Phat Panda is the flagship flower brand of Grow Op Farms, a Washington I-502 producer-processor at 2611 N Woodruff Road in Spokane Valley. Robert and Katrina McKinley founded the operation in 2014, and it grows, extracts, packages and ships its Washington flower, pre-rolls, vapes, concentrates and edibles from that one address.
It still sits on top. Headset ranked Phat Panda No. 1 in Washington flower for August 2026, its third straight month in that spot, and tracked the brand in 295 stores.
A marketing company's name on a flower jar
Before cannabis, the McKinleys ran a marketing company called Phat Panda. When Grow Op Farms needed a name for its flower, Katrina and some of the early employees pushed to reuse it. Robert told Marijuana Venture that big brands tend to attach themselves to an animal, pointing to Budweiser's horses and frogs.
The panda stuck. Marijuana Venture's profile listed Robert as CEO and Katrina as COO, running the facility day to day.
From 16,000 square feet to $1 million months
Grow Op Farms opened in April 2014 with 16,000 square feet and 15 employees, and it shipped its first product in December 2014. By June 2015 it was the first Washington cannabis producer to hit $1 million in monthly sales, per Marijuana Venture. Staff passed 100 inside the first year.
A 2017 expansion took the building to 85,000 square feet, with a two-story grow, a kitchen and a lab, and roughly $25 million went back into the facility. Marijuana Venture counted 620 employees and put 2019 revenue at $46 million. The company now lists more than 850 team members and calls its model craft at scale.
Coco coir, 40 flower rooms and a 500-cultivar library
Phat Panda flower grows in coco coir inside a room-based indoor facility. Marijuana Venture reported 60 to 80 strains in rotation at any time, drawn from a library of about 500 cultivars, and 250 to 300 pounds of trimmed flower a week. At that point the brand sat in 460 of roughly 500 Washington retail stores.
Cannabis Tech toured the building for Growers Network's Canna Cribs series in April 2018. The tour covered a 2,000-square-foot genetics room with 200 strains in development, 12,000 square feet of mother rooms and a cloning station turning out 500 to 1,500 clones a week. Forty customized flower rooms ran digital irrigation into 5-gallon fabric pots.
Twelve labels under one Spokane Valley roof
Phat Panda is the flower anchor of a wider family. The company's site lists 12 brands across six formats:
- Flower: Phat Panda, Cake House, Kandy Shoppe, Snickle Fritz and Eluzion
- Concentrates: Dabstract
- Vapes: Panda Pen and Juice Box
- Pre-rolls: Bangers and Firecracker
- Edibles: Hot Sugar
- Beverages: Hot Shotz
The Grow Op Farms site still carries an older roster that adds Sticky Frog and Flav. Pre-rolls move serious volume. Headset's top Phat Panda sellers for August 2026 were an OG Chem 1-gram pre-roll, a Bangers Golden Pineapple 2-pack and Platinum Line Trophy Wife pre-rolls in 1-gram and 28-pack formats.
Cannabis Cup wins and hometown hardware
Dabstract's Orange Zkittlez Live Resin Pax Pod took first place in Vape Pens and Cartridges at the August 2019 High Times Seattle Cannabis Cup. Grow Op Farms placed third in Sungrown Flower with Sun Grown GMO. Point Break Live Rosin Batter, a Phat Panda collaboration, took third in Non-solvent Hash.
The company also lists Best Infused Pre-Roll and Most Potent Flower, for GMO, at the 2018 DOPE Cup Washington. Rob McKinley made the inaugural High Times 100 in 2018.
Spokane keeps voting for it. Readers of The Inlander named Phat Panda Best Cannabis Brand in the 2024 Best of the Inland Northwest awards, the brand's second straight win in the category.
Massachusetts in 2025, Dabstract live resin in 2026
Phat Panda went east in November 2025. The launch put eighths and pre-rolls, Hot Sugar gummies, Dabstract live rosin, cured resin and live-resin cartridges, and Panda Pen vapes into licensed Massachusetts adult-use dispensaries. The first wave covered Greater Boston, Cape Cod and Worcester County.
Back home, Dabstract released four live resins on April 15, 2026: Pineapple Mintz, Tropical Trifle, Blueberry Pancakes and Apple Tartz. Each is single-source, pressed from whole flower frozen at harvest and traceable to one strain, one room and one harvest week. The drop went out in limited allocation to licensed Washington retailers.
Phat Panda's August 2026 scoreboard
Headset's August 2026 data put Phat Panda in 295 stores, 239 of them in Washington, with the densest coverage in Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Vancouver and Everett. It tracked 1,308 SKUs, more than $5 million in monthly sales and an average item price of $7.94. Massachusetts and three other states round out its footprint on Headset.
Flower made up 47.9% of the brand's Washington sales, pre-rolls 27.4% and vapor pens 22.7%. Beyond the No. 1 flower rank, Headset placed Phat Panda No. 2 in Washington pre-rolls and No. 5 in vapor pens for the month. The company says it was Washington's top producer every year from 2019 through 2025 on BDS and Headset rankings.
For adults 21 and over.