The arc that led here

I joined Applied Medical, a US surgical device manufacturer, at the start of my career. Three years in I was promoted to National Sales Manager and helped launch their global Advanced Energy Devices line. Twenty-five years on, I had spent every working day inside the regulated medical category. I knew what it took to get a clean, evidence-backed product into the hands of someone who needed it. I also knew how slow that process was.

In 2021 I co-founded Oleo Technologies, an Irish medical-cannabis supplier holding HPRA authorisation under the Medical Cannabis Access Programme. Oleo handles the regulated medical lane. Bedrocan supplies the flower. The HPRA process took three years. The brand walls between Oleo and TheBudtender are absolute. Different products, different regulations, different patients.

TheBudtender is the wellness lane. Hemp-derived cannabinoids, under 0.2 percent THC, sold to adults across Ireland, the UK, and the EU. We launched it because the wellness side of the cannabinoid market was still mostly stoner-coded. The 65-year-old in Galway and the chronic-pain patient in Cork were getting talked over by the same dispensary aesthetics every other brand was rehearsing.

What we will not do

  • No medical claims. Hemp-derived cannabinoids are a wellness product, not a medicine. Where a customer needs medicinal cannabis, we point them at the HPRA-authorised pathway.
  • No stoner aesthetic. No leaf icons, no 420 references, no neon-green and pink gradients.
  • No fudged shipping. We publish a country-by-country traffic-light table and we do not ship HHC, HHCP, or THCP into jurisdictions where they are restricted.
  • No mystery batches. Every product has a Eurofins or Celignis certificate matched to the batch on the bottle.

Lab partners

We test every batch with three independent labs: Eurofins (Munich), Celignis (Limerick), and Fundación Canna (Valencia). Cannabinoid potency, heavy metals, pesticides, microbials, residual solvents. We publish results whether they pass or fail.

Get a real human on the phone

If you have a question that is not answered on a product page, the Academy, or the FAQ, call us. The number is on the contact page. An Irish or UK voice answers between 9 and 17 GMT. We will not pretend to be a doctor, but we will tell you what we know and what we do not.