This is not your typical country club. In fact, the name and idea behind The Country Club is to create a casual, laid-back atmosphere for cannabis connoisseurs alike.
No membership fees, no fancy events — just pure, affordable cannabis products at consumers’ convenience.
And if their company logo of a small cabin in the woods doesn’t reiterate that enough, then their story will.
The ‘Country’ Club
The Country Club dispensary is located In Redway, California — right in the heart of Humboldt County. Humboldt County is a rural region most notable for being one of the three counties that make up the Emerald Triangle, the largest cannabis-producing region in the U.S.
The Country Club was created as a space for the people that have dwelled there for all their lives — the pioneers of the region’s cannabis industry.
With a story of its own behind the name of the dispensary, Lily Farrell, The Country Club’s administrative manager says, “The Country Club Cannabis is a bit of a play on words, ” says Farrell. “Because where we live is […] rural, and you don’t have a lot of people that actually dress up to scale that would be expected at a very typical country club.”
So, this country club is the opposite of a typical one, as it creates a very laid back and casual environment.
The Legal/Legacy Divide
Their target consumers are Humboldt County residents who have experienced a divide when it comes to the legal cannabis market.
According to Humboldt’s Finest, the county’s official cannabis site, residents have grown cannabis for decades. “Many of today’s Humboldt residents are second-generation cannabis farmers,” states the website states.
But, there is a divide between the legal and legacy markets. The Country Club wants to help mend that divide. By creating a dispensary that is local to Redway, and all of Humboldt County residents, The Country Club allows access and opens up the door for a legal retail market in that area.
Mending the Divide
When the dispensary first opened in May 2019, they did not experience a lot of sales. Instead, locals came in to look around, some stepping foot into a dispensary for the first time.
They built momentum by letting those visitors know that “your local blue-collar workers who are coming in — they run our banks, our gas stations… We had all these folks coming in, instead of getting a beer or whatever, they’re getting their pre-roll for the day, or their cart,” says Angie Cascio, The Country Club’s manager.
As a result, business started to pick up. The Humboldt County community started to trickle in to buy and use their legal cannabis products.
Battling two Crises — the Pandemic and Wildfire Season
Like many businesses during the pandemic, The Country Club hit setbacks. But, through it all, their employees kept working as essential workers.
The novel coronavirus wasn’t all that threatened the dispensary, as the wildfires started to scorch across the state of California in the summer of 2020. The state of California declared it a record-setting year for the wildfire season, according to CA.gov.
“We came in that day, and we literally just started grabbing stuff because we didn’t know if this place was going to be here the next day,” Cascio says of the experience.
They were not alone as community members came through to stock up on cannabis.
Describing their environment as red from the heat and intensity of the fires, both Farrell and Cascio called it “almost apocalyptic.”
The Country Club was luckily not damaged during the wildfires. The dangerous air quality and the fear factor of the whole situation is what affected them the most.
No Stranger to the Cannabis Community
The county alone is known for being more than the home of cannabis and is also recognized for its culture. Most of the population live in the hills and were once considered back-to-the-landers.
In fact, the owner of The Country Club, Skylar Keith, is a second-generation cannabis operator. Cannabis runs in his family back to the ’60s and ’70s, where his dad ran a commune called Rainbow Hills.
“In our own way, we are reliving his dad’s life, just in a new and innovative way,” explains Cascio. “[Keith] has taken it not just back to the land, but he’s also brought this into the [legal] market, and really contributing back to the community.”
Pride in Their Community
Serving the Humboldt community is something that The Country Club takes pride in.
“We have a lot of folks who are more low budget folks, that are looking for some sort of medicine that is inexpensive and can tide them over. And, it’s the products that are sourced here locally that aren’t always that inexpensive,” Farrell states. However, the company also sources some products which aren’t available locally from throughout the state.
“There’s not a lot of local edibles made here, besides Space Gems… love Space Gems! They’re a local fave, so we got to shout them out,” explains Farrell.
Needless to say, The Country Club has the cannabis-friendly population covered. This dispensary is bound to be a regional favorite with a wide variety of products, from flower to dabs, edibles, RSO, suppositories, bath bombs, tinctures, and even seeds.
Presently, The Country Club has been developing their own brand of cannabis, with their sister company, Grassroots Distribution. They sell their Country Club Cannabis brand in their shop, as well as in Los Angeles — allowing consumers throughout the state, get a taste of the community that helped bring cannabis to life in California.
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