Fog City Farms is a Watsonville indoor grower that keeps the whole chain in-house: it grows, trims, packages and distributes its own flower. Its calling card is vertical. Co-founder and CEO James Cunningham's grow was Pipp's first-ever mobile racking install, and the airflow system his team built for stacked canopy ended up as a Pipp division. The jars run from top-shelf Pacific Gas to Foggies smalls.
James Cunningham and a Central California crew
Fog City is a crew of Central California locals, run largely by family and friends. Cunningham had 17 years as a grower behind him when he talked to Cannabis Business Times in 2022, and state records list him among the owners of BTW Industries, the company that holds Fog City's licenses. His partner Kelly Hyland is the one who brought Pipp into the picture.
Envirocann, which certifies the grow, credits the team with more than 15 years of growing boutique strains. Retail menus carry the brand's own pitch: a premium indoor farm focused on sustainability and terpene production.
Pipp's first install and the mobile-rack bet
Cunningham told Cannabis Business Times that mapping the room with two-tier static racking convinced him mobile racks were a necessity: one tier on mobile carriages could hold more canopy than two static tiers, because every plant stays reachable.
In 2017 Hyland suggested Pipp Mobile Storage Systems, a Michigan company then building racks for retail and industrial storage, and Fog City became its first-ever install. The two sides were soon meeting in Oakland, and Cunningham has described those early rooms as essentially Pipp's first showroom.
The switch to LEDs was the other half of the bet. LEDs let the team hang lights much closer to the plants, which opened up the vertical space in each room, and Fog City says going vertical more than doubled its yields in the same footprint.
Nearly five years after that first install, Cunningham said the racks still worked like the day they went in. Fog City claims it helped pioneer vertical growing for California cultivators and that the partnership helped make Pipp the top-selling vertical mobile racking company in U.S. horticulture.
Vertical Air and the Pipp deal
Racks solved the space problem; airflow was next. Cunningham founded Vertical Air, known as VAS, in Santa Cruz to push air circulation, filtration, CO2 delivery and environmental control through each tier of a vertical room. When that “first of its kind” system wouldn't fit standard mobile racking in 2017, Pipp customized its racks to take it.
On December 10, 2020, Pipp Horticulture, the Walker, Michigan division of Pipp Mobile Storage Systems, acquired VAS, and it became part of Pipp's horticulture business. Fog City still runs the pressurized air and CO2 system in its own rooms.
The top-shelf jar lineup
Every top-shelf jar holds 3.5 grams, and the current menu reads like a gas-and-fruit tasting flight:
- Pacific Gas: Chem Dog x SFV OG Kush, a heavy indica with strong diesel and chem funk on the back end
- Hashburger: Han Solo Hashplant x Double Burger, an indica-leaning hybrid of garlic, gas, pepper and a meaty umami finish, and the cross Leafly named its 2025 Strain of the Year
- Santa Cruz Dream: DJ Short's Blueberry x Haze, a sativa
- Emerald Blueberry: old-school blueberry genetics
- Coastal Runtz: a beach-bred take on Runtz
Foggies, pre-rolls and other breeders' cuts
Foggies are premium smalls, already trimmed and ready for a joint or a bowl, in hybrid and sativa. Pre-rolls cover straight flower, including Lemon Cherrygelato and GG4 joints, plus an infused line.
Fog City grows other breeders' cuts too. It has sold LIT Farms' Bubble Bath, a cross of The Soap and Project 4516, as premium indoor eighths, and Fog City-grown Gelato #33 eighths sit on current dispensary menus. Retailers from Chula Vista to San Bernardino carry the brand, with Santa Cruz Dream, Lavender Panda and a Blueberry Thin Mintz pre-roll among the recent listings.
BTW Industries and the Watsonville licenses
BTW Industries holds two active specialty indoor cultivation licenses in Watsonville, two distribution licenses, a manufacturing license and a processor license added in July 2026. It also ran a non-storefront retail license from 2022 until it lapsed in June 2025. That paperwork backs Fog City's own promise: if the label says Fog City, the flower inside was grown in its facility.
Envirocann certifies the grow, an LED-lit vertical setup that recaptures and recirculates the condensate from its rooms to keep water waste minimal. Santa Cruz County neighbor Coastal Sun takes the opposite route, with a mixed-light greenhouse and outdoor fields.
For adults 21 and over.