Thomas Mitchell
Audio By Carbonatix
In less than one month, three of Colorado’s largest cannabis chains have downsized or shown signs of financial struggle, including buyouts, layoffs, vendor lawsuits and closures.
The latest round of bad news for business came on March 20, when PharmaCann Inc., the Chicago-based corporation that owns LivWell Enlightened Health, announced it would lay off 132 employees as it closes a major Denver cultivation and processing facility in May. This came weeks after Colorado dispensary chain Native Roots announced it was selling off the majority of its assets, including at least seventeen of its 21 stores — but not any of its major grow facilities — to Verdant Capital Partners, an equity firm co-founded by Josh Ginsberg, one of the Native Roots owners.
LivWell and Native Roots currently have 21 stores each, tied for the most in Colorado, although the future is cloudy for Native Roots stores and production facilities that weren’t included in the deal. Many LivWell dispensary employees have been wondering about their job status as well.
Last December, Minneapolis-based Vireo agreed to buy LivWell’s Colorado assets, but only seventeen of its 21 stores and zero cultivation facilities were included in that deal. Vireo signed a management agreement to run LivWell stores until then, according to the future ownership group, and the deal is expected to close within the first half of the year. Vireo may have long-term plans in Colorado, but LivWell’s days of twenty-plus stores and constant expansion could be done…or at least put on a long pause.
Less than a month before Colorado’s top two retailers announced major shakeups, the third-largest Colorado weed retailer was taken to court over an alleged six-figure tab. The Cannabist Company, owner of the Green Solution and Medicine Man dispensaries, was sued by a vendor over an alleged non-payment of almost $400,000 at a total of seventeen locations. Since purchasing the Green Solution in 2020, the Cannabist has closed six of its locations.
The shrinking of Colorado’s largest cannabis chains follows years of a receding market in Colorado. According to the state Department of Revenue, wholesale weed prices have fallen by over 65 percent since 2021, while the number of registered growers has dropped by almost 40 percent. From 2021 to 2025, annual dispensary sales dropped over 40 percent, DOR records show, from more than $2.2 billion to around $1.3 billion.
Liqour Stores, “but With More Rules”
Some cannabis growers have been calling for a reduction in licensed growers for years, but the market appears to be doing it for them…just not fast enough. And with a retail marijuana landscape that was initially built on vertical integration — dispensaries were forced to grow the majority of weed they sold in Colorado in the early years of medical and recreational legalization — many of Colorado’s older dispensary chains have large growing and extractions operations that they now want to shed.
Although it may seem like a long time, Colorado’s relationship with recreational pot sales is just over a dozen years old, which is still young as far as billion-dollar markets go. Specialization has been in place for years now, too, with the vast majority of popular cannabis growers and extractors in Colorado operating as their own stand-alone brands without dispensary ownership involved.
Longtime cannabis advocate Mason Tvert, who helped usher legalization into Colorado, called it over two years ago as Colorado’s post-pandemic market trends were first starting to get grim. Now a partner at cannabis policy and public affairs firm Strategies 64, Tvert predicted that dispensaries would further focus on their retail responsibilities, and less on production.
“With something this new and varied around the country, there are a lot of people who just want to open a marijuana store because it’s exciting, fun or unique,” Tvert told Westword at the time. “As people were doing that, though, we sort of realized that ten years from now they would be owning a liquor store, but with more rules.”
