Kiva Confections is the Bay Area edibles house Scott and Kristi Palmer started in 2010 in their San Leandro home kitchen, now headquartered in Alameda. It makes Kiva chocolate bars, Terra bites, Petra mints, Camino gummies and Lost Farm live resin and rosin edibles, sells them in 17 states, and helped write the playbook for precisely dosed, professionally packaged edibles in California.
A San Leandro kitchen and a hot-wired washing machine
The Palmers are East Bay natives with photography backgrounds who came out of college into the recession. Edibles in 2010, as Kristi Palmer later put it, were "rough. No one knew what they were getting into." After a visit to a local chocolatier, the couple started making bars in their San Leandro kitchen, and the early days were improvised enough that, by Kristi's account, they once "hot-wired the washing machine to make another batch of chocolate."
Kiva moved into its first commercial space, 1,000 square feet in Oakland, in September 2011, then into a West Oakland warehouse. In 2021 it was producing out of a 14,000-square-foot facility, with plans for a 70,000-square-foot plant in Alameda, which it already listed as headquarters.
Kiva Brands, Inc. now counts more than 400 employees, and Scott Palmer is still CEO. The customer never changed: "Our target is still that mother-in-law, grandma, casual consumer, newbie," Kristi told Prepared Foods in 2021.
Cold water hash and the ten-hour bite
The bar that started everything is still made with cold water hash, a solventless concentrate, and sustainably sourced cacao from a supplier that is more than a century old and a founding member of the World Cocoa Foundation.
The 2026 lineup runs Milk, Dark, Blackberry Dark, Churro Milk, Mint Irish Cream, Peppermint Bark, S'mores and Birthday Cake, with high-dose versions of the classics. Ratio bars cover Dark Chocolate CBD 5:1, Espresso Dark Chocolate CBD 1:1 and a Midnight Mint Dark Chocolate with CBN. In August 2026 Headset had the Kiva bar in 1,154 licensed dispensaries, 450 of them in California.
Terra arrived in 2014 and became a best seller. Each bite goes through a traditional panning process that takes more than ten hours, building layers of chocolate around a center at 5 milligrams of THC or less per piece.
Blueberry and Espresso Bean were on shelves by 2016; Sea Salt Caramel, a CBD 1:1 Almond, a CBN Milk and Cookies and a seasonal Peppermint Pattie followed. In 2021 Kiva moved the bars into 100% biodegradable cartons and made the Terra and Camino tins fully recyclable.
Petra, Camino, Lost Farm and the rest of the house
Kiva's first product that wasn't chocolate was Petra, a 2.5-milligram mint launched in December 2016. Camino followed in 2018 as a line of gummies sorted by mood rather than strain, and in January 2020 its Midnight Blueberry, 5 milligrams of THC with 1 of CBN, went out billed as the first CBN-infused edible. By August 2026 Headset ranked Camino No. 2 in California edibles and No. 1 in Massachusetts and New York.
Lost Farm launched in October 2020 under the tagline "Novices need not apply." Kiva called it the first edible made with strain-specific, 100% live resin: flower flash-frozen within two hours of harvest, extracted, and paired with a fruit. Chews followed in February 2021, and the line now includes solventless live rosin.
Current pairings include Raspberry x Wedding Cake, Watermelon x Gelato, Pink Pineapple x Sour Dream, Root Beer x Gastro Pop #4, a Black Raspberry x Northern Lights with CBN and a Mango x Amarelo with THCV. Headset had Lost Farm at No. 4 in California edibles in July 2026. A sixth name, the Kiva CBN Dream Team, rounds out the house.
Turkey gravy, ketchup and a shelf of Clios
Kiva sells edibles like a candy company that happens to hold a cannabis license. In 2019, when Outside Lands became the first major U.S. festival to allow legal cannabis sales and consumption, Kiva was an anchor vendor in its Grass Lands area, and about 12,000 festivalgoers came through the booth for Churro Bars, Terra Blueberry Bites, Petra Citrus CBD mints and Camino.
That Thanksgiving it sold a fast-acting, 10-milligram cannabis turkey gravy for $5 at Grassroots in San Francisco and Sweet Flower's three Southern California stores.
The gravy stunt won a Grand Clio Cannabis award in 2020, one of six Clios Kiva took that year, alongside silvers for Camino's packaging redesign and Lost Farm's identity. Five more followed in 2021, led by Lost Farm campaigns.
Collaborations kept coming: a limited Lost Farm collection with musician SAINt JHN in April 2022; a Jetty Extracts team-up that June with Honey Apple x Sunshine OG gummies and Sour Berry x Legend OG chews, both 100% live resin; and a 10-milligram THC ketchup made with Fatburger for 4/20 in 2023, sold at Artist Tree and Sweet Flower in Los Angeles.
In November 2023 Kiva and rival Wana ran a joint campaign warning buyers about fake online accounts and scammers.
How a California kitchen reached 17 states
Outside California, Kiva mostly travels through licensed partners who make its recipes in-state. Klutch launched Kiva, Terra, Camino and Petra in Ohio in January 2021, and by that August Kiva counted itself the state's third-largest edible brand.
High Life Farms brought Camino to Michigan, Revolutionary Clinics handled Massachusetts, 24K Labs in Tulsa took Oklahoma, and in 2021 Kiva renewed its Illinois partnership with Cresco Labs. C3 Industries opened Missouri in March 2023, and Garden Society, the Sonoma County company founded by Erin Gore and Karli Warner, began manufacturing the full Kiva portfolio for New Jersey that year.
Florida came through AYR Wellness, which signed a three-year exclusive in August 2023 to license and sell Kiva products in the state. Ayr's 2026 menus still list Camino, Lost Farm and Petra across 65 Florida medical dispensaries.
Kiva's state selector now covers Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio and Oklahoma. Separately, a hemp-derived Camino line launched online in February 2024 and now delivers to Texas, Georgia and 20 more states.
Kiva Sales & Service and the Petalfast deal
The Palmers also built a distribution business. Scott Palmer co-founded Kiva Sales & Service after the chocolate took off, and KSS grew into a California distributor carrying other brands, including Garden Society under a 2023 deal. In August 2026 KSS completed a merger with distributor Petalfast, announced that March.
Petalfast co-founder Arun Kurichety runs the combined company, Scott Palmer chairs its board while staying on as Kiva's CEO, and a new name is due later in 2026. The roster includes Kiva, Jungle Boys, PAX, Uncle Arnie's, CANN and Smokiez, with New York and New Jersey next on the map.
Kristi Palmer, meanwhile, has spent years in the policy trenches, leading state trade groups including the California Cannabis Industry Association. In December 2025, marking fifteen years, she pointed to Kiva Bars as among the first professionally packaged, precisely dosed, lab-tested edibles in California. That standard is still the brand.
For adults 21 and over.