Fabian Monaco

Gage Cannabis Co. is growing an impressive footprint in Michigan.

The company has seven retail stores open and five retail licenses that are expected to open later this year. Including acquisitions, the company expects to have about 20 stores by the end of 2021.

Supplying those stores are three cultivation facilities that are wholly owned by Gage, along with 10 partners that have exclusive cultivation contracts.

But the most impressive statistic about the company could be the average spend per customer at Gage-owned shops. In 2020, Gage’s average basket size was $164 — nearly double the statewide average of $85 and about $100 more than the national average.

“What I attribute that to is our strategy to focus on flower,” says president Fabian Monaco. “Our brand is a flower brand, and Michigan consumes some of the highest amounts of flower in the country on a per capita basis.”

He also says partnering with “the best brand in the space right now” — Cookies — “helped catapult us to a household name in Michigan cannabis.”

Gage is currently focused solely on the Michigan market, but it is in the process of going public and will be looking closer at a multi-state expansion later this year. Monaco, who has more than a decade of experience in the capital markets (“my bread and butter,” he says) and was part of the team that took Tweed public in 2014, says Gage may follow a model similar to a company like Trulieve, in which the bulk of its success comes from one market, while slowly building out a footprint in other states.

“We’re very, very bullish on expanding our brand to other states,” Monaco says. “We do exceptionally well in Michigan, and that’s a tough market.”