Before Terple Gang became a rising name in Michigan cannabis, it was just a group of friends chasing a shared passion for growing flower and making edibles during the early days of the caregiver era.
One of those friends, Mike Thackeray, began experimenting with edibles around 2011 in a commercial kitchen in his basement. He wanted to solve the problem of wildly unpredictable dosing.
“Everyone has a story that they ate a cookie they were given and freaked out on the couch,” says Thackeray, who is managing partner of Terple Gang and Northern Lights, which makes edibles. “I really dove into dosing edibles reliably because of that problem.”
Meanwhile, Kyle May, a sales representative and partner of Terple Gang, had been growing cannabis since 2010, shortly after being laid off. He got involved as a caregiver, but it became personal when his father was diagnosed with cancer.
“He did pass, but he got many more months out of his life than what was projected,” May says. “That’s when I really was aware of the benefits of the plant and how it gave him comfort at the end of his life. I was very vested at that point.”
In 2018, Michigan voters approved cannabis for adult use. The crew eventually joined forces and, in 2019, repurposed an abandoned building in Lansing. Their first harvest came in September 2021, and they’ve been selling flower and pre-rolls ever since under the Terple Gang label in Michigan’s medical and recreational markets.
The business is entirely self-funded and built slowly by design — a strategy that’s helped them survive as prices crash, companies consolidate, and surplus cannabis floods the market.
Read more at Metro Times
