MMJ Daily
Two Santa Rosa cannabis manufacturers, CraftForce Services Inc. and NorCal Cannabis Company, announce mass layoffs totaling more than 100 workers at their Giffen Avenue and Circadian Way facilities this fall, citing financial pressure across California’s legal cannabis industry.
CraftForce Services Inc., the manufacturing arm of CannaCraft, files a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice on July 22 indicating it will lay off approximately 60 employees on Sept. 20. The majority of those workers are production technicians. CannaCraft merged with Southern California dispensary chain March and Ash in 2022 and operates under parent company Groundwork Holding Inc.
Bret Peace, CEO of Groundwork Holding Inc., describes the situation as a “race to the bottom” driven by economic downturn, declining sales, and ongoing competition from the illicit cannabis market. Peace calls it “a sad day for the industry.” “There’s a lot of good people that did a lot of good work over the years,” Peace says. “It’s not a decision we made lightly. The industry has moved to a place where people are more specialized and they’re able to do more with less space, and we couldn’t compete with that. It was sized to a scale of industry that didn’t materialize.”
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 represents many of the affected CraftForce employees. Union president John Frahm does not respond to a request for comment before publication.
CannaCraft has operated in the local legal cannabis market for approximately a decade. The company settled a false advertising case in 2021 for $250,000 following claims from the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office and prosecutors from eight other counties that it falsely advertised its products could clear genes linked to Alzheimer’s disease and help with other ailments. In 2018, CannaCraft also paid $510,000 to resolve a separate investigation dating to 2016.
The second round of layoffs involves Queen City Staffing, affiliated with Arizona-based KB Benefits, which files a WARN Act notice on July 14 stating it will permanently shut down operations at the GB2, LLC facility, also known as NorCal Cannabis Company, at 2717 Giffen Ave. Around 49 workers, mostly in packaging and trimming, will lose their jobs on Sept. 13. Those employees hold no union representation. GB2, LLC has held an adult-use processor license in Sonoma County since May 2019. Queen City Staffing does not respond to a request for comment before publication.
The layoffs come as statewide cannabis sales fall more than 12% in the prior year, with first-quarter taxable sales reaching a five-year low in 2025, according to the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors approves a tax break in April reducing qualifying operators’ tax liability to $0 for fiscal year 2026-27, and the board also votes unanimously to introduce an annual cannabis business licensing system with a starting charge above $500, with revenue directed toward funding the county’s commercial cannabis governance program.
