Exploring the CBD Trend with Yuyo Botanics

How these Nashville women are changing the face of cannabis.

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On a recent afternoon at Poppy & Monroe, the Germantown spa known for its natural and eco-friendly products and services, the air swirled with the clean fragrances of beauty creams and nail polishes—universal scents of self-care.

Roaming the shelves in the clean white space, a woman with electric blue eyeliner showed a customer concoctions of cannabidiol (CBD) tinctures blended with turmeric, black pepper or other herbs. The pale peach and floral Yuyo Botantics label wrapped around a brown bottle with black dropper top helping it blend in like feminine camo.

But not all products with CBD—the acronym for cannabidiol, one of more than 100 cannabinoids in a cannabis plant—come with such a soft touch. Christie Tarleton, a co-founder of Yuyo Botantics, says farmers growing cannabis plants overwhelmingly tend to be men. And yet when it comes to Yuyo’s products, it’s women who helped get it from farm to shelf, and it’s women who they aim to help as that demographic searches for ways to assuage anxiety or inflammation or promote better sleep.

“Even though we have a pretty aesthetic,” she says of the company she started with Amanda Matsui, “we get down to the nitty gritty.”

Indeed, this time of year, Tarleton might spend eight hours in a grow room transferring hemp seedlings or up-potting them and getting them ready for the field. She farms with her husband, Will Tarleton, and they were one of the farms on the forefront to take advantage of the Department of Agriculture’s pilot program to grow hemp in Tennessee.

For her Yuyo tinctures, she works with last year’s crop, which would have been harvested and dried at the end of October. She takes a portion to a processor—who also happens to be a woman—for extracting the CBD from the plant. The final product ends up at Poppy & Monroe or East Nashville’s Lemon Laine. And within just over a year on the market, Yuyo Botantics can now be found on shelves from Nashville to Indianapolis, Texas to Hong Kong, and in Neiman Marcus stores.

“I never anticipated having a product, and I never anticipated the volume it would grow to—and that Amanda and I could pay our bills [with the business],” Tarleton says. “We started Yuyo with basically like $300.”

Christie Tarleton started her career in Nashville like many do—working in various facets of the music business. But when she arrived in 2012, the local food scene also was in the midst of its red-hot ascent. “I got drawn into farming through the food community,” she says.

She worked at respected local operations like Green Door Gourmet and Bear Creek Farm, and she left town for a stint at Stone Barns Center (the Rockefeller family’s nod to sustainable ag).

“I was widely introduced to the young farmer scene—the concept of farmers being on small plots of land,” she says. “I wanted to be a farmer full-time.”

The man who would eventually become her husband already had immersersed himself in the Bells Bend community with a CSA and flock of sheep. She joined him and started Farmers’ Forest, a fresh cut flowers program. Then came the Department of Ag’s program to look at hemp as an alternative to tobacco. The Tarletons signed on after that first year in 2014.

“Our original angle was fiber production,” she says. They got involved with the Nashville Fashion Alliance and looked at how to make hemp into a weaveable fiber. But they kept hitting a wall because of infrastructure. Still, when it comes to the farmer getting paid per pound for their product off the land, Hemp allowed an alternative. “What we always wanted to do was create more industry around agriculture,” she says.

Meanwhile, more research had developed around cannabis. While legal CBD does not make a person feel high like marijuana, which contains THC and remains illegal in Tennessee, both substances are cannabinoids. And both CBD and THC are just two cannabinoids of more than 100 that come from the cannabis plant. While more research is underway, CBD has garnered attention for its possible help with a variety of issues including anxiety, pain, neurological conditions, and more.

For example, Tarleton says a mother who’d heard of CBD’s properties, contacted her early on for help with her daughter who had leukemia.

“We ended up making a product especially for her out of that test batch. She loved it and shared it with her community.”

Around the same time, Lemon Laine, the East Nashville natural beauty and wellness shop, also asked Tarleton if she could hold an informational panel at the shop on CBD. Tarleton joined forces with Amanda Matsui. The pair had the processor make sample bottles; they came up with a name, created an instagram account, and Yuyo Botanics was born. Poppy & Monroe came on board soon after as the brand’s first wholesaler.

“Having the support of Poppy & Monroe and Lemon Laine—that was the community that gave me the best feedback,” she says. “There’s no way I’d be in business without them. The community engagement was incredible.”

On a recent Saturday night at an event space across from Third Man Records, a group of about 75 people gathered to snack on canapés, listen to live jazz, and learn more about CBD.

Tarleton and Matsui were the only female-owned company showing their wares—samples of tinctures and topical rubs. And though most other growers or sellers in the room were men, another woman stood out in the pack for her knowledge: Amy Price Neff, M.D., a primary care physician at St. Thomas Hospital says about 30 percent of her patients use CBD.“I think CBD is helpful for many, but not everyone,” she says. “I have seen it really help people with insomnia. It’s also helpful for anxiety and pain.”

She says one memorable patient with chronic fatigue syndrome had to retire early and was on disability.

“When I met her, she had been using a water-soluble whole plant extract, and it had totally changed her life. Of course, I would consider the potential for the placebo effect to be possible, but when it results in something so dramatic, and without any significant side effects, I am open to the good.”

Neff says that like many medications that humans take, CBD is a plant-derived substance that appears to have a role in human health.

“It tends to help people in a variety of ways and the most common ones are things that unfortunately, western medicine doesn't do well: insomnia, anxiety, and pain. While there is not much high-quality research to support its use, what we do know is that there is no known lethal dose, and it does not have many drug interactions,” she says. “I can't speak to long term outcomes, particularly in children and adolescent patients, but it does appear to be safe, have limited drug interactions, and minimal adverse effects.”

Neff’s knowledge of CBD had partly inspired the gathering. The organizers — Rambler events led by Chef Patrick McCandless and Community Manager Jean-Marie Merkle — met Neff at another event on how food affects the body.

And along those lines, event attendees could taste CBD-infused cocktails or spread CBD whipped butter onto breads alongside other appetizers. Elsewhere in Nashville, CBD has started popping up on menus, too. At The Fountain of Juice in the Nations, customers can pick up a bottle of alkaline water with blue spirulina and CBD. At Firepot Tea Bar in 12thSouth, the Emerald Zen contains matcha, CBD oil, lemon, and mineral mater. And at Café Roze, CBD can go into cocktails, teas, and lattes.

Café Roze owner Julia Jaksic says she put The Gateway cocktail on the menu after meeting Tarleton.

“I’d been using CBD personally and was excited once I tried their AM formula, which has lemon, peppermint, and ashwagandha root,” Jaksic says. “I thought the flavor would work well in a cocktail and we played around with a few different ideas and landed on The Gateway, which has Ford’s Gin, Nux Alpina, lemon, and fresh juiced hemp leaves that we also get from Yuyo.”

Jaksic says Café Roze’s cocktail appeals to all sorts of types of customers, butfor the tinctures and salves of Yuyo, Tarleton says she saw a feminine gap.“I kinda took it into this beauty wellness arena.” Indeed, she connected with Neiman Marcus at a conference called Beauty Indie Expo. “We just really clicked with the buyer,” she says.

As for women’s particular interest in CBD, Neff says the connection might have to do with empowerment—women being able to help themselves or their loved ones“Women are natural healers, and cannnabinoids are one more tool in the healer toolkit,” she says.

As research continues (the FDA holds its first hearing on CBD in May), Tarleton says the anecdotes from customers continue to roll in.

“I cry probably once a week,” she says, “from emails we get from our community.”