New Franchise Idea: Mobile Cannabis Processing

PROBLEM:  Increasing numbers of growers are entering the medical and recreational cannabis industry, but while they've learned to grow the stuff, they don't know how to process it. 

SOLUTION:  A truck-based mobile cannabis processing facility that will go from farm to farm, processing the material on-site for growers into either trimmed buds or cannabis concentrates like hash, wax, or tinctures.

That solution is a proposed new franchise venture for Terpworks, a new Vancouver (WA)-based business launched by grower/processor Tom Lauerman.  An article by reporter Sue Vorenburg of The [Vancouver] Columbian profiles the innovative new business:

"There's a need out there for this," said Lauerman, who added that he's already lining up customers. "There are a lot of people getting into the cannabis business, and they to some extent know how to grow, but they don't know how to process their plants."

Lauerman, who said he will also continue running his farm, is preparing a specialized truck that will have an array of concentrate processing equipment set up. The truck also has a sleeping area for the two-person team that will manage the operation.

"We can even work with I-502 (legal Washington recreational) businesses, I talked to an attorney about it," Lauerman said. "We're basically just another contractor, like an electrician. So we roll up into a grower-processor's canopy space, roll in and process for them."

One benefit of the mobile business is that the grower can watch or join in the processing and learn more about it. Also, their marijuana doesn't leave the grower's site, so the grower doesn't have to worry about shipping marijuana, he said.

"Nobody wants to travel with pounds and pounds of weed, so this way we can do everything there," Lauerman said.