That summer, the owners had to remove many of their products from shelves to comply with Minnesota’s regulations on low-dose edibles. And when they opened a location in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood in 2023, regulators ultimately banned their THCA flower and vapes for similar reasons.

State regulators destroyed more than 190 pounds of cannabis flower from retail stores, worth about $578,000, according to the Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management (OCM).

These run-ins led Thompson and Johnson to open their 200-square-foot location in Hudson, Wisconsin. Because of the lack of rules there, they can sell many of the same products they offered in Minnesota, including cannabis flower, at a premium. -dose of edibles, THC vapes and pre-rolls. According to Johnson, the Wisconsin location is outperforming its other two stores with about 30% more revenue since opening in April 2024.

“It was a way for us to serve this customer base that we had earned their trust for a long time,” Thompson said, “and give them a place where they can still come and get safe, tested products, where they can be comfortable to buy and that they know well.

If hemp-derived THC products were a loophole before legalization in Minnesota, THCA is an exercise in interpretation in Wisconsin. Technically, laboratories should test TCHA for this 0.3% threshold only after it converts to delta-9 following heating. But it’s not entirely clear in the farm bill, meaning people can buy TCHA products in Wisconsin, for example, that are much stronger than the 0.3% threshold after heating .

“I guess this is a gray area industry, and I guess it has been since the farm bill passed,” Thompson said. “But all we’re going to do is make sure we’re delivering the highest quality products possible to the market served.”