Unity Rd. has opened its first franchised marijuana dispensary, in Boulder, Colorado, which its co-founder and franchising chief believes is also the first in the United States. It was a long time coming.
“Feels good. It’s been a long road, pun intended,” said Mike Weinberger, who first spoke with Franchise Times about franchising the brand, then called One Cannabis, in late 2019. The former CEO of Maui Wowi, Weinberger said at the time “plowing is a good description” of his quest since 2016 to franchise marijuana stores. Read the Unity Rd. origin story here.
The store’s owner is Nate Wetzel, a former house builder and land developer in Iowa who was the third generation to operate the family business. He decided to jump into the weed industry when he heard a podcast by the franchise’s co-founder, Christian Hageseth, who has since left the company after its acquisition with Item 9 Labs Corp. in March 2021.
“I’ve been looking at the cannabis space for a few years. There seemed to be a very dangerous school of hard knocks, lessons to be learned, that kept me away,” said Wetzel. (Asked if he is related to the Wetzel’s Pretzels franchise family, he laughed. “If I was, I think I’d be driving a much better car.”)
“I was listening to a podcast, there was a gentleman named Christian Hageseth, and I very rapidly found no one else was offering what they were offering. It helped check a lot of those boxes I was concerned about, off the list.”
He purchased an existing marijuana dispensary in Boulder and rebranded it to Unity Rd., re-opening last week after “a year and some change”of preparations. “We had some false starts. We had some contracts that for various reasons were unable to be executed all the way to the end,” he said.
“I’d like to be a multi-unit operator. I’d like to grow a good root here in Colorado, where a lot of things” around cannabis are “being done right. I’d like to get a good root here, and then as things become available, try to bring this stuff back home, the lessons I learn here. Nebraska first, and then Iowa coming after that.”
Eighteen states, plus Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational weed as of July 1. Nebraska and Iowa are not yet among them.
Weinberger, formerly COO of Unity Rd. but now chief franchise officer, said its merger with Item 9 brought new resources to the brand. “The merger brings in complementary skill sets from both teams,” he said, adding, “We’re now publicly traded so more on the forefront of people’s minds.”
The company employs about 92 people, with about 85 located in Phoenix, Item 9’s headquarters, and most of the rest in Denver, with one in Illinois and one in New Hampshire.
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July 10, 2021 at 12:19AM
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Unity Rd. Opens First Franchised Marijuana Store, At Last - Franchise Times
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