Azuca CEO Kim Sanchez Rael came from the technology world before getting into cannabis, so it’s fitting she would use a tech analogy when talking about edibles. She says traditional edibles are like dial-up internet (slow and unreliable), while more modern, rapid-onset edibles are like broadband (fast and reliable) and steadily taking over the adult-use market.
Rael is the co-founder and CEO of Azuca, a New Mexico-based company that has been a leader in rapid-onset formulations for edibles since its 2018 launch. The company’s secret sauce is an “activator” that gives manufacturers the ability to produce an edible that delivers a “smoker’s high” within 5 to 15 minutes of consumption. Azuca makes a variety of activators for different uses, including specific formulas for beverages, chocolates and more. The result is a faster onset and more predictability for consumers, and for producers, better efficiency and improved margins, among other benefits.
The company has seen massive growth in recent years. In the fall of 2023, it surpassed 300 million servings delivered, with licensed partners in 20 states and about 120 SKUs. Azuca is in the process of expanding overseas, and its three-year growth rate of 2,628% ranked No. 214 on the Inc. 5000 in 2023, making it the top-placing cannabis company on the prestigious list.
To launch Azuca, Rael teamed up with co-founder Ron Silver, who originally created the company’s rapid-onset formulations. Each co-founder brings a significantly different skill set and personality to the operation. Rael lives in New Mexico and previously worked in tech and finance, learning the “importance of getting it right 100% of the time” while she was in the semiconductor industry. She came from Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” generation and had to reverse the “brainwashing” of the first 50 years of her life when she started learning about cannabis.
Silver is a chef, a businessman and an artist who lives in New York. He’s always loved cannabis, but hated edibles, so he set about using his “chef magic to solve the edibles problem,” Rael explains. Through rigorous experimentation, he developed a way to not only reduce the onset time of edibles, but also mitigate several other pain points, including the fact that cannabis extract is “like cooking with tree sap,” Rael says.
“We originally set out to solve the onset problem for edibles, and in the process of doing that, we make manufacturing more predictable,” she says. “We take that very difficult-to-work-with ingredient and make it very easy to work with.”