Evanston gets 2nd marijuana dispensary

“Cannabis is OK. You’re OK, I’m OK, and it’s OK if you’re also not interested.”

So says John Aldape, a partner in the group behind Okay Cannabis, Ltd., which officially opened a dispensary Monday on the ground floor of the Evanston Gateway apartment building at Chicago Avenue and Howard Street.

This is Evanston’s second marijuana dispensary (the other is ZenLeaf, downtown), but Okay is a bit different than other dispensaries in Chicagoland.

Okay is only half of the property. The other half, with the same front door and same owners, is West Town Bakery. The combined dispensary and bakery is a “joint” venture, so to speak, giving Okay/West Town something unusual in the marijuana market.

But it’s a model also followed at two other Okay/West Town locations, in Chicago and Wheeling.

“This is our niche,” Aldape says. “We identified that there’s room for hospitality to be improved for dispensaries.”

Aldape, who is his company’s director of concept development, says opening a bakery next to a dispensary began with the concept that “people who might want to enjoy cannabis might also want to pick up a coffee and a donut. We thought it would be a natural fit.”

It is possible, of course, to only go into the bakery, or only the dispensary (you do have to go through the bakery first).

Because cannabis products are more expensive than, say, a hot chocolate and a croissant, Aldape says the higher percentage of revenue comes from the Okay portion of the business.

Cannabis taxes help fund Evanston’s first-in-the-nation reparations program, and having a second dispensary will help beef up the fund.

Originally, the city hoped to bring in $10 million over 10 years for reparations, but with only one dispensary in town until now, the 3% tax on gross cannabis revenue was coming in far short of what was hoped. The city even added real estate transfer tax dollars to beef up, excuse the expression, the “pot” of money.

While taxes are an inevitable cost of doing business, Aldape says he and his partners are glad some of their tax dollars will go to reparations, particularly since Okay is a minority-controlled business.

Reparations are intended to help Black residents who were not allowed to buy houses in certain parts of Evanston, from the 1920s thru the ’60s.

The first dollars went to the small number of those who are still alive from that era and directly experienced discrimination. The city is now moving on to descendants. The hope is to help at least 80 more individuals this year with housing-related payments of $25,000 or cash payments instead.

But with more than 450 people applying, it will take years to provide payments to all those who are deemed eligible, even with a second dispensary adding tax dollars to the fund.

The Evanston Okay/West Town location will not have something that the company has at its Wheeling location — an on-site consumption lounge in addition to the dispensary and bakery.

The proposal from Ald. Devon Reid (8th) to allow such lounges got nowhere last year at City Hall. Plus, even if it was implemented, the Okay/West Town site is in a “no smoking” building.

As a niche operator, Okay is competing with much larger national dispensary businesses, so Aldape says that even beyond the bakery combo, Okay has to differentiate itself in other ways.

One of those, he says, is by selling “craft cannabis,” which, like craft beer some time ago, is now “just emerging.”

Craft cannabis, Aldape explains, comes from smaller producers, and can often be better quality than what the mega-stores generally offer. (This new bud’s for you).

Okay/West Town is part of a Chicago hospitality company called The Fifty/50 Group, which, besides the three dispensary/bakeries combinations, also owns or manages 15 other restaurants and bars.

The “Okay” name, Aldape says, is part of an effort to “normalize” cannabis. It’s OK if you want it, it’s OK if you don’t.