Ann Arbor, MI (Aug. 28, 2020) – PRESS RELEASE – Michigan Supply & Provisions (MS&P), one of the first recreational cannabis provisioning centers in the state, officially opened its new flagship provisioning center in Ann Arbor Aug. 28.

The new recreational provisioning center is the fourth retail location statewide for MS&P and the third it has opened this summer, joining Battle Creek and its main medical-only provisioning center in Detroit. MS&P’s original retail outlet in Morenci opened in late 2019.

“Ann Arbor has a rich and progressive cannabis history and we are excited to be a part of its unique culture with our own one of a kind cannabis brand,” said MS&P CEO Francis Perullo. 

The newly remodeled Ann Arbor provisioning center located at 2019 W. Stadium Blvd, features 2,200 square feet of premium interactive retail space and will bring 25 full and part-time jobs to the Ann Arbor community. 

MS&P features a wide selection of the highest quality flower, vapes, concentrates, edibles and topicals, including its exclusive Ozone line of products.  The center’s staff were hand selected and trained to provide knowledgeable guidance to consumers of all experience levels. Hours of operation will be 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. seven days a week. 

In a proactive response to keep patients, customers and employees as safe and healthy as possible during the coronavirus pandemic, MS&P will operate by online pre-ordering and dispensary pickup.  Customers can learn about products and place orders at www.michigansandp.com. Michigan medical cannabis card holders will receive a 15% discount on purchases.

Michigan Supply and Provisions plans to open additional provisioning centers throughout Michigan in 2020.

CHICAGO - (Aug 25, 2020) – PRESS RELEASE – AWH, a multi-state, vertically integrated cannabis operator, announced its intent to enter Illinois’ largest cannabis market with an agreement to acquire a pair of well-known dispensaries in two iconic Chicago neighborhoods – Logan Square and River North.

The agreement will allow AWH to take ownership of both MOCA - Modern Cannabis dispensaries following approval from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

“We are pleased to enter the third largest city in the United States though our pending purchase of Modern Cannabis. MOCA has been a leading player in the Chicago market, and we are excited to pair it with our Illinois Supply & Provisions (IS&P) dispensaries which include the top performing retail outlet in the state in Collinsville,” said AWH founder Abner Kurtin.

MOCA is one of Chicago’s original cannabis dispensaries, first opening to serve medical patients in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood in February 2016. Today, the location serves both medical and recreational customers and recently opened a new recreational-only location in River North.

“AWH is a great fit for us. They have a clear, focused strategy and a nimble, ambitious team. Of the several partnerships we considered, AWH made the most sense for us in terms of their state and national size, growth trajectory, and company culture,” said MOCA founder Danny Marks.

AWH, one of the fastest growing cannabis companies in the U.S., is also announcing the final closing of its latest funding round at $68.2 million, of which $41 million is new capital that will be used to further the company’s expansion of retail and grow operations.

“We are pleased to continue to have access to capital and be fully financed to build out our flagship retail locations and scale grow operations in our five states of focus,” said Kurtin.

The addition of the two MOCA properties would give AWH six retail licenses in Illinois. The company will continue to seek new acquisitions and partnership opportunities to reach the state limit of 10 licenses per ownership group.

AWH currently owns and operates two of Illinois’ most successful cannabis dispensaries under the IS&P brand which led to the expansion into Illinois’ largest and most competitive cannabis market. IS&P locations in Springfield and Collinsville (the top grossing dispensary in the state) serve hundreds of patients and customers each week.

“The Illinois cannabis program is structured in such a way that we believe it’s in the best interest of our company, staff, customers and medical patients to join a cultivator. We are excited to add our own flavor to the mix and help build a great cannabis company that is well positioned to thrive in the next phase of US cannabis legalization, ” added Marks.

AWH’s state of the art cultivation and processing center in West Central Illinois, the produces its own popular line of Ozone branded cannabis products to licensed retailers across the state. AWH will keep the MOCA brand in place and operate both dispensaries as a separate brand.

After a delayed grand opening due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Michigan-based Nature’s Finest opened its Battle Creek dispensary in early June to serve the state’s medical and adult-use cannabis markets with a variety of products, as well as friendly and knowledgeable customer service from its budtenders.

Nature’s Finest originally planned to open March 15, but in response to the coronavirus crisis, it held off on launching medical cannabis sales until June 8 and added adult-use sales at the end of July.

“Since then, we have all the protocol in place with the masks—we wear masks all the time,” says Operating Partner John Kassa. “There’s a lot of sanitation always. Curbside is huge—a lot of people are placing their orders on Weedmaps and we’re going out to their car to deliver their order. It’s really just following the state protocol that’s in place.”

Photos courtesy of Nature's Finest

Kassa formerly worked with a cultivation operation in Colorado, and upon returning to Michigan, set to work launching his own cannabis business in the Wolverine State.

Kassa and his team initially planned to start up as a grow operation, but Kassa’s time in Colorado taught him that cultivators who didn’t have an outlet for their product had a difficult time selling it. This experience led Nature’s Finest to lead with a retail operation in Michigan’s market.

The company currently holds five licenses in the state to operate in both the medical and adult-use markets. One property in Lenox Township is licensed for cultivation, processing and retail, and Nature’s Finest holds two additional retail licenses in Battle Creek and Kalamazoo.

The company has other properties, as well, that are awaiting municipal approval. In total, Nature’s Finest hopes to hold nine total licenses with the additional approvals, although the Battle Creek dispensary is its only operational location to date.

“Kalamazoo is our next property, and that one should be open within the next six weeks,” Kassa says. “It was a building already, but we’re just refacing it and beautifying it on the inside. The other three [facilities] will be open probably about March of next year. I’m excited to be able to finally reach the consumer on the medical and on the adult-use level.”

The company’s Battle Creek dispensary is split in half, with one side designated for medical products and the other designated for adult-use items. There are more products offered to medical patients, Kassa says, and registered patients can purchase higher doses of THC. (Adult-use products are capped at 100 mg, he says.)

Edibles are an emerging trend in Michigan’s market, he adds, and Nature’s Finest is prepared to meet this demand.

“It’s amazing that a few years ago, … edibles were scary because people had that experience of ‘I took too much’ or ‘My cousin makes brownies,’ but now we have products that are regulated and dosed, … and the flavors of these items are so delicious. It’s not like this disgusting, heavily influenced THC brownie. Now, there are just cookies and brownies that really do taste like baked goods. I’m really happy to see that trend in our marketplace.”

Kassa says Nature’s Finest has two main goals at its dispensary: to provide patients and consumers with a wide variety of products, and to provide friendly and knowledgeable customer service that fosters customer loyalty.

“We want people to come in and feel that they’re having undivided attention from the budtenders—that way they look forward to coming back to our stores,” Kassa says. “We want them to learn. We want them to enjoy that experience of coming in, and that’s how we set ourselves apart.”

Nature’s Finest prefers to hire staff with previous cannabis experience, and all new hires complete a two-to-four-week training course before serving customers.

“We’ve tried to look for people who have different [backgrounds]—growers, people that are processors,” Kassa says. “A lot of these people have done it on a smaller scale, but that’s OK because we want them to grow with the business.”

Nature’s Finest also brings in vendors as much as possible to educate the staff on their products.

Moving ahead, Kassa wants to continue learning as much as he can about market demand, and he looks forward to becoming vertically integrated as facilities become operational at the Lenox Township property.

“We want to be able to produce our own product and take it one step further into processing and see what the trends are, what our market calls for,” he says. “[We want to] launch our own brand and then hopefully, one day, when this is federally legal, you’ll see Nature’s Finest in all retail locations across the country."