The first Illinois store to combine the sale of marijuana and alcohol opened Wednesday in Wheeling. The owner wants it to be a place where customers can hang out and relax.
Unlike other businesses in the state, Okay Cannabis operates licensed cannabis sales under the same roof as West Town Bakery, which offers beer, wine, liqueurs, bakery products, and other food products.
The majority owner is Charles Mayfield, Interim Chief Operating Officer of Chicago Public Schools. Chicago 47th Ward Aldo. Ameya Pawar and others are minority shareholders. They partnered with Westtown His Bakery to offer a cafe and event his space that can be rented for birthday parties and other occasions.
Through Mayfield, who is African-American, the owner has qualified as one of the first socially equitable pharmacy owners to open in the state, especially in the suburbs.
The huge 12,000-square-foot space in the site of Twin Peaks in Wheeling’s Restaurant District on Milwaukee Avenue is much larger than most pharmacies.
The café with bar is separate from the cannabis sales area. The owner hopes to add a cannabis consumption area someday.
The store had a soft opening on Wednesday, with employees still painting and finishing.The grand opening is scheduled for Friday.
Fifty/50 Restaurant Group, founded by Scott Weiner and Greg Mohr, operates the bakery and plans to open two more Okay Cannabis locations in West Town and Evanston in the coming months with social equity partners. . West Town Bakery already has four locations in Chicago.
Mayfield quotes visitors who found the cafe very comfortable.
You must prove you are 21 years old to enter the clinic, but children are welcome in the cafe when accompanied by a parent.
After a two-year delay in granting licenses, the state has awarded 192 dispensing licenses in 2022.
Weiner said it’s aimed at people spending time there rather than the buying and buying experience at many pharmacies. “Make it an experience,” he said. “We believe this is the next iteration of the cannabis industry.”
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Illinois licensed the first medical marijuana companies in 2015, resulting in wealthy white men owning almost the entire industry. Subsequent authorization processes were intended to give priority to “socially equitable” applicants. This is generally defined as people living in areas with high poverty rates or high cannabis arrest rates, or low marijuana arrest rates.
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But just six Social Equity dispensaries have opened, including Okay, Altius in Round Lake Beach, and Ivy Hall in Crystal Lake, in addition to three in downtown Chicago.
By eliminating hundreds of pages of application forms to simplify the process, the Illinois Department of Financial Professional Regulation is implementing a new online application process through February 14. Complicated the process.
Of the companies selected through a complex application and lottery process in the past, 41% were majority black owned, 7% were majority white owned, 4% were majority Latino, and 38% of the winners were You didn’t specify your race. owner.
An Air Force veteran, Mayfield has majority ownership of Wheeling and Evanston’s licenses. He said his full-time job at CPS is separate from Okay Cannabis.
Pawar is an Indian-American, Senior Fellow of the Economic Security Project, and has worked with the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations. Pawar owns a portion of all three of his licenses, owned by another group called Canna Ventures at the West Town site, and mostly owned by Dr. Charlesnika, an epidemiologist at Northwestern Medicine. Evans and his in Chicago is Nikki Hayes, former president of the LiUNA Local 1001 chapter. .
Pawar said the key to helping other licensees open is passing the federal SAFE Banking Act to allow bank loans to cannabis companies and reschedule or deschedule cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act.
