In the summer of 2018, MedMen opened a boutique cannabis dispensary on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice — "the coolest block in America," as the company hyped in a press release at the time.
With natural light pouring through floor-to-ceiling windows and spacious display tables dotted with sleek tablets, company executives weren't shy about where they'd drawn design inspiration for their high-rent storefront: They saw themselves as the Apple store of weed.
MedMen was an early darling in California's recreational pot market, drawing attention from the media, politicians eager to align themselves with the burgeoning legal industry and a growing consumer base curious about the trendy new locations selling products with names such as L'Orange, Grape Gasby and Highuasca.
Flush with investors' cash, the Culver City-based company poured $2 million into a "Forget Stoner" ad campaign, a marketing effort to counter the slacker pothead stereotype. And it expanded rapidly, opening more than a dozen locations across California, as well as stores in a handful of other states, including a boutique on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The sky, it seemed, was the limit.
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