‘In the Weeds’ with Vincent Villalpando
Posted on Mar 01st, 2021 | Tags: Employee Spotlight, and Meet The Team | Categories: cannabis, cannabis101, Employee Spotlight, marijuana, medical marijuana, and Uncategorized
Get to know Vincent Villalpando.
Vincent is our Master Grower, which means he’s responsible for the entire cultivation department and the plant health of thousands of plants here at our Plymouth facility. We sat down with him in our early veg room to ask him a few questions about his life as “the plants guy”. Here’s what he had to say:
How did you get started with cannabis?
I grew up in Santa Maria, California where I smoked flower recreationally.
I was also battling health issues which had me on more than a dozen pills per day. I hated pumping so many different pharmaceuticals into my body, and I soon realized that certain compounds in cannabis plants could be used to target my specific health issues. So, I registered as a medical patient with the state and started using cannabis to help ease my symptoms. I was able to minimize the number of pills I had to take each day by just using home-grown flower. This also led me to develop a passion for growing cannabis, which was not initially accepted by my parents.
Eventually after realizing the health benefits of cannabis, my parents started to support my home-grows. Now we’re at the point where I’m coaching my dad through how to manage HIS home grow back home in California (and his garden is pretty impressive!). Crazy to think that something I caught so much flack from my parents for is now my full-time career!
How did you get started in the cannabis industry?
I have a strong finance and accounting background and after graduating from college I became a controller for a chain restaurant but was always fascinated by the fast-growing cannabis industry. So, I decided to give up my high-paying corporate career up to pluck leaves and mop floors for $10 an hour! I made the decision to let my passion take me down my new career path and jumped.
I started my cannabis career as a cultivator at a company called Virtue based in Las Vegas, NV. At Virtue, I was the 4th person hired to their new team, so I was able to really help build the program and the brand from the ground up. I was tasked with building the grow rooms, setting up the environmental controls, setting up the menus and processes, and ultimately helped Virtue get on the map as a Las Vegas craft cultivator.
Soon, I was recruited to be the Director of Cultivation for a company called Las Vegas Cannabis in Las Vegas, which had some serious issues in their grow rooms. They brought me in to help them solve their cultivation issues, which included everything from mite infestations to powdery mildew to invasive thrips and root aphids. Within about three months of managing the cultivation department, we finally started passing our state testing and came out with much higher-quality products. We grew about 50 strains in-house at the Vegas facility harvesting about 100lbs every three weeks. This led us to rebrand ourselves under the Las Vegas Cannabis umbrella to our new brands that we called Pheno Exotic and White Lvbel. Pheno Exotic being our top shelf flower line and White Lvbel being our bulk wholesale line.
In 2019, we competed in the Cannabis Cup of Nevada and won 1st Place for Sativa Flower with our Melonade strain, 2nd Place for Hybrid Flower with Jet Fuel, and 1st and 3rd Place for Pre-Rolls with our Guava Jelly Infused Pre-Roll by White Lvbel and our M.A.C Pre-Roll by Pheno Exotic x LOADED.
And now you’re at Triple M in America’s Hometown. How different is the cannabis culture here from that in Vegas?
I can already see some patterns emerging that remind me of the kind of explosive growth we saw on the West Coast in the industry, which is really exciting. I love the fact that more and more people are becoming more open to trying cannabis, but in a way that makes them feel that they’re connecting with the product and the brand. Consumers here are quickly realizing that there’s a lot more than just TAC when it comes to purchasing flower and other products; it’s about the terpene profile, the way it was grown and processed, and so much more.
Here at Triple M, we’re constantly pheno-hunting to build our catalog. Our entire Cultivation Team is seriously obsessed with taking care of our plants, and we completely geek out over every frosty bud we harvest.
What’s next for Triple M?
We’re currently working on doubling the size of our grow space so that we can keep up with the demand for top shelf flower. We’re excited to continue to build upon our already fire list of in-house strains and introduce our Triple M community to new flower!
Do you have questions for Vincent?
Head over to our Facebook page and comment your question on our latest post (the one about Vincent, of course!) and we’ll choose a few to have him answer in an upcoming blog!