40 Under 40
For the past five years, the Marijuana Venture staff has compiled an annual list of some of the brightest young leaders and influencers in the cannabis industry. As in past years, we have narrowed the list from hundreds of worthy candidates to present 40 individuals from the vast and ever-changing business in the United States and Canada.
It is our honor to share their stories.
Rahn Bruns
Age: 34
Company: Local Roots
Title: Owner
It’s the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of the cannabis industry that most excites Rahn Bruns. He says it is starting to settle in and feel more normal today, more than five years after he opened his first Local Roots retail store in Granite Falls, Washington, about two hours north of Seattle, but it’s still an industry unlike any other.
Bruns got his start in cannabis growing and processing in Oregon’s pre-regulated gray market. He started an extraction company called Jollybee and would sell his bee-shaped extracts at more than 100 farmers markets in Washington and Oregon. But he divested as Washington went rec-legal and began the process of getting a retail license.
“If we didn’t adapt, we might have become extinct,” he says. “As the industry adapts and changes, we’re going to adapt and change with it.”
Today, Local Roots is a three-store chain, and Bruns still enjoys the unpredictable nature of the retail cannabis industry.
“I feel like this is one of the few industries that’s really appreciated by the community,” he says. “At the end of the day, we’re just trying to have happy customers.”