The Mint Dispensary opened its first Mint-branded retail location in Kalamazoo, Mich., in October 2020, but the dispensary did not have its official grand opening festivities until this February due to market changes.
The grand opening festivities took place over Super Bowl weekend. The Mint had a vast number of deals for customers, worked hand in hand with local vendors on-site and had giveaways on Friday and Saturday, said Joey Kejbou, Mint co-owner.
“It was a pretty successful event,” he said. “We had record numbers in terms of sales, but more importantly, I think it kind of put us on the map in terms of brand recognition and traffic, and we are starting to see it increase because of that.
Changes in the market in terms of inventory availability from the licensed growers and processors and regulatory changes impacted how The Mint went about launching the site, he said.
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“We finally got to a point where we are comfortable enough to have a good amount of traffic come in and have an adequate amount of inventory to service everybody,” he said. “We established all of our relationships with different vendors that put us in a position where we could work with them to offer a nice set of deals that day.”
Since the opening last fall, the dispensary has been seeing month-over-month increases in customer count, sales and overall growth, he said.
Furthermore, The Mint is opening three additional Mint-branded retail locations and one high-tech cultivation and processing facility in Michigan this year.
The second retail location will open in Portage, Mich,, right next door to Kalamazoo. The third retail will open in Coldwater, Mich., which is about an hour away, and the fourth retail will open in Monroe, Mich., which is about two hours away.
“Two of them will be live in the next three months or so, and the third one in about five or six months, it has a little more construction to be done compared to the others,” Kejbou said.
The cultivation and processing facility is expected to open in Claire, Mich., about two hours away from Kalamazoo.
“The processing facility is probably further down the line, we’ve got our local approval for it, but it’s probably going to be built out in phases,” he said. “It’s 24,000 square feet total. The first 8,000 square feet will be done by the end of next month and will hopefully be online for just cultivation.”
The Mint founders have spent a lot of time developing specific proprietary methods that are going to be brought to Michigan and part of the entire business model, he said.
“We are looking to build the entire brand as a whole, and Michigan is probably the next one that is going to start seeing a lot of sites online,” he said.
