Baked East / Portland, Maine

Photo Credit: Baked East

About Baked East Edibles

The team at Baked East prides itself on crafting beautiful, delicious, and reliably-dosed edibles for licensed partners in Maine that supply medical marijuana to cardholders.

Baked East (near Portland, Maine) emerged from co-founder Pete Nikiforakis’ first company, Grown East, which started growing medical cannabis in Maine in 2015. He continues to provide the grower know-how while founder Jenny King, and family business, Stonewall Kitchen, focuses on development and creation.

Jenny spends a lot of time in the kitchen with Edible Chef Claudia Davis-Meggs and jars of The Perfect Purée, which she discovered at another cannabis company. Like The Perfect Purée, Baked East avoids artificial colors, flavors, and high-fructose corn syrup.

If you can see the seeds, you know it’s real. That’s what Jenny King thinks when making edibles for Baked East. “When we make Kiwi, we’re able to see some kiwi seeds, and I think it just adds something and brings it to life some more,” she says.

“At one point, we tried making purées [in-house] to see if we could manage to do it ourselves, but we were never able to have a product as good as The Perfect Purée,” Jenny says. “[They] [do] an excellent job of bringing in that real fruit flavor [that distinguish] our products from the artificial [edible] flavors you would see elsewhere.”

“It’s cool to see people come in and say my product is the thing that’s helping them,” Jenny says.

The Industry

Medical-grade CBD products typically contain high concentrations of THC, the compound associated with being “high.” Opposed to over-the-counter CBD edibles that don’t have the psychoactive effects of THC. Both types of edibles can reduce pain, inflammation, and anxiety, but studies of medical marijuana show it also alleviates nausea and chronic pain, according to the American Cancer Society.

“Practitioners are careful [when prescribing cannabis cards], but they’re making it more accessible, and it’s becoming way more common,” Jenny says. In recent years, medical cannabis has been recognized for its healing abilities to treat certain illnesses and ailments, including insomnia, stress, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and muscle spasms.

Ultimately, she says it’s about helping people feel better with products made from high-quality natural ingredients. Something as simple as seeing those kiwi and strawberry seeds makes the Baked East team feel they’re putting more care into their product.

So far, fruit chews and gumdrops span the flavor spectrum from Strawberry, Mango, Passion Fruit, Lemon, Guava, Pina Colada, Raspberry, Kiwi, Lime, Tangerine, Blackberry, and Cherry. Lollipops with flavor mixtures like Strawberry Lemonade are in development.

Jenny says Baked East has a line of CBD gummies without THC and medical-grade edibles.

“You get more of the medical benefits of the plant, the anti-inflammatory and anxiety-easing properties, but you don’t need a medical card,” she says.

Pets are in line too. Jenny says she doesn’t want to bring peanut butter into the kitchen, so she’s trying to develop a pet flavor without it.