After pivoting from a successful 14-year soyfoods marketing career, in 1994 Richard Rose started a movement by being the first to market sophisticated branded perishable foods made from hempseed to the masses, not only proving the viability of a new industry but changing society’s stigmas too. That revolution in food became hemp’s first billion-dollar industry and 90% of Canadian hemp. It was the leading value-driver for hemp, globally.

Tell us a bit about yourself, how did your interest in hemp start?

Like many entrepreneurs my age, I sold a variety of different products, learning supply and demand, customer service, pricing, inventory control, marketing, quality control, packaging, regulatory (non)compliance, the metric system, operations, vendor management, accounting, and the rest that'll come in handy later.
Then in 1980 I bought a tofu company and started my food career making tofu and secondary foods from it, marinated, dips, salads, and the like. That evolved into making various frozen desserts for supermarkets, ice cream shops, and exports. Further it evolved into cheese alternatives, like TofuRella in 1986. That same year a major food industry magazine named me a "leading innovator of 1986" for the work I did in "Americanising" soyfoods in the U.S and Canada, a similar approach I later took for hemp foods.
Since by 1994 we already had cheese alternatives based on tofu, almond, rice, and brazil nuts, adding one made with hempseed was a logical progression for the brand. That became HempRella, which we introduced along with Hempeh Burger at a big trade show. Those were soon on the shelves across the country and Canada.
Because I had long worked with soybean, when I learned hempseed had as much protein I was intrigued. Soya had a flavour and stigma to overcome even in the '80s, but EVERYONE loved the idea of hempseed, and the flavour even more. Plus it was not just more fun to work with, but way more nutritional as well as easier to use. I never went back to soya, professionally.

What was the major success for you in terms of product?  Did that product become the mainstay throughout your business life?

TofuRella, which got us on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies in 1993 (950% growth in 5 years), begat HempRella. Selling "America's most-hated food" (tofu) in the Reagan '80s made selling food from hempseed in '90s easy. I already had 14 years experience by then plus a BA in Marketing and MBA studies. It was a Perfect Storm, the culmination of my years of study, work in soyfoods and being the first food pro to pivot, when I introduced hemp foods.
Spending a quarter million dollars on ads and PR got hundreds of millions of media impressions, while most gave a sly wink it was still presented as a serious and legit new commercial food. We had a tsunami of momentum!
Then in 1996 after years of working on developing a shelling technique, I found it at a German trade show. The guy silently held up an unmarked bag in front of my face, and knew he found the right customer when I was the first to start jumping up and down and screaming with surprised joy "you did it!" On the way back to Cali I stopped in London and showed it to Paul Benhaim. He went on to make millions in Australia.
So I started importing it and named the product "HempNut brand hulled hempseed," then "shelled hempseed" because my Northern California accent made "hulled" sound like "whole," a crucial operational error to avoid. Then to reduce costs, I contracted hundreds of tons of certified organic whole hempseed from China delivered to Germany for shelling, then shipped in 32,000 pound containers to California where I had it packaged. That allowed me to sell organic for below the Canadians' cost of production of conventional. Today you know that material as "Hemp Hearts" but mine was "Hemp Nut," a term so perfect that two hemp associations demanded the trademark, calling it "too generic."
Shelled hempseed went on to become hemp's first billion-dollar segment, with the most consumers, retailers, products, sales, profits, and acres, 100% legal globally.
When the fibre hemp and soap guys killed the hemp food market for years around 2001, almost taking down Canadian hemp with it, I sold Rella Good Cheese Company and retired, moving to Amsterdam. And I walked away from the $2.5 million I invested making hemp food a Thing with HempNut Inc. It took until 2011 for Canadian hemp acres to recover, it killed hemp food's Golden Age and wiped out the massive public momentum we had, never to regain.

What were the secondary products?

HempRella in 2 sizes, Hempeh Burger, HempNut shelled hempseed in 3 sizes, Toasted HempNut in 2 sizes, Cannessence essential oil, Hempseed Oil Refined and Unrefined in 2 sizes, Lip Balm, Whole Food Bar, Chocolate Chip Cookies in 2 sizes, Organic Blue Corn Chips, Nut Butter in 2 sizes, The HempNut Health & Cookbook, Flour (first protein powder ever), and Bite Me chocolate bar. Products on-deck were Organic Margarine, and UHT Hemp Milk. The burger had a FDA-legal health claim for reducing risk of heart disease, the only hemp food ever to do so. The chips had a FDA-legal Structure-function claim.

How many products did you end up producing?

Too many, way too many. It was a problem I had in soyfoods too, having introduced about 120 products.

Do you think that the CBD industry has been a stumbling block for the hemp food industry?

*Without CBD, hemp would not have been legalised federally in 2018. But yes, drug hemp has had a seriously bad impact on hemp since then. Nothing was as bad for hemp as legalisation. And now, the "Billion-Dollar U.S. Hemp Industry" is just synthetic THC made from foreign CBD sold to teens in gas stations, so U.S. farmers don't even benefit. U.S. acres have crashed 95% since 2019 while "hemp THC" became a $20 billion industry. Few seem to care that it is full of bizarre compounds of unknown effect. Although we can import seed and make branded high-margin foods, my goal was for hemp was to help U.S. farmers, not foreign ones.

When it comes to recruitment did you build a team around you and your vision or was it more of an organic process?

*I was not a hemp startup, but rather an ongoing food marketing business selling our own brand with an international sales and distribution network established years earlier, which pivoted slightly from soybean to hempseed. It's way easier to succeed that way than to be a startup. I had the vision so my staff were well-paid professionals who just did the work, whether it was tofu or almond or hempseed.
I had a great staff, I was so idiosyncratic that they either fit or not and we knew right away. Most did and never wanted to leave, very low turn-over.
My manager once unknowingly hired a local undercover narc’s wife! When he picked her up for lunch I noticed that he was a long-haired biker one day, then a short-haired lifted-truck driver a month later, so I asked about it. She was very open about his job and said he doesn’t care about marijuana, he only works methamphetamine cases. When I asked about her working for us since we sell hemp foods, she was adamant that what we were doing was legitimate and legal and professional, and if DEA knocked on the door she would tell them exactly that and mention her husband, who they know personally, then "send them on their way." She stayed with us for years, you can't buy that kind of loyal integrity. Even from a narc's wife.

When thinking through your business activities, in order of priority what came first?  Product, marketing, environmental issues, availability of raw material?

Since we were an ongoing enterprise just pivoting slightly from one input material to another, hempseed was incorporated into our operations like any other. I already had all the hard parts nailed: raw supply, processing, production, packaging, warehousing, sales, distribution, marketing, advertising, PR. It would have been impossible for a startup to do that, the food industry is notoriously conservative but I had a reputation for professionalism and quirky innovation, so they would hear the pitch.
Everything was made using contract manufacturers, just like I did for years in soyfoods. We out-sourced everything but R&D, marketing, and accounting, and ran the whole thing out of an old Queen Anne Victorian house in Santa Rosa, California with 5 employees.
 
How many tons of hemp seed do you think you are you responsible for growing, processing and selling?

No idea, but in 1997 I contracted for 1,000 tons. In 1996 I was the first by years to market shelled hempseed in North America, branding and getting it placed in stores far and wide in two countries literally years before the others started. Those founders were new to food, as well, and I had been pioneering weird new foods since some of them were toddlers. Between shelled hempseed and the many products made with it like cereal, sales exceed a billion dollars.

How do you see the future of the hemp food industry?

Once Congress gets drug hemp under FDA control and out of the bathtubs it's made in, it'll take time to undo the damage it has caused true hemp, both grain and fibre. We spent years disassociating THC from hemp food then cannabinoid cowboys put dirty synthetic THC in gummies, causing adverse reactions to be reported to FDA from this unregulated food.
Some important discoveries are being made with the hempseed, perhaps one day we will say "hemp food is medicinal."
My goal has long been to disrupt 15% of U.S. food soya, or about a million acres. It can still happen, but not if USDA keeps ignoring the industry's needs.  If USDA were on a kick to slow hemp, this is what it would look like.
But between exaggerated Dunning-Kruger claims and Frankenoids passed off as hemp, the "H" word is fast becoming toxic for big business and serious marketers.

Are you working on anything exciting that you can talk about?

*Besides the Hemp Food Association and The Richard Rose Report, I just released "Seedy!" on how to start a hemp food business. It's 177 pages, 52,000 words, 200 images, and thousands of links. Cost is free but value is priceless. "Never before has an industry insider pulled back the curtain on the successful strategies used to create hemp's biggest industry segment, food. Part How-to, part hemp history, part self-help." And I have another book on the way, showing how hemp food in 2024 started as tofu in Mendocino County in 1980. But honestly, I'm supposed to be retired and should probably start acting like it.

Links:
https://therichardrosereport.com
https://therichardrosereport.com/seedy-or-how-to-start-a-hemp-food-business/
https://the-hfa.org