The LED-lit cannabis grow operation at Connected California, where Alien Labs is cultivated.
Take me to your weed dealer.
Alien Labs, a cannabis brand born in Redding, California, is beloved by consumers. It has built an interstellar fandom methodically over the last decade by breeding rare and genuinely exotic strains. The shiny and artful packaging is just a bonus, standing out on shelves and hinting at the premium, trichome-dense cannabis inside. “Alien Labs sells itself,” cannabis advocate and journalist Jimi Devine once told me.
A lifestyle brand for outliers, skaters, and weirdos, Alien Labs has become a tough competitor in California’s top-shelf weed landscape. This success is in large part due to Alien Labs’ Founder and Creative Director Ted Lidie. In 2018, Lidie began his partnership with Caleb Counts, Co-Founder and CEO of Connected Cannabis Co. The brands grow out of an 800-light grow in Sacramento, built in 2015, and have an additional 500 lights at a research facility dedicated exclusively to breeding new cultivars. “I consider them family,” says Lidie. “We let them take over the heavy lifting. Since we’re from Redding, it was typically a banned city and county. I moved to Sacramento to find us a home and that ended up being with Connected. Connected was the first big grower in Sac. To my knowledge, they have the most advanced grow in the state.”
Connected has expanded since their partnership to MSO standing, reaching markets in 3 states with 400 employees. “When I came on, it was Caleb and a handful of people. It’s been great being able to witness that growth,” says Lidie. “I grow weed and sell it, and he’s science-minded. It’s where art and science come together. You have to have both. There’s so much to both sides that we have to learn from each other, we have to come together and figure it out.”
Ted Lidie, founder of Alien Labs, at Hall of Flowers California.
Alien Labs is the epitome of high cannabis culture. Fan favorite cultivars from the minds at Alien Labs and Connected include GSC, Gemini, Biscotti, Y2K, Biskante, Area 41, Baklava, Atomic Apple, Gelato 41, and Melonade. Connected’s Gelonade cultivar was the very first indoor-grown cannabis to win 1st place at The Emerald Cup. Alien Labs’ Zkittelz won a Zalympics award for the new Best Thing Smoking category at the connoisseur weed tournament hosted by retailer Greenwolf earlier this year.
“Cannabis culture is thriving,” says Lidie. “The industry maybe not so much, but nobody’s slowing down smoking weed. For us, it’s exciting. We’re in a cool place to not really think of anybody as competition. There is competition out there for sure, but I’ve never thought of it that way. We’re just happy to be here. Especially at the top of the game.”
Alien Labs first made waves in the legacy scene with an outstanding cultivar, Mars OG. Even at that nascent stage in his business, Lidie noticed consumers craving variety. “I honestly believe we are one of the first companies to offer consistent new phenos,” says Lidie. “Before that, we were just growing OG. I saw quickly that people want to try new stuff. There are tons of customers who come in and buy the same thing all the time, of course, but I’m always looking for new flavors. Our customer wants to try new flavors.”
It’s earned its place among the ranks of weed geneticists pushing the boundaries of indoor cannabis cultivation. The ever-evolving strains available from Alien Labs feel like a friend is showing you their latest and greatest. Lidie recalls when his circle would be excited to see his new strains. “It’s that same energy,” says the founder. “We want to show you stuff, we're not just here to make money and put out the same shit all the time.”
The unique in-house bred cannabis cultivar Y2K from Alien Labs.
Where does the Alien Labs name come from? Not from winning popularity contests, but from existing in the margins. “We wanted to be inclusive and let everyone into this world,” says Lidie. “That’s why the name is Alien, it’s a term for outsiders. We felt like we were that to what was going on. But we always let everyone into our space and chop it up. We are just down to earth.” In another meaning, what’s Alien about the brand is the bud itself, with its unique, dense structure, high terpene percentages, and out-of-this-world effects. “People weren’t up to our level,” he says. “By the looks of it, it looked like some Alien shit.”
The Connected/Alien team is no stranger to collaboration. One with Travis Scott called Cactus Farms, a limited-edition line of weed, garnered attention in 2021. Alien Labs also drops capsule collections of merchandise to significant fanfare at Zumiez. The biggest yet, a collaboration with the world-renowned skateboard brand HUF, has been two years in the making.
Alien Labs is currently working on a collaboration with The Ten Co., a California-based brand beloved by consumers for its Zushi strains. “The Ten Co. is so inspiring,” says Lidie. “They kill the branding and have high-quality cannabis. It’s hard to do both. The weed can speak for itself, but you want to tell a good brand story. That’s not easy to do. Weed makes people creative. The product is the story. Telling a story about the product should be just as good as the cannabis itself.”
Cactus Farms was a limited-run collab with Connected California and Travis Scott.
Creating new strains is a significant portion of who Alien Labs is as a company, says Lidie. He does side-by-side trials, comparing different levels of nutrients, light, and temperature, among other factors, and times the rooms to the same schedule. “We do all of our in-house breeding. We also pop other people’s genetics, too,” says Lidie, shouting out seeds from Compound Genetics. “5 times a year, we plant 700-800 seeds. Together with myself, Luke, Caleb, and our R&D team, Jonathan and Ian, we test them out. We find out which ones we like.”
Alien Labs offers a glimpse into its R&D process by selling consumers half-ounces of “pheno salad”— a mixture of different research cultivars that have passed through the storied Connected and Alien Labs hall. Of the 800 seeds popped, about “400 of them end up in our room for breeding,” says Lidie. “We’ll do 40 of each strain at a time, and at the end, we mix them up to sell. It's like a pheno salad of new shit we haven’t necessarily released yet. We did it for so long and never put out the weed. People love it. That's what being in this industry is all about, about being creative. In R&D and breeding, you have to get creative.”
Alien Labs crowdsources its cannabis effect descriptions. When the strain enters phase 2, it goes out to Connected customers who can access a link to give feedback on the new phenos. “We gather feedback from consumers and then use it for our education,” says Lidie. “We got hundreds of responses, feedback saying 80% of customers found it made them feel creative, while 70% say it tastes like pine. We take that info and loop it back into our educational material. It’s crowd-sourced. Most brands are like, ‘To me, it tastes like berries and stone fruit.’ While customers do like that approach, we think it’s best to crowd-source those opinions. Take a wide swath of people, you’ll get a general consensus.”
What strains is the founder personally smoking and most looking forward to dropping this year? “From Connected, Cherry Fade. It's Red Pop x Apples and Bananas. It’s just the craziest thing I've ever tasted. It tastes like cherry cough syrup. The flavor is so thick and coats your mouth. It’s the best strain I’ve tasted in a long time and I’m so excited about it. I’m annoyed I didn't select it for Alien.”
For his current favorite flavor from Alien Labs, Lidie says: “I’m smoking Dark Web, it’s different from anything we have in our lineup. I’ve been focusing on gas for so long that I’ve been ignoring other flavor profiles. This one is special.” Alien Labs has just released another winning pheno called Planet Red this Fall.
Biskante bred by Alien Labs.
Today, Lidie is attempting to bring back the nose of the OG he used to love. He says the old-school method of growing used lights under 750 watts which may have contributed to their gassy flavor profile. The terpenes on each flower are so fragile, that they could be getting cooked off by stronger lights, suggests Lidie. “We’re trying all kinds of different temperatures, light levels, to find an OG that comes out exactly how it used to in the day. It has this earthiness but it doesn't have the gasiness, the sting of the nostril, that I used to smell,” he says. “These new modern practices may have left some of the things we do behind.”
Alien Labs and Connected operate differently than other cannabis MSOs. They’re both majority self-funded and were fixtures in the culture before expanding into other states. “We pulled ourselves up,” says Lidie. “We don’t have money like that, we’re not a super-funded company. We’ve taken some investments but not big ones, so we’ve been slowly expanding when we get the chance. MSOs don’t just get to come into the industry, tell somebody ‘we own you,’ and then use them as a segway into the culture.”
Lidie lays out potential remedies for California’s legal market and its regulatory woes: “California needs more stores,” says Lidie. “Leaving it up to the counties, over 60% of the counties in California have banned retail. There’s no banning on the size of grows, some are 1 million square feet. They have so much pot and nowhere to sell it. That does a disservice to the rest of the state.”
Alien Labs is currently on dispensary shelves in California, Arizona, and most recently went on the market in Florida. “Florida is going really well,” says Lidie. “It’s cool to go into these markets that haven’t seen high quality and help educate these customers. Florida’s been down bad. They hadn’t had anything super outstanding until we came in. It’s very hard for companies to scale and maintain quality going to different states. In some cases, we’ve exceeded the quality standards. Especially in Arizona, they growing fire out there, it’s crazy to me.”
Lidie says he’s eyeing New York once indoor licensing opens but is in no rush. “We’re focusing on doubling down in the states we’re in until New York. Once they release indoor licensing, we’re going to try and figure it out. The rollout has been slow and not great, but I have all the faith in the world they will get it figured out. The equity piece is so important. We have to get it right,” says Lidie.
Gummy edibles from the Alien Labs brand.
“New York is having trouble with its approach,” says Lidie. “They’ve created the problem by not having enough places to sell in the state. They should have seen which counties would ban retail, then limit the canopy to an amount they can sell.”
Alien Labs is building generational wealth. The devoted father says his kids are now excited to take over the family business someday. “My daughter is only 6 and she’s like, ‘I want to go work with my dad.’ She is welcome. There aren’t a whole lot of women in the space,” he says. “I just hope that every day more and more come in. We want women to stand on their own.”
On some parting advice for other cannabis entrepreneurs who look up to the success of his company, Lidie says: “One thing is to not give up when you have an idea and you think it’s great, you just keep going no matter what. It’s hard to wake up and go do shit and make progress. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, we are moving forward.”
“Also, get those experts in there,” the founder says. “We need to embrace traditional businesses. It’s not just us versus them anymore and it doesn’t have to be.”
