The Grasshopper Club Celebrates 2 Dispensary Openings This Year in Chicago

The Grasshopper Club co-founder and CEO Matthew Brewer has much to celebrate as he looks back on 2023, including opening the first dispensary in Chicago’s South Loop.

The independent, Black-owned company opened its first retail location in Logan Square in February and celebrated the grand opening of its South Loop dispensary in August, when Brewer’s mother, Dianne, made the first purchase.

Brewer and a group of family and friends applied in 2019 for adult-use dispensary licenses in Illinois. The COVID-19 pandemic and legal challenges delayed the license awards, but Grasshopper Club ultimately received three licenses in July 2022.

“Because of some of my experience and other people I brought in, we were able to move very quickly,” Brewer says. “We opened two dispensaries in the span of six months, which I don’t think has ever happened in Chicago.”

Grasshopper Club’s South Loop location is the closest dispensary to the south side of Chicago, he says, and the store is also near Soldier Field and Grant Park.

“We get lots of tourist traffic [and] business travelers, not to mention the neighborhood itself and then just the more extended south side,” Brewer says. “It’s been great from the very beginning. It’s been well received. We opened just in time for Lollapalooza, … so it’s just been great.”

That’s not to say that Brewer’s team didn’t encounter its fair share of challenges, as he says, “Chicago can be a tough place to open a dispensary.”

Every cannabis retailer must get zoning approval, and Brewer says other members of the community often have strong opinions on a dispensary coming to the neighborhood.

“Some of that can really take on a life of its own,” he says. “There are many dispensaries that could have opened in a particular location, and they didn’t because of opposition from some of these other groups.”

Now that Brewer and his team have come out on the other side with two operational dispensaries, he says “it’s a fascinating time to be in cannabis.”

Craft growers are starting to bring products to the market, resulting in a diverse mix of product offerings.

“Every week there are new products, new strains, new SKUs, new edibles,” Brewer says. “It spices up the market a lot and creates a little bit of disruption. It puts pressure on dispensaries to figure out what their purchasing strategy is and whether they’re going to try to keep up and curate or focus on the tried and true. And customers are becoming more knowledgeable and coming in with stronger preferences than they had a year ago. You put it all together, there’s just a lot of change happening at the same time, which is exciting.”

Brewer says Grasshopper Club was built on the premise of creating a curated experience, which starts with the team it hires.

“They’re phenomenal, they’re knowledgeable [and] they meet customers wherever they’re at,” Brewer says. “Some people are first timers or newbies and need a lot of assistance, and other people know exactly where they want to go. Our team has dozens of years of experience, both in hospitality, generally, but also working in other dispensaries. … We had a wait list of about a thousand people in a time and in an industry where it’s hard to find talent. … I think a big part of that was what we represent in the industry, which is a fresh, independent perspective.”

Brewer describes Grasshopper Club’s dispensaries as places where customers can explore, become inspired and learn about cannabis.

“I think it’s a lot less transactional than what the dispensary experience has traditionally been,” he says. “I tell people the traditional dispensary experience is more like cashing a check at a currency exchange, and ours is more ordering a drink from your favorite bartender.”

The Grasshopper Club team hopes to take this experience to a third dispensary location, which is yet to be announced.

The company’s two existing locations are at the epicenter of where people live and work, in highly trafficked retail corridors with restaurants, shops and events. Brewer says Grasshopper Club’s prospective third location meets the same criteria.

“I think there used to be a time where you could find an area that doesn’t have a dispensary and then just benefit by being the closest dispensary in the neighborhood, and that’s how a lot of the earlier dispensaries started,” Brewer says. “I think that playbook has changed in Chicago. Rather than trying to plant a flag where there’s not an existing dispensary in Chicago—that ship has sailed—but there aren’t a ton of dispensaries that still have these main-and-main locations, and I think we will have three of those in the Chicago area.”

When it comes to product selection, Brewer says Grasshopper Club is “very intentional” about what its dispensaries carry.

“Now, for the first time, we have all these craft products coming into the market, and we don’t have to guarantee any of our shelf space to anyone,” he says. “We’re in a position where we can be a lot more picky about what we carry and carry a wider variety of growers. Every week there are new products, and we carry some of the larger MSO-cultivated products, but we also carry a very large amount of the craft-grow products that are newer to Illinois." 

Flower is still the most popular product category, Brewer says, but edibles and beverages are quickly growing in popularity among consumers. Grasshopper Club also sells vape cartridges, tinctures, concentrates and accessories.

Once Grasshopper Club executes on its third retail license and opens a third storefront in Chicago, Brewer says the company will take an in-depth look at what it’s built, analyzing customer analytics and insights into purchasing habits and staffing, so it can expand its business to other states.

“We’ll double down opportunistically in Illinois, but there are other new states that are just legalizing adult use for the first time,” he says. “We happen to have experience here in Illinois, and I think there’ll be more opportunities in other states to leverage that experience in expend our footprint that way.”

Brewer says Grasshopper Club would also like to manufacture its own products at some point, and he anticipates that coming to life through a partnership or acquisition.

“One of the fun parts about this is that the plant is something that really brings people together, and we’ve been lucky enough to have two grand openings this year,” Brewer says. “Both of them were wildly successful and we have people from all walks of life. … It’s a fun time to be around."