Having just hired their 18th employee, Chico Cannabis Company is quickly becoming the preferred plug for California cannabis brands seeking distribution, manufacturing, white labeling, toll processing, co-packing, and more. Best-selling SKUs from some of the biggest brands on the regulated market are being crafted in-house at Chico Cannabis Co.

22 years into an illustrious military career that began fresh out of high school with an enlistment in the Marines and led to a leadership role with the Green Berets, with tours ranging from Kosovo to Afghanistan to the infamous ridgelines of the Emerald Triangle, Chief Warrant Officer David Petersen needed help.

A chest filled with awards and medals reflected decades of earned skills and unwavering valor, as well as an adulthood dedicated to service not only to our country, but to everywhere he put boots on the ground. However, those accolades also reflected the mental and physical anguish that such bravery can carry, and telltale signs of PTSD had begun to infringe on Petersen’s personal and professional lives. 

On a mission to be the best father, husband, and soldier that he could possibly be, Petersen took the prescribed course of action to get help from the military. Through the VA, he found plenty of resources and tried a slew of different forms of therapy–from experimental writing to experimental lighting–but as varied as these sessions were, there was always a low common denominator… the inevitable pill push.

Having seen too many colleagues in the military lose their minds, if not their lives, to these dangerous pharmaceutical cocktails, Petersen pushed back and eventually drifted away from the VA.

Back To The Roots

Growing up in the Bay Area in California in the 80s and 90s, Dave Petersen was no stranger to the region’s decades-long reputation for all things counter-culture, particularly cannabis. Though he didn’t partake as a teen, plenty of his friends were growing and smoking their share plus his, and his cool demeanor allowed him to hang around for those early formative days of what would go on to become a multibillion dollar regulated market.

Upon graduating high school, the homies kept chasing terpenes but Petersen joined the Marine Corps and spent the next 20 years or so chasing bad guys around the globe. For a time, that task included uprooting cartels and other bad actors who were illegally growing weed in the state parks and national forests of Northern California. Unfortunately, though, he saw far too many generational farmers caught up in overenforcement.

When his work-related PTSD seemed to only be getting worse, Petersen reached out to a childhood friend and told him everything. That friend invited him to come lend a hand on an outdoor cannabis farm–trimming, watering, and other basic duties.

With his boots off for the first time in years, Petersen found and felt a palpable healing process occurring with his feet grounded in the soil and his hands and arms always awash with trichomes. Though he wasn’t smoking cannabis, the plant finds a way, and through a quite literal “contact” high with the sun, the soil, and the sensemilla, Petersen realized, day by day, that he was getting better.

Fascinated, but still skeptical, he dove deep into cannabis research, learning about Charlotte’s Web, the endocannabinoid system, and the decades of anecdotal and clinical research and results that had been hidden from mainstream society for so long.

For any soldier, purpose and planning are essential. Petersen certainly felt like he had a new purpose and he began to formulate a plan to package the relief that cannabis gave to him and deliver it to more veterans and civilians who may have been let down by more ‘socially acceptable’ forms of therapy or wellness seeking, or by dangerous pharmaceuticals.

Stepping off of that farm with renewed spirit, Petersen put in for retirement from the military and began to put his plan into action.

Step 1: Secure a Buddy.

Chico’s First Cannabis Manufacturing Company is Disabled Combat Veteran Owned & Operated

Chico California Cannabis Company is also appropriately dubbed as C4, an homage to the military background of not only Dave Petersen, but of his co-founder and fellow vet Curtis Bortle who fills the role of CFO at C4.

Bortle served honorably in the U.S. Army for 14 years with tours in Iraq and Jordan, before retiring as a Staff Sergeant. After crossing paths in their careers in the armed forces, Bortle was Petersen’s first choice when seeking a potential partner to help shoulder the load.

Together they applied for a retail dispensary license in Bortle’s hometown of Susanville, CA where they still own and operate a popular little pot shop called Canna Junction. It was through this experience that the two truly began to identify and understand the pain points that cannabis brands have to endure to get from being a good idea to a profitable business.

California’s cannabis supply chain can be brutal for brands that don’t have the capital reserves to wait, and wait, and wait for a return on what they put out into the market. While we initially saw a rush toward vertical integration here in Cali, the incredibly high cost of maintaining all of the necessary licenses and permits and real estate proved to be crippling for many companies. Some couldn’t survive, but the ones who did were generally the ones with a strong brand. They learned that they could stay in the game off the strength of the name.

That is how Chico Cannabis Company came to be. Bortle and Petersen saw the bottlenecks that brands were facing, particularly on the production side, and they applied military-grade problem solving to create an in-demand business building up in-demand businesses.

“If our military experience taught us anything, it was how to problem solve using detailed analysis, creative thinking, and unconventional approaches,” Petersen says. “Promoting a good work ethic and mentoring our employees to work hard but efficiently has allowed us to utilize our staff and automation to complete projects substantially quicker than other manufacturing companies. Operating in the cannabis space using the same military mindset of mission accomplishment through relationship building, transparent communication, and integrity is what seems to be setting us apart.”

Today, some of California’s top selling top-shelf brands are being made in Chico at C4. The process is pretty simple: you bring them the weed (or they can source it for you) and tell them what you want it to become. Pre-rolls, vape carts, jarred flower, all forms of concentrates and extracts, edibles and more. C4 has invested in cutting-edge automation technology that delivers a level of quality matched only by its scale of output.

By tapping in as a client with Chico Cannabis Company, even small to mid-sized cannabis brands can take advantage of high-cost, high-quality tech, leveling the playing field at last.

CHARLIE MIKE: Chico California Cannabis Co. Continues Its Mission to Uplift Brands that Uplift People

As a key part of their market research, Bortle and Petersen spent the past several years attending cannabis tradeshows from coast to coast, always looking for legitimate innovation and like-minded professionals.

They found both when they came across the team from Xylem, whose groundbreaking Automated Vaporizer Filling Machine filled a need for C4 whose clients provide a high demand for such products. With the Xylem-3 in operation alongside an APEHEX Preroll Machine that is capable of producing up to 900 top-shelf-ready prerolls per hour, C4 is on the frontlines of automation.

That’s how we met Dave, through an introduction from our buds at Xylem who knew he had a story to tell and knew we love telling people’s stories.

The California cannabis industry was never all that big to begin with and as it continues to contract, one of the few benefits is that it is making it easier for the companies like Chico Cannabis Co., Beard Bros Pharms, and Xylem to organically gravitate toward one another and grow together.

So, if you are looking to expand your brand–or even build one from the ground up–your orders are to report to Chico Cannabis Co. first to see how their state-of-the-art facility and no-nonsense work ethic can boost your ranks.

You can learn more at https://chicocannabiscompany.com/