One of our favourite parts of running Fritz’s over the years has been experimenting with different flavours and combinations.  We’ve tried so many different flavours, with varying levels of success, and have found some classics that seem to please everyone, as well as some wild and wacky flavours that have gathered their own cult following.

Gummies and Soft Candies

One thing we’ve discovered is that a few “buckets” of flavours seem to work for different types of products.  When it comes to gummies and soft candies, fruity and berry flavours are always popular. Flavours that really POP, like blue raspberry and grapefruit work well because they almost “dance” across your tongue while you’re chewing the candy.  At Fritz’s, we make our gummies with a low-temperature German confectionary method that results in a chewy texture.  We think gummies ought to taste like gummies! Because of the chewy texture, the gummy frolics inside your mouth as you chew it, and we focus on making sure every flavour we choose is delicious. highlighting the flavour of the cannabis inputs we use, and disguising any aftertaste that might linger.

We’ve also made gummies with classic candy flavours like red vines and sour lemonheads.  The nostalgic flavours of childhood candies bring consumers right back to the sweet memories they have of childhood, but this time with a more adult offering.  There’s something especially delightful about eating an infused version of a flavour you remember from being a kid, and our customers always responded positively to confectionary flavours.

We’ve also done some REALLY funky flavours with gummies, including horehound, cherry blaster, and one ill-fated batch of “Buckley’s Gummies”, a double-strength batch that we forgot to add any flavouring at all to…they tasted awful, but they worked.

Lollipops and Hard Candies

Many of the same flavours we used for gummies translated perfectly to lollipops and hard candy, and the medium of boiled sugar gave us more room to work with different flavour combinations than the ones we used in gummies. The high-temperature cooking method meant that terpenes wouldn’t be retained, so we used only distillate and isolate in our hard candies and not hash rosin, or other full-spectrum inputs.

We started branching out with unique flavours and creating novel combinations that were sometimes better in theory than in practice.  (Bergamot Yuzu might SOUND like a good idea, but trust us, it’s not.) Fruity flavours work just as well for hard candy as they do for soft candy, and we made lollipops in flavours like lychee melon and guava.  Spicy flavours were another bucket that lent themselves well to hard candies, and some of our more popular lollipop flavours were pineapple jalapeno and cucumber serrano, both very spicy choices that a distinct subset of our customers loved!

Naturally, timeless candy flavours translate perfectly to lollipops, and bubble gum and cinnamon hearts (another spicy flavour) were very popular offerings for both lollipops and hard candy.

We also loved creating seasonal flavours and products, including Pumpkin Spice Lollipops (our own version of the PSL) when fall rolled around each year, Champagne-flavoured lollipops at New Years, and Christmas blends like Cranberry-Lemon, Pomegranate-Orange, and Cranberry-Plum during the winter holidays.

Choosing flavours in the Legacy Market vs. the Regulated Market

Our most popular flavours were the ones we brought to the regulated market when we made the transition.  We brought over Raspberry Lemonade, Peach, Mango, and Strawberry Kiwi because they were some of our most popular flavours in the Legacy market.

One thing we miss about back then was being able to experiment with new flavours, take them to market, and get quick feedback on them directly from our customer.  When we sold our products at the Green Markets or at the Kensington Flea, we were able to connect face-to-face with our shoppers who told us exactly what they thought of each (uninfused) flavour we had out for samples, and every infused flavour we sold from our table.

Not just that, but we could look at the weekend’s sales data and decide on a new flavour on Sunday night, get the flavouring ingredients on Monday, cook the batch on Tuesday, demold it on Wednesday and leave it to cure through Thursday, package it on Friday, and sell it on Saturday.  Now, any new flavour we want to offer must first go through a minimum 60-day Health Canada review process before we can bring it to market.  Every submission (and therefore every flavour) we submit includes a significant amount of preparation and administrative work along with it.

We really do miss the days when we could just whip up some new flavour combinations to see what the market would support!