Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily McCune.
Hi Emily, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
After getting clean and becoming a registered medical marijuana patient in 2019, my career began (and took off) as a cottage cannabis baker and eventually worked its way into retail dispensary ownership (we opened our dispensary doors in August 2022).
Initially, I was producing hemp-derived cannabis edibles from home as a cottage food producer and hosting pop-up bakeries around Fergus Falls but, in 2021, the state of Minnesota prohibited doing so and I shifted professional gears.
I decided I wanted to learn more about the physiology of medicinal cannabis use and enrolled in a Cannabis Medicine and Healthcare program with the University of Wisconsin Platteville (graduated: February 2022) and had begun conducting what I called “cannabis consultations” for area community members, answering questions mostly on how to become a registered medical marijuana patient in Minnesota, which cannabinoids are right for which conditions, concerns with use during recovery from addiction/substance abuse, how to use cannabis for cancer, pediatric cannabis use, and more.
In April 2022, I signed a lease on a storefront/office space and we opened our doors officially in August 2022. We are a dual business, operating both a retail dispensary (hemp only for now due to legalities but will incorporate marijuana with our newly-adopted legalization efforts!) and consulting services. My business offers educational community presentations, and DIY workshops on how to make your cannabis extracts/edibles/topicals/medicines at home, and gives back to our community every opportunity we get!
I sit on the board of Directors for the Minnesota Cannabis Association and chair the Retail Committee. I employ six staff members and all staff completed training before opening to become certified cannabis caregivers, and we emphasize responsible and educated cannabis use in the community. We are open six days a week from 10 AM to 8 PM (Monday thru Saturday).
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, it has not been a smooth road. Every time I have gotten through my last hurdle or challenge, the next one comes along. I am in a brand new and extremely misunderstood (not to mention severely stigmatized) industry, and I live in the rural Midwest.
All of these conditions do not make for an easy transition or smooth road in the cannabis industry. The reason I have gotten where I am today, however, is through patience, grace, and compassion. I have dedicated myself as a civil servant to spreading the message and information and truth about cannabis medicine and all that entails. But federal and state implications make this less easy than for other industries.
Licensing/permitting hasn’t been too challenging (yet), it’s more the attitude and pushback that’s the biggest challenge. Just one month after opening our doors in August, we received word that our county public health department had launched a campaign to impose a moratorium on the sales of THC products countywide.
Fortunately, our local city government filed for exemption immediately, which resulted in no disruption whatsoever in our business operations and we are forever grateful to our local city government for that. In January this year, our county commissioners did decide to supersede state law and vote on imposing a countywide 12-month ban on the sales of some types of cannabis products. Fergus Falls is one of only two cities within Otter Tail County authorized to sell these products at this time.
There have been MANY challenges, most of them unprecedented and unanticipated. Shortly after we opened, a brick was thrown through our
storefront window. Just a few days ago, we had a garden gnome stolen from our sponsored city planter we beautifully planted on the sidewalk in front of our store. One day later, I came to work and saw that a different garden gnome we had displayed was smashed into pieces in front of our store. Young punk kids being up to no good? Or somebody targeting Sugar High? I don’t know, but this is why we can’t have nice things. In the fall, an aggressive competitor moved into town and opened up another dispensary just two months after we opened our doors as the very first cannabis dispensary in Fergus Falls, undercutting our prices and undercutting even the manufacturers’ suggested retail prices. Making wildly false accusations about our business to the general public, false reports to governing agencies, accusations to local law enforcement for being noncompliant (that one in particular *really* upsets me, as compliance is a huge proponent of my business – always has been and always will be) and that has been unnecessarily challenging and frustrating for us, as well – and not just being in the cannabis industry specifically, but being a business owner, in general (I’ve heard that’s par for the course). The ugly truth is that there are many who don’t applaud the success of others and will attempt to do what they can to see those businesses fail so that they themselves can win, regardless of the industry they’re in. That is one of the uglier parts of small business ownership, to me. Still? Totally worth it for the
rewards that come along with it as well!
In addition to basic, everyday business ownership “problems”, I am fighting in a war to destigmatize and normalize medicinal cannabis use again. It’s very hard. And, on top of all that, we have governing bodies trying to regulate a substance they do not even thoroughly or properly understand. Very few do. They don’t even teach Cannabis Medicine physiology in medical school or nursing school. Fortunately, medical cannabis programs are popping up around our country left and right, and this is only the beginning of the future.
As you know, we’re big fans of Sugar High Cannabis Consulting and Dispensary. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We have identified the four core tenants of our business operations as the following: Awareness, Accessibility, Affordability, and Advocacy for cannabis medicine. Currently, we operate exclusively as a hemp-only dispensary, but only due to legal reasons; with legalization efforts underway in our state, before too long you will see marijuana products added to our business operation. In addition to our retail store, we offer cannabis consulting services in the way of private consultations (both in-person and over the phone), free educational presentations for the community, and DIY workshops on-site where we instruct individuals on how to make their cannabis extracts at home and their medicines, like edibles, topical creams, tinctures, and more.
We focus on responsible and mindful medicinal cannabis use and strive to educate our community and customers and make them feel more comfortable using cannabis to improve their quality of life. We are very soon expanding into manufacturing our in-house brand of cannabis edibles, as that is my particular personal passion. By trade, I am a baker, and creating my cannabis extracts and my own edibles recipes is my biggest passion in life! My ultimate goal is to be a professional cannabis baker and distribute my brand exclusively to our region of Minnesota. I specialize in gummies, caramels, chocolates, hard candies, and baked goods.
To begin, my current business will expand within the hemp sector of the industry but, as I’ve mentioned before, when legalization efforts are more established, we will incorporate marijuana into this expansion project. As pertains to my passion for baking, my specialty is using locally-sourced ingredients and creating products that are appropriate for our region. As well, I only use whole food ingredients and very few processed ingredients. For example, I only use locally pastured eggs, pure cane sugar, local butter (NO refined/processed oils), locally-foraged foods like hazelnuts and choke cherries, locally grown produce, local raw honey and pure maple syrup, locally-milled flours, and others. I want our consumers and customers to know that, when they purchase a Sugar High edible, they are purchasing a locally-made artisan product.
In my industry, there is a lot of what’s called “white labeling” or “private labeling”, and what that refers to is when retailers will purchase in massive quantities other peoples’ mass-manufactured products and package them into their own privately labeled materials/packaging and sell them as their own. Sugar High will NEVER do that. The other academic degree I hold is in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Production (circa 2013). So, it is safe to say that my biggest passions in life are food and cannabis and that’s why I have been working so hard to carve out and create a career for myself marrying my two biggest passions together into one lucrative AND fulfilling business!
Something that sets my dispensary apart from other similar retailers in our community is that we are very outspoken, vocal, loud, and proud about normalizing cannabis use. We feel as though we have nothing to hide or feel ashamed or discreet about it. That’s not as common in the cannabis industry. We nurture and indulge in our customers’ desire to feel positive vibrations from this miraculous and healing flower and do not promote the idea or concept of feeling ashamed of it.
This is what sets us apart from others, and this is what people report enjoying the most about their experience shopping at our store, as well as the amazing customer service and dedicated treatment they receive on an individualized basis. The “vibe” is something we often hear from our customers as being something they enjoy about Sugar High and that makes me, as the owner, extremely happy because I invested a lot of time and energy into that part of my business right out of the gate: cultivating community culture, acceptance, and common ground.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
We believe that we can put Minnesota on the map in the cannabis industry! We here in the Midwest are often the last to integrate in this way and it is an ultimate goal of ours to show our citizens and community members that we possess the passion, skill set, and talent to create the best quality cannabis and cannabis products in our field and do our best to normalize cannabis use again.
Before the 1930s, cannabis had been used medicinally for as long as human beings could document and communicate. In the 1920s, “tincture of cannabis” was the number one most commonly-prescribed medicine by US physicians with over 3 million prescriptions written a year. We’d like to see a return.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sugarhighconsulting.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/sugar_high_fergus_falls?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
Image Credits
Briana Barry
