessPodcast #GreenhouseCannabis #CannabisCEO

Hennessy Leilani Shaw has been working in legal cannabis since 2014. She started as an executive assistant at Rhode Island's first medical dispensary and spent the next 12 years building her career through inventory management, buying, and retail leadership. Today she runs sales and marketing for Buds Goods, one of the most respected vertically integrated cannabis companies in Massachusetts, with stores in Worcester, Leominster, and Framingham. She has seen this industry go through every phase it has had.

Matt and Hennessy recorded this episode on location at the Buds Worcester store, one of Matt's favorite dispensaries in Massachusetts and one of the few in the state with a trading card and sports memorabilia theme that matches his own obsession. They ripped a few packs. Nothing spectacular, but a Lamar Jackson variant showed up.

The real conversation is about where Massachusetts cannabis actually is right now and what operators who have been here long enough understand that newer ones do not.

Hennessy breaks the Massachusetts market into three acts. The green rush, where nobody cared about price and everyone was excited to be legal. The middle period, where supply caught up and prices started compressing. And now, act three, where the operators who made good decisions are still standing and the ones who did not are figuring that out. Her take is that this is not a crisis. It is what every mature market looks like. The cannabis industry is just moving through the same evolution that restaurants and retail went through, compressed into a much shorter time frame.

They also get into something that is on every Massachusetts operator's mind right now: the ballot measure that would repeal recreational cannabis in the state. Hennessy is unambiguous. Vote no on Question 8. Register before October 24th. She talks about what Buds is doing inside their stores to drive voter registration, and Matt shares what mello is building at the Haverhill store, including a tablet where customers can register to vote and receive a discount for doing so.

They close on the business itself. Buds is a flower and pre-roll company, same as mello. Their top wholesale SKU is a 28-pack of half gram pre-rolls in a jar that fits in a cupholder. mello now carries Buds products. Two operators who respect each other's work, on the same page about where the market is going and how to survive act three.

Topics covered: Massachusetts cannabis market maturation, the three acts of legal cannabis, Vote No on Question 8, voter registration at dispensaries, dispensary pricing strategy, racing to the bottom, Buds Goods wholesale business, pre-roll pack formats, competition in Worcester, cannabis industry consolidation, Rhode Island cannabis licensing, 12 years building a cannabis career.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Hennessy Leilani Shaw is the director of sales and marketing at Buds Goods, a vertically integrated cannabis company with dispensaries in Worcester, Leominster, and Framingham, Massachusetts. She began her cannabis career in 2014 as an executive assistant at Rhode Island's first medical dispensary and has spent 12 years building her expertise across inventory management, buying, and retail leadership. A recognized industry voice, she has moderated and hosted educational panels at NECANN Boston, Flower Expo Massachusetts, and the Boston Freedom Rally. She has been with Buds Goods for nearly six years.

Learn more: budsgoods.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Matt Richman is the CEO & CFO of mello Cannabis, an award-winning vertically integrated cannabis company based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. A former Deloitte auditor, he entered the cannabis industry in 2017 after two decades in corporate finance, public and private company CFO and COO roles, and M&A advisory.

Connect with Matt:
linkedin.com/in/matthew-richman-508aa413
mellocannabis.com

New episodes of The Blunt Boardroom drop twice a month.

#TheBluntBoardroom #MassachusettsCannabis #CannabisIndustry #CannabisMarket #CannabisBusiness #CannabisOperator #CannabisEntrepreneur #DispensaryLife #CannabisAdvocacy #VoteNoCannabis #CannabisBusinessPodcast #CannabisCEO #WomenInCannabis #CannabisRetail #BudsGoods

Every legal cannabis plant and package in Massachusetts carries a state-issued RFID tag from the day it is a seedling to the day it is sold. Most operators treat that tag as a compliance cost and nothing else. Outlaw Technology built an entire business on the idea that it is actually an asset.

Matt sits down with Hans Dietterich, head of sales at Outlaw, and Brie Oaxaca, director of operations, to talk about what cannabis operators are leaving on the table by not leveraging the tracking infrastructure they are already paying for, and what the operators who get it right are doing differently.

Outlaw has been in the RFID space since before cannabis was legal anywhere. Their founder Dave Eaglesen sold Metric its very first RFID equipment before the company even had the cannabis contract. When the state built its compliance system, nobody built the operator-side tools to go with it. That is what Outlaw did.

The conversation covers the full solution stack from cultivation to dispensary: how plant-level tagging works in a grow, how harvest batches convert into package tags, how manifest validation can cut a 90-minute receiving process down to a scan, and why most dispensaries are still counting inventory with spreadsheets and pen and paper when they do not have to be.

Matt walks through what Outlaw costs in practice, which is a few hundred dollars a month per location, and why operators consistently assume it is three to four times more expensive than it actually is. He also shares what happened when regulators walked into the mello store and saw Outlaw tools in use. They checked one thing and moved on.

They get into the future of cannabis inventory technology and where AI fits into it. Matt talks about building tools on top of the Dutchie API using Claude, why he thinks cannabis operators are spending too much time building their own tech when their job is to grow and sell great product, and what the Canack group, a curated stack of best-in-class cannabis tech partners, is trying to solve for the industry as a whole.

Brie explains what it looks like to operate in a state with no compliance tracking system at all, why that sounds easier and is actually a data nightmare, and how operators who experience both sides understand immediately what a well-built RFID system is worth.

If you run a cannabis operation and your inventory process still involves someone walking the floor with a clipboard, this episode is for you.

Topics covered: Cannabis RFID technology, Metric tag system, seed-to-sale compliance tracking, cannabis inventory automation, manifest validation, dispensary inventory counting, cannabis compliance audits, AI in cannabis operations, Dutchie API integration, cannabis tech stack, Outlaw Technology, cost per audit, cannabis operator efficiency, the Canack partner group.

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Hans Dietterich is the head of sales at Outlaw Technology and one of the founding team members. He has been in RFID technology since before cannabis legalization and has helped build Outlaw's presence across all Metric states and several non-Metric markets.

Brie Oaxaca is the director of operations at Outlaw Technology. Also a founding team member, she has led implementation and onboarding across cultivations, production facilities, and dispensaries in multiple states including extensive work in Virginia's medical market before it transitioned to Metric.

Learn more: outlawtechnologies.net

ABOUT THE HOST

Matt Richman is the CEO & CFO of mello Cannabis, an award-winning vertically integrated cannabis company based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. A former Deloitte auditor, he entered the cannabis industry in 2017 after two decades in corporate finance, public and private company CFO and COO roles, and M&A advisory.

He is both the CEO & CFO, and the difference comes through in every conversation.

Connect with Matt:
linkedin.com/in/matthew-richman-508aa413
mellocannabis.com

New episodes of The Blunt Boardroom drop twice a month.

#TheBluntBoardroom #CannabisCompliance #CannabisInventory #CannabisOperator #RFIDTechnology #CannabisAutomation #MassachusettsCannabis #CannabisBusiness #CannabisTech #CannabisCEO #CannabisBusinessPodcast #MetricTracking #DispensaryOperations #CannabisEntrepreneur #SeedToSale