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Jerry Velarde, President, Evergreen Organix

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Jerry Velarde
Photo: Mikayla Whitmore

If you’ve consumed edible products in Southern Nevada, odds are good they originated with Evergreen Organix. Nevada’s largest producer of edibles doesn’t have a retail operation, but almost every dispensary in the Vegas Valley stocks Evergreen—and lots of it. “We’re selling anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds of chocolate a month. Our average order for cookies for a large dispensary is 5,000 per week,” president Jerry Velarde says.

Velarde, a Southern California native who has lived in Las Vegas the past 20 years, expanded from businesses like construction, real estate, hospitality and banking into cannabis, turning a building his company already owned into a production facility for edibles, topicals, vaporizers and flower. “We’ve been told by professionals from all over the world that we have one of the most outstanding kitchens around,” says Velarde, whose goddaughter, Jillian Nelson, handles daily operations for Evergreen, presently offering more than 70 different products. “We’ve surrounded ourselves with people who weren’t experts in the cannabis business,” Velarde adds. ”A master baker, two true chocolatiers, two sugar artists … They’re experts in their specialties, so we have educated people making very educated decisions.”

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