In 2016, a close friend called Jared Maloof, who was working as CFO at a billion-dollar metal company, and asked: “How’d you like to help legalize cannabis in Ohio?” Intrigued by the prospects of high margins in the emerging market, Maloof agreed to Kevin Murphy’s invite.
Maloof contributed to the ballot initiative to legalize medical cannabis, just before Gov. John Kasich signed the legislation into law. This set the groundwork for Maloof, Murphy and three other co-founders to launch Standard Wellness Co. LLC in 2017. After winning a license to operate in the newly legalized state, they began growing cannabis at their Gibsonburg, Ohio cultivation facility in 2018. And then, on January 16, 2019, the company’s retail arm, The Forest, made the state’s first sale in Sandusky. Maloof joined the company that summer, initially as CFO before taking the helm as CEO.
Carving out a presence in the highly regulated, rapidly evolving cannabis space has been anything but easy. But despite the ups and downs and countless “near-death experiences,” Maloof wouldn’t trade the tumultuous ride he’s had building Standard Wellness into a vertically integrated multi-state operator with almost 400 employees in four states, nearing $100 million in revenue.
“We’ve built a company that we’re all very proud of,” he says. “We have nearly 400 families that are counting on us to succeed.”
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Enduring a rocky start
With no experience growing or consuming cannabis, Maloof had a lot to learn about the culture of the market he was diving into.
“Many people in this space are extremely religious about the plant, and initially I didn’t appreciate that,” he says. “I focused solely on building a business and generating a return for shareholders.”
Although his financial background served him well in this role, the metal industry didn’t fully prepare him for the regulatory turbulence that came with cannabis.
“Working in public accounting, and also in metals, which is a very slim-margin business, taught me the importance of discipline, never getting out over your skis and always looking forward,” he says. “We did a good job of keeping SG&A tight and running extremely lean at the top. If we’d had incredible success right out of the gate, I worry that we might have gotten a little sloppy. But having to struggle and earn it every step along the way resulted in a company that has more discipline than it would otherwise.”
Discipline was critical to success, because when Maloof joined, the cards seemed stacked against the business. At that time, Standard Wellness had just signed its first acquisition, launched a capital raise and closed on a debt facility. His first decision as CFO was to cut a handful of salaries in half “because we were spending faster than we were generating revenue,” he says. “We had to come up with another million dollars toward the acquisition, which we didn’t have.”
Then, the “near-death experiences,” as he calls them, began to pick up pace. On top of the financial pressure, the company issued a voluntary recall of one of its first processed products. Then, a daunting regulatory issue made him wonder whether the company would survive at all. Maloof began to question his career move, after leaving a financially stable job for a nascent space where he had personally funded a significant portion of an acquisition at risk.
But then, he realized, “I happened to be in the spot where I was supposed to be at the time when the company needed me to be there.”
Growing beyond Ohio
Leveraging his experience structuring complex financial deals and growth through M&A, Maloof focused on leading Standard Wellness through these hurdles with his eyes on opportunities beyond Ohio’s borders. While bolstering the strength of the Ohio business — the first vertically integrated cannabis company in the state — his team also began applying for licenses in other markets.
“Applying for a cannabis license is not for the faint of heart,” he says. “It’s a lot of work.”
Maloof and Murphy spent most of the summer of 2019 on the road searching for properties and writing applications. In fact, Maloof says, it was the prospect of multi-state growth that ultimately lured him away from his previous job.
“We were all looking at it as a one-time opportunity to gather up land in a burgeoning new industry,” he says.
However, many of his competitors suffered from this land-grabbing Gold Rush mentality as they clamored to stake claims anywhere they could. Fortunately, Standard Wellness was a bit more selective in its growth strategy.
“It was important for us to expand outside of Ohio, but it was more important to do it in the right states that would be good marketplaces,” he explains. “Avoiding bad markets was one of the most important things we did.”
That’s why you won’t find any Forest dispensaries or Standard Wellness cultivation facilities in states like Michigan, Colorado, Washington or Oregon — markets with unlimited licenses, which can lead to overproduction and oversupply, resulting in ruthless price wars. Instead, Standard Wellness targeted states with limited license availability: Utah, Missouri and Maryland, where they have “a significant but not controlling interest” in a partnering business.
In fact, winning the license in Utah was a pivotal catalyst that spurred an additional capital raise, allowing Standard Wellness to fund the million-dollar payment required to secure the acquisition made when Maloof first joined the company.
Today, the company operates three cultivation and processing facilities — one each in Ohio, Utah and Missouri — along with one dispensary in Utah, two in Missouri (one of which is an acquisition pending regulatory approval) and three in Ohio (plus one pending approval), with the ability to place three more and a fourth, also pending approval. Without any additional M&A, Maloof says the company’s current suite of assets could achieve $150 million in topline revenue within the next year or two.
Funding multi-state expansion
The key to managing this growth across state lines is having “a highly competent leadership team that I can trust,” Maloof says. “I can’t underestimate the importance of the advice I get, not only from them, but also from third parties, lawyers, investment bankers and accountants. Our advisers have been instrumental to our ability to manage growth, fend off threats and identify opportunities.”
Maloof also credits the company’s “patient and supportive shareholder base.” Standard Wellness has about 125 legal entities and 200 individual beneficiaries that comprise its capital stack, with an average check size of about $200,000. Since the initial raise of $1.2 million to launch in Ohio, Standard Wellness has raised close to $50 million in equity. But Maloof is most proud of the fact that all the equity in the company is pari passu, or “on equal footing,” meaning no investor has preference or priority over another.
“There’s no anti-dilution. No one has preferred returns. The only difference is a few of us have voting stock,” he says. “We’re all extremely aligned.”
Gaining alignment among shareholders was a critical turning point, since the equity wasn’t always structured this way.
“Some state regulations required separate legal entities for licensing purposes,” Maloof says. “For example, Missouri required at least 50 percent ownership by Missouri residents.”
Having shareholders split across separate subsidiaries caused a degree of misalignment, as some investors owned shares of a dispensary, while others owned a piece of the cultivation facility that sells product to the dispensary. The question became: how to set a fair and appropriate price without favoring one set of shareholders over another.
“A big milestone for the company was effectuating a rollup where all 200 shareholders exchanged the equity they had in the subsidiaries for equity in the parent company,” says Maloof, who was proud to achieve 100 percent participation in the rollup. “That was a big relief because now I’m rowing in one direction for all the shareholders instead of constantly assessing how each decision might impact one over the other.”
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Evolving capital markets
Although the cannabis capital markets have significantly evolved over the past decade, accessing funds to grow Standard Wellness required a creative approach.
When Maloof and his co-founders started out, they faced a lack of institutional investors — and the few options that were available “came with a lot of strings,” he says, which pushed Standard Wellness toward private investment instead. Traditional banks have been likewise leery of lending to cannabis businesses, due to its federal illegality. To fill this capital gap, several credit funds emerged to offer loans in this space.
These credit funds became “a natural place for distressed debt lenders because they could command better-than-market terms,” Maloof explains. “Not only do they want a higher interest rate than traditional banking, but the financial covenants, collateral and structuring of the loans are far more challenging than your average lender.”
That’s where Maloof’s financial expertise shone, as he deftly negotiated the difficult transactions that funded growth for Standard Wellness. Since starting out with distressed debt cannabis lenders — which were one of the only options early on — the company has “graduated to traditional banking debt” by refinancing with banks and credit unions at much lower rates.
For example, when Missouri legalized recreational cannabis in November 2022, “that’s when I knew the company was on the path to success,” Maloof says, “but at the same time, we were in a difficult situation from a liquidity standpoint. We’d spent all the money to build out these state-of-the-art facilities, but the revenue had not yet come because the business was not yet recreational.”
Initially, Standard Wellness took a $32 million loan from a credit fund, Focus Growth Capital Management. An amendment required the company to repay at least $12 million within a certain period of time, Maloof says, “and that’s when Wright-Patt Credit Union came through for us.” The Ohio-based credit union offered a loan with a 9.25 percent interest rate to refinance the Gibsonburg cultivation facility, with the proceeds repaying a portion of the Focus Growth loan.
Then, Maloof turned his attention to refinancing the cultivation facility in Vandalia, Missouri. A loan from Needham Bank in Massachusetts took out another $10 million from the Focus Growth loan. Most recently, in April 2025, a $14 million credit facility from Advanced Flower Capital repaid the rest of the existing debt from Focus Growth, while funding another acquisition in St. Louis.
“Paying off that loan was great because, on one hand, it was great to get a lower cost of capital debt,” Maloof says, “and on the other hand, it was very gratifying to fully repay someone who made a significant bet on the company.”
Now, Standard Wellness is taking “a well-deserved break from raising equity or additional debt,” he says, “at least until the end of this year.”
Preparing for the future
Looking ahead, Maloof sees significant turmoil approaching the cannabis industry — along with incredible opportunity for those that can weather the storm.
“In 2026, $3.5 billion worth of debt is coming due in the cannabis space, and as much as half of it is not refinanceable,” he says. “If you think you’ve seen carnage in cannabis thus far, you haven’t seen anything yet. But for a company like ours that’s comfortably levered, there will be real opportunities ahead. At some point, there will be a federal legalization event and safe banking, so all the things that have been our weaknesses will turn into real strengths.”
Maloof compares the strict regulations and compliance guardrails as “training wheels” that have been preparing Standard Wellness for unfettered growth. Once those training wheels come off, following federal legalization, “the speed at which the company can move will be dramatically faster,” he says.
Until then, Maloof doesn’t plan to expand the company’s footprint anytime soon. Instead, he remains focused on strengthening the existing business and “bulletproofing” its current operations by improving cultivation practices, bolstering the brand and opening the dispensaries still pending regulatory approval.
Although he jokes that the cannabis industry has arguably taken a decade off his life, Maloof wouldn’t trade the near-death experiences he’s dodged or the impressive milestones he’s achieved in this challenging market.
“We’ve built a durable business that’s poised to succeed, and when we get relief at the federal level, we’ll be in an even better position,” he says. “It’s still something I’d do all over again.” ●
