Meet Caroline Yeh

CAROLINE YEH WORKED her way up in the cannabis industry the old-fashioned way. The Los Angeles native, who has an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, started her cannabis career at Bloom Farms and Kiva Confections. She moved up through the management ranks at those two notable California cannabis brands, creating new product lines, negotiating purchasing agreements, establishing pricing, overseeing vendor logistics and reaching sustainability packaging goals.

Yeh took those skills and went entrepreneurial with them in 2021. With VC backing, she co-founded TSUMo Snacks out of Oakland, CA to actualize a terrific new-old idea: producing savory, crunchy edibles for the recreational market.

As Yeh explains, such THC-infused snacks were once popular in the medical cannabis market. But as adult-use markets opened up, sweets and gummies crowded out the salty-savory edibles of the medical era.

Yeh and TSUMo Snacks have won over consumers with their old-school munchables. Fans include none other than hip hop legend Snoop Dogg, an early investor who teamed up with Yeh’s crew in October to unveil “Uncle Snoop’s Snazzle Os” cannabis-infused onion and spicy onion crispy flavored rings.

Global Cannabis Times was pleased to pick Yeh’s brain about all things snackable in a recent interview.

DAMON POETER: Hi, Caroline. What are you munching on these days?

CY: Shrimp chips. As an Asian, it’s a very nostalgic snack for me.

DP: Definitely. Comfort food.

CY: Absolutely. That’s exactly it.

DP: How did your founding happen?

CY: We’re sort of a unique entity. The ownership structure of the company is split between Casa Verde Capital, which most people know as Snoop Dogg’s VC fund, and a CPG venture studio called Red Bud Brands. These two companies had the idea of entering the edibles product category with savory snacks. They didn’t quite know what direction to take it or how to do it, which is when I was brought on board.

DP: Let’s talk a little bit about that. First, let’s talk about your name, TSUMo Snacks. That’s unique. What’s the story behind the brand?

CY: Yeah. TSUMo Snacks. What it means is, it’s a tsunami of flavor. So that’s why we’ve got the “TSU.”

DP: That’s cool. And how did you and your investors come up with the idea to go for chips and crunchable snacks?

CY: Part of it was my experience wiht Kiva, which is the largest edibles manufacturer in California. Knowing what’s possible. And then also having been in the marketplace for the medical market and watching that transition to recreational—the truth is, this is not the first time that medicated chips have appeared in a dispensary. They used to be quite common in the medical days. For me, the question was, why wasn’t that translating into the adult-use market? Was there still room for this kind of product?

As Americans, we love to snack. It’s an enormous category in the traditional food world. And savory snacking is actually the dominant part of that category. So again, it was this question of, why is it when I enter a dispensary, has this category become almost non-existent?

DP: When I look at all your different flavors, a lot of them are very recognizable—for example, I buy these big boxes of chips for my kids, for their school snacks. And there’s always a cool ranch flavor and a fiery hot. I think fiery hot is one of those flavors that, for me, I started noticing it probably about 10 years ago. Like, all of a sudden, everything was fiery hot on the supermarket snack aisle.

CY: Everything is flaming hot now.

DP: It’s flaming hot. Yeah, that’s right. TSUMo has a fiery hot cruncher snack. So how do you pick the flavors?

CY: I think with our initial flavor choices, it was really looking at what performs well. We were also trying for this kind of familiar, nostalgic brand. What are those flavors that you reach for when you are picking something off the chip aisle? I would pick Cool Ranch Doritos. That’s my No. 1 choice. And then the other thing is, we’re looking at how does this fit into our overall brand story and product selection?

DP: You have tortilla rounds. You have crunchers. How do you decide on the kinds of crunchy snacks you make?

CY: We have various formats. The crunchers are like a Cheeto. We have tortilla rounds and we also recently came out with these corn chips, similar to what you think of as Fritos. For that product, we have it in Chili Limon and Nacho Cheese flavors. And of course, our most recent product that we came out with partnering with Snoop is an onion ring type product.

DP: Can you talk a little bit about your go-to market activities and how you work with partners?

CY: Sure. In terms of our sales priorities, our products are not going to work for every retailer in the state What we do is, we try to focus on the top 150 to 200 stores in the state.

Because our product is not very high cost, we need retail partners who have high velocity in inventory turn. That’s typically where we’re going to see a lot more success. Because of that, we do a lot in terms of supporting our retailers on marketing and promotion. How much we do, depends on the relationship.

DP: Caroline, thank you so much for talking to us and introducing us to TSUMo Snacks. When I get a chance, I want to try the Fiery Hot Cruncher.

CY: You’re welcome and that’s a great choice!