Lola Lola is a family-owned San Francisco cannabis brand, founded in 2015, that made its name on pre-rolled joint packs organized by feeling instead of by strain name. CBD, THC, and hash-infused blends sat side by side in packaging built to look as good as it smoked.
Where It Started
The company came together in San Francisco as a father-and-son operation. Michael Gargenese Jr. walked away from a sales and marketing job at Google in 2014 to build it full time alongside his father, Mike Sr. Two to ten people ran the whole thing at any given time.
Blends Named For The Moment
The catalog skipped the usual strain-forward menu. Its blends carried names like Calm, Relax, Mingle, Imagine, Trance, and Transcend, split across all-natural CBD, THC, and hash-infused tiers. A Superb Sampler pack let you run the whole range in one purchase.
What They Actually Made
Joint packs were the anchor, but the line stretched wider than that: flower, dabs and concentrates, disposable vaporizers, and the Gold N Bright cartridge series. The brand leaned on an exclusive grower network it called Lola Lola Farms for its starting material.
Golden Clear
Lola Lola ran its own extraction process under the name Golden Clear, stripping fats, lipids, and other impurities out of the oil and landing in the eighty to ninety percent THC range. One early run turned that concentrate into heart-shaped pieces timed to Valentine's Day.
Lolalandia
The brand built a whole world around itself and called it Lolalandia. Its site opened on that greeting, its newsletter ran under the name Inside Lolalandia, and a play section sat alongside the shop.
Aesthetics were treated as part of the product. Lola Lola pitched a trifecta of quality, look, and partnerships, and kept inviting growers and designers in to keep the packaging from going stale.
Built For People Who Weren't Sure Yet
Education sat right next to the checkout. There were pages explaining cannabinoids and terpenes, a strain finder, and a colorful printed strain guide, all pointed at shoppers who did not already know what they wanted.
The founders' stated aim was to be inviting to the everyday consumer, not just to regular users. The ratio work across the CBD, THC, and hash-infused blends followed the same logic.
Where You Could Find It
The footprint was Northern and Central California, 21-plus retail only. Shelves ran from Project Cannabis SOMA in San Francisco through Caliva, Airfield Supply Co., Purple Lotus, and The Guild in San Jose, then down to The Reef and Plantacea in Seaside.
Synchronicity carried it in Carmel. North of the city it reached Solful in Sebastopol and Harvest of Napa, with The Canopy in Santa Barbara marking the southern edge.
Where Things Stand
Lola Lola's own website is no longer online, and the final year printed on it was 2022.
The High Rise Read
Lola Lola was early to an idea the rest of the market spent years catching up to: sell the occasion, not the strain. Naming a joint pack Mingle tells a first-timer more than a sativa percentage ever will, and the design work backed it up.
The Golden Clear oil and the hash-infused tier gave it credibility with heavier smokers too, which is a hard needle to thread. Worth knowing as a piece of Bay Area cannabis history, even if the shelves have moved on.