Nicolas Guarino, CEO and Co-Founder of Jaunty – Interview Series

As the New York cannabis industry comes to fruition, realizing its several billion-dollar potential, every brand and business will want to stand out and make their mark in this nascent industry. Jaunty is one such brand that’s making its brand known through both clever marketing and by strengthening the very industry that it’s a functioning business within via the creation of the Empire Cannabis Manufacturers’ Alliance. For a better understanding of the Jaunty brand and its accomplishments and milestones, as well as the tumultuous world of working in the New York cannabis industry, mycannabis.com had the pleasure of speaking with Nicolas Guarino, Jaunty CEO and Co-Founder.

Prior to joining the cannabis industry, where did you attend college, and what subjects did you primarily study? How did those subjects prepare you for eventually working in and dealing with the daily ups and downs of the cannabis industry?

I attended Baruch College in NYC and was majoring in International Business, but I took more English and Philosophy classes than I did my major before I left school. They were more interesting and I always got better grades in those classes. I think the English classes were key for me because they really developed my communication skills, particularly my ability to persuade in writing. This has been important for everything from fundraising to team development.

What industries did you work in prior to cannabis, and what skills did you acquire from those roles?

My family has a background in agriculture and I’ve actually been involved in cannabis since I was a college student, starting out on the hemp side in 2017 when New York expanded its hemp program, which was previously limited to research, to include commercial business and established industrial hemp as an agricultural commodity. Since I was a kid I have been helping in my family’s agricultural ventures from the back of a pick-up. A few of my relatives had a small plot of land upstate, and that inspired my then-roommates and I to apply for a license and then began fundraising for a vertically integrated CBD project. As avid consumers at the time, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get involved with the cannabis industry from the ground up. To learn more about the industry and better prepare for starting our own business, we apprenticed at farms in Oregon and Colorado.

We then founded the company Naturae to focus on CBD cultivation and production, we also received an investment to build up Naturae’s processing and manufacturing infrastructure. The five years the Naturae team and I spent in the hemp industry presented enormous challenges because supply was not regulated and interstate commerce was allowed almost immediately, but they proved to be the best training ground for our current operations in the THC sector under the Jaunty name.

What were your regular duties while serving as Director of Agriculture for HempChain Farms, and how did this role serve as a stepping stone into the cannabis industry and the creation of the Jaunty brand?

As Director of Agriculture at HempChain Farms, I oversaw more than 25 acres of outdoor CBD hemp production—from managing the nursery to leading planting, cultivation, and harvest operations. That hands-on experience was foundational to what we later built with Jaunty. It gave us the ability to produce high-quality outdoor cannabis inputs for extraction at scale, which is still at the heart of Jaunty’s value today: delivering top-tier extracts at prices people can actually afford.

What were the deciding factors and moments that led to the creation of the Jaunty brand, and why did you name it such?

On the actual creation of the Jaunty name, that credit goes to my partner Chistian Mollica who in my opinion has better creative ideas than most: the idea was to create something fun and light hearted for rec cannabis. We always joked with each other that Jaunty would “put a little extra pep in everyone’s step”, and it stuck. As mentioned previously, we originally founded Jaunty as Naturae, and have been part of New York’s licensed adult-use THC industry since day one. In September 2024 we announced that Naturae would be rebranding under the name of our top-selling house brand, Jaunty. Jaunty has become the core part of our business that adult consumers recognize and can rely on for quality products that are approachable, fun, and offer both premium and more affordable options. Rebranding the entire company as Jaunty was a natural fit.

How would you describe the process of creating a cannabis brand in New York? How arduous was it, and did the process change when cannabis became recreationally legal in the state?

Before Jaunty entered the New York adult-use market, the company – then called Naturae – manufactured white-label CBD products in the state. But that was difficult work and we really didn’t see worthwhile returns. Fortunately, we brought back our core CBD team including Connor Brown, brought in Christian Mollica, forged a relationship with Brian Hinchcliffe who is still our investor to this day, and with that capital we were able to get licensed to enter New York’s adult-use THC market. We started with producing a line of distillate vape cartridges, live rosin and hash oil products that hit dispensary shelves in January 2023. We decided to focus on oil-based products and to work to bridge the gap between flower and oil in terms of experience effects and flavors. Our goal continues to be to make vapes that can appeal to O.G. legacy flower consumers as well as those who are newer to the market.

The next big decision was determining which products to launch first and how to brand them. Even though our parent company was called Naturae at the time, we decided to develop our product lines under different brand names. The vape cartridges and edibles became Jaunty, the hash oil became Rezinators, tinctures became Jumbodose and we partnered with the acclaimed California company Critical to bring their concentrates to New York.

While having multiple brands was a strategy that worked when the New York market first came online and had fewer stores, once our state crossed a certain threshold – we’re now at about 300 stores – we decided to fold our other brands into Jaunty and put all of our focus into creating one signature house brand. These were our first and best-selling products to begin with, plus the name reflects the approachable and fun vibe that we’re all about.

From your years of working in this very young industry, how would you recount the whole experience in the New York cannabis industry? What are the frequent ups and what are the frequent downsides of working in this nascent industry?

New York’s cannabis industry has been a roller coaster ride, to say the least, but I’m feeling really positive about the market moving into this new year. 2024 was the biggest year yet, both for Jaunty and the New York cannabis market as a whole. Our state’s licensed adult-use cannabis market has officially kicked into high gear, and by the end of the year we had passed $1 Billion USD in sales. After a rough 2023 marked by limited store openings, over-supply, and hindered growth due to lawsuits, New York now has approximately 300 licensed dispensaries open and selling more than $100 million in legal cannabis per month, and that number is expected to reach 500 across the state by the end of 2025. Enforcement on illicit shops has also increased significantly since that issue peaked in 2023, and in certain areas legal store sales have recovered 98%+ thanks to those efforts.

For Jaunty, we’ve been focusing on expanding our product portfolio and speed-to-market capabilities, and we’re proud of the success we’ve seen on this front. It’s full steam ahead for us, as we dropped three new products going into 2025: Jaunty Palms, which are disposable vapes; Jaunty Live Rosin vape cartridges; and Jaunty Drops – cannabis tinctures. We’ve also expanded our top-selling Classic Vape line – 510-thread vape cartridges that combine proprietary blends of cannabis-derived terpenes with distilled cannabis oil, delivering true-to-strain flavors and effects-based profiles. And we will have our Jaunty Live Resin vape carts out, which we could not be more excited about due to the advanced filtration tech we will be applying to create a truly distinct product.

From an industry standpoint, there are a few things I’d like to see change. In New York, one of the key issues holding operators back – especially smaller, independent operators – is a tax burden. A crucial step forward would have been for New York State Governor Kathy Hochul to sign a bill that was on her desk to fix it, A10196/S9359, which would shift the filing of wholesale taxes for cannabis cultivators and processors from a quarterly cycle to an annual one, but unfortunately, it was vetoed even after receiving overwhelming support from the assembly and senate. We will keep fighting this and hope to work it into the Governor’s upcoming budget, this time proposing pushing back the filing and collection date by 30 days so that sellers have the time to collect funds to pay the tax. The current quarterly payment system is problematic because it requires businesses to pay taxes before receiving payments from that period’s sales, so it almost guarantees that even the most successful companies remain strapped for cash.

Throughout the brand’s life, what have been some of your favorite highlights and accomplishments of Jaunty? What awards and/or recognition has the brand achieved so far?

I’m so proud of our entire team – Jaunty closed out the first month of 2025 as the best-selling cannabis vape brand in the state (according to cannabis market data and analytics platform Headset). Out of the nearly 500 and counting list of licensed cannabis brands in New York, Jaunty Vapes ranked number one in January with regards to total units sold and market share (14.7%), and our Sour Diesel Classic Cartridge was the number one selling vape product. A lot of these numbers were propelled by the success of Jaunty Palms, our largest disposable vape yet (1.5 grams). It’s awesome to see New York consumers embracing these products – it’s clear New Yorkers know their cannabis and are inundated with tons of options, so really appreciate the support and engagement with what we have to offer. And in terms of awards, Jaunty vapes and Critical Concentrates placed first in their respective categories at Cannastock’s Annual Excelsior Cup in 2023.

What led to the creation of the Empire Cannabis Manufacturers Alliance, and what are the organization’s goals and objectives? How do you hope this organization strengthens the New York cannabis industry and its employees and operators?

I’m one of 8 founding members – all of us are licensed cannabis processors in New York who previously worked in the state’s hemp sector. Our goal is to serve as an advocacy organization and platform for reliable information about cannabis manufacturing for lawmakers and regulators. As processors, we are the middle tier of the supply chain that connects farms with stores, and we needed a larger platform to raise awareness for the policy issues that affect us and the market — plus there are a ton of regulations for our tier of the supply chain, which change constantly.

How do Jaunty and its products stay true to its mission of being “dedicated to enriching the cannabis experience for our customers”?

Jaunty has been part of NY’s licensed cannabis market since day one as an independent home-grown brand. We make everything ourselves in our Hoosick Falls, NY facility and are all about closing the gap between oil and flower – we work to craft vapes and oil-based products that offer an experience as close to smoking flower as possible. What sets us apart is our speed to market capabilities, variety and ‘three oil’ strategy: with the upcoming launch of our live resin vapes and concentrates, we will be the only brand in NY state that sells all of the primary oil types available: distillate, live resin, and live rosin.

We’re also able to leverage our extraction expertise to offer multiple categories of THC products to appeal to various consumer interests, from connoisseurs seeking ultra-premium 100% solventless live rosin to the more casual cannabis consumers exploring economically priced, approachable options that taste great with predictable effects. Since entering the market in January 2023 with only 7 SKUs of vapes, we’ve built our product portfolio to include more than 60 SKUs across multiple categories, including edibles, concentrates, and sublinguals.

If a federal rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III occurs, how do you envision that sweeping change impacting both Jaunty and the New York cannabis industry?

Rescheduling would be a critical step in transforming cannabis into the mainstream industry that it already is for most Americans. Section 280E of the IRS tax code has been one of the greatest burdens on operators across the supply chain, but with rescheduling, cannabis business owners would be able to file taxes like any other business, saving billions of dollars for the industry as a whole. We can then focus even more-so on innovation and growth.

However, at the end of the day, medical markets would be positively impacted the most. But the adult-use markets in 24 states and D.C. still face great limitations that hinder the legal industry from reaching its full potential. We’re hopeful that there will be a progressive and landmark decision that will set an example, and pave the way for improved measures like SAFE Banking, increased access to logistic providers and to capital, and ultimately, to federal legalization.

Thank you for joining us, Nicolas! For more information on Jaunty, please visit its website.