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Green Dragon Cannabis buys Breckenridge dispensary

Elise Reuter
Summit Daily
Backcountry Cannabis Company sold its Breckenridge store to Green Dragon Cannabis Company, a chain stretching from Denver to Glenwood Springs. While the store re-opened on Thursday, Dec. 31, BCC's sign will remain in place until Green Dragon receives approval for rebranding.
Elise Reuter / ereuter@summitdaily.com |

One of Breckenridge’s mainstay dispensaries, Backcountry Cannabis Club, sold its Airport Road dispensary to Denver-based cannabis chain Green Dragon Cannabis Co. It opened its doors at the location on Thursday, Dec. 31, and shop’s shelves are already filled with several strains of bud, edibles and tinctures.

“We’re fully open and ready to roll,” said Max Gorodesky, a manager at Green Dragon Cannabis Co., formerly Backcountry Cannabis. “We’re gonna have an entirely new look within the next few weeks.”

While the ownership has changed — employees say co-founders Brian Rogers and Caitlin McGuire are focusing on wholesale — the store looks very much the same. The old “Backcountry Cannabis Co.” sign still overlooks the storefront, while Green Dragon waits for rebranding approval.



“The timing on that is a matter of paperwork,” Green Dragon marketing manager Trent Blizzard said. “We just bought the actual store.”

On Main Street, BCC’s Cannabis Education Center is now vacant. The upstairs of the bright yellow building once housed BCC’s flagship medical marijuana store, which opened in 2010. The dispensary was moved to Airport Road in 2014, after BCC began selling retail and the town of Breckenridge voted to move all dispensaries from Main Street.



After the move, BCC continued to lease the space from the town of Breckenridge and use it for cannabis education, as well as to sell memorabilia and raise awareness of the new space on Airport Road. Moving the business to BCC’s former garden, the current grow space is located in Steamboat Springs. Another dispensary was opened in Crested Butte the summer of 2014 and is set to continue with cannabis retail.

The story came to fame after the move was detailed on CNN’s eight-part documentary series, “High Profits,” which is now available on Netflix.

The acquisition will make for the seventh shop owned by the Green Dragon Cannabis Co. Denver-based Green Dragon, formerly GreenWerks, in 2015 bought Glenwood’s Green Dragon grow operation and store on Devereux and changed its name. It also has applied to start an edibles kitchen at the Devereux site.

“They have a huge and very sophisticated grow operation in Denver and have a new one in Glenwood now,” Blizzard said. “It certainly blows my mind — the experience and technology they bring to growing very high-quality marijuana.”

While the new store has been open for less than a week, Gorodesky noted he had seen a change in product.

“Prices are going down,” he said.

One strain of note is Green Dragon’s LemonG, a lemon-pine scented sativa cut that won second place at the High Times Cannabis Cup in Holland.

Neither Rogers nor McGuire were available for comment at the time of this story.


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