Welcome to the TDC Cannabis Grading System, a digital tool to revolutionize the cannabis industry and our own consumption behaviours.

This blog post will introduce you to the key points of our grading system, explain how to access it and discuss how the system can be used to solve various issues in the current cannabis industry.

What is the TDC Grading System?

The TDC Grading System is a digital, web-based cannabis evaluation tool that can be accessed by everyone through our website.

The system and its corresponding evaluation process have been in development for years to ensure we create a cannabis assessment tool that is easy to use and still thorough enough to create the new cannabis evaluation standard for the global cannabis industry - starting with Canada.

Now you may wonder what makes our grading system so innovative and different from other evaluation tools.

We’d like to explain this by focusing on the key points of the TDC Grading System:

Digital-first

Given that we’re living in the technologically advanced 21st Century, we created the system by focusing on the digital side of things meaning our grading system can be seamlessly used on any computer or laptop. This not only allows us to capture all of the evaluation data in a streamlined way but also empowers our users to store and analyze their own data. Thereby, the users can monitor their consumption and/or enhance their cannabis profession by using the data for their QA, retail environment, or to build relevant marketing assets.

Research-based

After working in the legal cannabis industry, reading research papers, taking various cannabis courses, and learning from different cannabis books and industry experts, we have gained a wealth of knowledge on how to assess cannabis quality effectively. As a result, we have created an evaluation tool that reflects all of this accumulated knowledge.

Applicable data points

Coming back to our research base, as we discovered different cannabis courses and evaluation tools, we realized that most of them were not precise and relevant enough. With this in mind, we focused on tracking and evaluating only the most applicable data points to ensure the datasets our users create can be properly implemented in their day-to-day as consumers or industry professionals.

Effects prediction engine

A key component of the TDC Bud Grading System is our effect prediction engine that shows the users, after submitting their full grading report, what effects they will likely experience when consuming the product. Since our effect prediction relies on the sedative to stimulating effect spectrum, outlier users with paradoxical effects can also benefit from the effect prediction as they just need to flip the spectrum.

Standardized evaluations

The way we laid out our grading system, together with the hands-on training we provide through our cannabis grading courses, creates a consistent, standardized and objective cannabis evaluation process. By going through this process with each product they purchase, the evaluation procedure and knowledge about cannabis will be deeply ingrained in our users, empowering our community to think about cannabis to the same comprehensive and applicable standard.

Fully guided and illustrated

Our digital grading tool guides the user through the entire evaluation process by explaining to them through text and illustrations what and how to evaluate when grading their cannabis.

Educational and easy-to-use

The fully guided and illustrated approach makes the TDC Grading System easy to use and educational, allowing everyone from first-time cannabis users to seasoned cannabis sommeliers to use and benefit from the system.

Optimized for content creation

Our developers are not only cannabis professionals and educators but also passionate cannabis content creators. As a result, the TDC Cannabis Grading System was built to empower cannabis reviewers and marketers with their work by having a streamlined dataset of applicable product highlights to use for their content creation.

Third-party quality assurance

Because Urbanistic & TDC stand for authenticity and transparency in the cannabis industry, we’re offering a third-party grading service to licensed producers to provide valuable product insights and assets. Our third-party grading service is thereby similar to a COA, just that we show the consumers what the product is really like and how it may make them feel instead of listing a bunch of highly inconsistent numbers.

Now that you have some insight into what makes our grading system so special let’s explore how you can use it.

How to use the TDC Grading System?

The TDC Grading system is based on a three-step evaluation process.

1. The Bud Grading
2. The Joint or Dry Herb Vape (coming soon!) Grading
3. The Effect Grading

To evaluate your cannabis buds entirely, you start with the bud grading, followed by the joint or dry herb vape grading and end with the effect grading.

To evaluate your pre-rolls entirely, you just fill out the joint and effect grading.

You can also use the three grading processes individually and evaluate the effects of any products by using our effect grading system.

To access the grading system, you just need to create a free account on our website and then access the grading system through the “Learn” Tab on our website or by clicking here.

For quick access to the grading system, you can either save the HTML link to your desktop if you primarily use your computer, or you can save the link to your home screen if you primarily use your phone (this works for Android and IOS).

Retailers and Licensed Producers who work with us will access the grading system through the education hub we create for them to ensure all of their assessments land in their personalized database.

At the end of each grading system, you’ll see a summary of your grading scores which you can screenshot and share with your team and on social media.

Besides the summary in the grading system, you’ll also receive an email listing all of your assessments and providing you with a link to continue with the next step of the grading process. By clicking on this link, you can connect your data and avoid the need to repeatedly enter the product information.

Once you have finished grading a product, you can utilize the data from your email or personalized database to inform your team about the products and increase their product awareness. Additionally, you can incorporate the data into your QA records or utilize it to create relevant product assets.

As you can see, the TDC Grading system is quite extensive and provides a lot of unique value to its users that can solve some of the various challenges the cannabis industry is facing.

A multifaceted way to solve industry problems!

So what are some of these challenges, and how do we solve them?

1. Bud Pods

Having bud pods/smell jars set up in a store is usually quite costly since the products lose their smell and appeal quite quickly and therefore need to be rotated through frequently.

Therefore, smell jars can often become a burden to a thought-leading cannabis store, given that the process requires time and resources, and old products could potentially even deter customers.

However, by grading the product before placing it in the jar, you’ll be able to build a valuable dataset that changes your product expense into a data investment. Further, because you gather the actual and relevant key characteristics of a freshly opened product, you can use those data points for the strain cards next to your smell jars empowering your budtenders to talk about the actual aroma of each product even if the current display already lacks in odor again.

2. Product Categories

Cannabis products are commonly labelled as Indica, Sativa or Hybrid.

However, Indica, Sativa or Hybrid can refer to quite different things when it comes to cannabis. For example, it could refer to the botany of the initial genetics of the cultivar, the actual expression of the cultivated product (phenotype) or the predicted effects of a strain.

Cannabis stores usually use Indica, Sativa and Hybrid in terms of the latter to explain to the consumers the possible effects they will experience after consuming the product. But why don’t we just refer to the actual stimulating or sedating effect spectrum of cannabis, and what do you do if a product is labelled as a Sativa but doesn’t express any common sativa characteristics in its appeal, density, aroma and effects?

Our grading system can solve this problem by letting go of the meaningless Indica, Sativa and Hybrid labelling and instead focusing on the actual expression, quality and predicted effects that your knowledgeable employees determined by using the TDC Grading System.

3. Product Pricing

Imagine you are running a grocery store, and one of your banana suppliers ships you a batch of perfectly ripe bananas for $100, and then a month later ships you another batch of overripe, brown bananas for the same price.

Would you pay the $100 for the brown bananas? Or would you demand a discount on the product, return it, or switch to a more consistent supplier?

Dealing with cannabis products and pricing is, in principle, not much different than dealing with bananas. If a high-quality cannabis product for $50/3.5g is of excellent quality one time and then lacks in quality the other time, you’ll get your customer pissed off. Same as you’d get a Walmart customer pissed off if all the brown bananas were the same price as the usually fresh ones.

While the quality standard and pricing of fruit is fairly straightforward, so should it be for cannabis.

Applying our grading system to your internal QA processes, whether it’s in a retail or LP setting, will be vital in setting the standard for assessing quality and determining pricing.

Just imagine a world in which an LP or a retailer would price their product accurately so you pay exactly for the product quality you get. Taking this thought-leading approach to cannabis pricing will increase customer satisfaction and reviews tenfold.

4. Product Awareness

Having great product awareness is key when it comes to your budtender’s product recommendations, the product assessments of your QA team and the asset creation of your marketing team. As we’ve previously mentioned, our grading system is a powerful tool to skyrocket your product awareness by providing engaging illustrations and a streamlined grading process that makes it easy to assess and remember the key features of your products. Paired with the ability to store and view the data you captured, the TDC Grading System takes your product awareness from 0 to 100.

5. Education & Customer Service

As mentioned in the first section of this article, the TDC Grading System is educational and easy to use. Therefore, even someone who has just started in the industry or has never consumed cannabis before will be able to use the system and gain a proper understanding of what makes cannabis quality. As a result, by showing the grading system to a consumer, you can greatly educate your customers in a playful way and engage in more meaningful conversations around product quality with them. Lastly, by improving your bud pods, your product categories, your pricing and your staff’s product awareness, you’ll be able to provide next level of customer service.

6. Product Sampling

Giving out product samples is finally allowed in some Provinces, but how does anyone benefit from that besides that the budtenders finally get free weed? Preparing the samples itself is quite labour- and cost-intensive for the producers, and it’s questionable where the actual ROI in sampling is if you don’t get proper feedback of the product or receive reviews like “yeah, that’s solid,” which undoubtedly doesn’t benefit your product development much.

For that instance, our grading system also provides a solution as we offer LPs to generate custom QR codes for them. These QR Codes can then be added to their samples to motivate the stores to assess the products more mindfully. Doing so will not only provide relevant feedback to the producers but also enhance the product awareness of the testers and therefore improve the customer service of the stores. As a result, you’ll take your sampling ROI from being non-existent to now providing ROI to the producers, the budtenders and the stores themselves.

Conclusion

Our goal at Urbanistic is to revolutionize the global cannabis industry, and we think that we can accomplish this goal thanks to our TDC Cannabis Grading System.

The Grading System is publicly available on our website and offers a cascade of features and benefits to improve your cannabis knowledge and business.

If you want to learn more about our grading system and the related services and workshops we offer, you can contact us at any time at info@urbanistic.ca or text us on Instagram at @urbansticscopes.

Lastly, if you like what we’re doing, feel free to share this article and our grading system. Every bit of support helps to start revolutionizing the global cannabis industry together!