When I spoke with Cheech & Chong’s team in 2025, the tone leaned more toward business planning than cultural throwback, which makes sense at this stage of the industry.
But there’s still room for a cultural fight. On one side: a retail landscape dominated by multistate operators (MSOs) that carve out protected territories and lean on regulatory power instead of brand building. On the other side: a legacy cannabis brand trying to stitch together a national network of independent dispensaries without becoming the thing they’re critiquing.
The weapon, they insist, is IP licensing, not empire-building.
“We’ve got a handful of MSOs that raised a huge amount of money and they’ve kind of been able to wall off the states they operate in. It’s pretty protectionist,” says president Brandon Harshbarger. “The model we’re giving to smaller independent operators is a way to take an iconic brand and lay it across their store… and compete on something other than just license power.”
Instead of buying stores, Cheech & Chong’s Cannabis Company is selling an overlay:branding, design, data, marketing, and a bit of cultural gravity.
Retailers keep ownership. C&C takes a 6% royalty and tries to drive a 20–30% lift at the register.
“We don’t need to become an MSO,” says co-founder and CEO Jonathan Black. “The OPEX to become an MSO and the state lines doesn’t fit the goals of this company. When we started, the goal was to get products with consumer confidence into every consumer’s hands, no matter where they are. Hemp gave us the bridge; retail completes it.”
They tested the concept quietly in Massachusetts a year and a half ago, with three locations in non-glamorous markets and a parallel launch of their hemp drinks. The numbers were …
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Author: Rolando García / High Times
