Before Biscotti & Gushers became modern cannabis staples, a Collective Efforts breeding project in Oakland turned Gelato 41 × Motorbreath 15 into 2 standout phenotypes.
Before Connected
Before Connected, there was Collective Efforts.
Owners Luke & Caleb Counts assembled the crew, secured important genetics & built the Oakland network behind Triple C, Bandwagon & 88th.
Within that structure, Dan Dango ran cultivation across multiple sites.
The genetics, facilities, staff & operating network built by Luke and Counts created the environment where the Biscotti and Gushers hunt could happen.
The Breeding Spark
When the Gelato cuts arrived, Luke asked Dan if he had breeding experience.
He did.
That conversation became the starting point for one of the most influential seed runs to come out of the operation.
Dan led the breeding work, while the larger Collective Efforts system supplied the plants, space, labor and feedback needed to take the project beyond a single cross.
The Red Cup Hunt
Dan used Gelato 41, bred by Mario Guzman, and pollinated it with Motorbreath 15 pollen supplied by Sway.
Around 2014–2015, the crew reportedly popped roughly 100 seeds at Bandwagon, with each seedling started in a red Solo cup.
Two phenotypes separated themselves from the population:
RC14 became Biscotti.
RC27 became Gushers.
According to Dan and others involved in the project, both came from the same cross:
Gelato 41 × Motorbreath 15.
The Team Behind the Hunt
The project was not the work of one person alone.
Luke and Caleb Counts helped secure genetics, organize the cultivation sites, hire the crew & build the structure that allowed the hunt to operate.
Dan led the breeding and early selection, while the wider Collective Efforts team grew, tested, smoked & gave feedback on the plants.
That crew included Kenny, manager at Triple C; Hunter, manager at 88th; Jordan, manager at Bandwagon; Angelica, Jean, buyers and managers at the San Francisco shop; and the cultivation and retail teams working across Collective Efforts.
The selections emerged from a larger system of people evaluating the same plants from different angles.
From Phenotypes to Production
Once Biscotti and Gushers had been identified, Luke and Counts helped move the selections from promising phenotypes into full production.
The strains later gained much wider visibility through Connected, Cookies & Berner, who is credited in this account with naming Biscotti.
Those brands helped bring the flower to a larger audience, but the foundation had already been built inside Collective Efforts through ownership, genetics, breeding, cultivation, selection & execution.
The Gushers Lineage Dispute
The published lineage of Gushers later became complicated.
At the time, Triangle Kush carried significant market hype, and Gushers was promoted with a Triangle-forward lineage.
According to Dan and others directly involved in the original breeding project, Triangle Kush was not part of the cross.
Their firsthand account identifies the actual genetics as:
Gelato 41 × Motorbreath 15.
Under that account, the Triangle connection was marketing rather than breeding history.
Sway’s Contribution
One of the least visible people in the story was Sway, who supplied the Motorbreath 15 pollen used in the project.
Without that pollen, the seed population that produced Biscotti and Gushers would not have existed in this form.
His contribution remained largely behind the scenes, but the genetics carried forward through 2 strains that became much larger than the original hunt.
Legacy
Biscotti & Gushers came from a collaborative Oakland breeding system, not a single isolated moment.
Luke and Caleb Counts built the infrastructure and secured the genetics. Dan Dango led the breeding and early selection. Sway supplied the Motorbreath 15 pollen. The wider Collective Efforts team helped test and evaluate the resulting plants.
Later brands gave the strains scale, branding & visibility.
But according to the people involved in the original hunt, the core story begins with Gelato 41 × Motorbreath 15, roughly 100 red cups, and 2 selections labeled RC14 & RC27 that became Biscotti & Gushers.
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