MedMen is continuing its quest to bring cannabis to high street retail.
The Los Angeles-based, private equity-owned cannabis retailer opened a new store on Venice, California's Abbot Kinney Boulevard last week, Chain Store Age reports. It is the company's 13th retail location across California, New York and Nevada, which includes another recreational store in Beverly Hills and a medical dispensary on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
MedMen, led by former BlackRock executive Chris Leary, has raised over $100M in capital through multiple funding rounds since the start of 2017, after bringing in $60M the year before. In March, the company announced a 50/50 joint venture (to be named MedMen Canada) with Canadian-based Cronos Group, the first cannabis company to be listed on the Nasdaq, to expand the company's presence north of the border.
The company's posh store design has led some to call it the "Apple Store of marijuana," but Leary has preferred to instead compare his retail outposts to fashion icon Barney's. Placing stores in the most exclusive shopping corridors in the country is MedMen's way of "mainstreaming marijuana," Leary told Chain Store Age.
Next up for MedMen is an expansion into Florida, where the company has recently been licensed to open up 25 medical dispensaries across the state, Chain Store Age reports.
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