Hemp Enters the Mainstream

The sachets of hemp hearts on the shelves at Costco, Safeway, and Whole Foods Market are Mike Fata’s last laugh. The founder of Manitoba Harvest has spent the past decade working to transform hemp—a variety of cannabis—from the butt of weedy jokes into a supermarket staple. Fata’s investors are particularly happy about the mass-market breakthrough. “Our customers are bright enough to know that it does not have dope in it if Costco’s selling it,” says Jim Taylor, a founding partner of Avrio Capital, a Calgary-based venture capital company that was one of Manitoba Harvest’s early backers.

Looser cultivation restrictions and the food industry’s hunger for produce that packs a protein punch have helped distance hemp from its more notorious relative. Hemp contains less than 0.5 percent of the mind-bending compound tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, that gives marijuana its potency. Earlier this year the U.S. government finally recognized hemp as distinct from cannabis. A federal ban on commercial cultivation, however, is still in force.