Maryland-based company Curio Wellness is set to take over manufacturing and cultivation licenses from VMO-Ops, the state’s only Black-owned vertically integrated license holder
Curio Wellness’ new 130,000-square-foot marijuana facility in St. Louis (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).
Originally published on Missouri Independent
MARYLAND HEIGHTS — Covered in white protective clothing, Wendy Bronfein stepped into a long, sterile hallway of closed doors.
She calls it the “Willy Wonka-esque” corridor.
“This is the Mike Teavee part of the tour,” said Bronfein, co-founder of the Maryland-based marijuana company Curio Wellness, referencing the character from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Everything down to the wheels on the carts at the new marijuana manufacturing facility in St. Louis County gets scrubbed regularly. And that’s not just because Bronfein had been expecting inspectors from the Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation to complete a final audit of the site so the company could begin operations.
It’s also because Curio Wellness is aiming to be among the few marijuana facilities in Missouri to obtain a Good Manufacturing Practice certification, a standard the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires pharmaceutical companies to obtain.
“GMP is a standard that goes above and beyond anything that the state requires,” she said. “We’ve had that certification in Maryland since 2013.”
The entire facility is 130,000 square feet, with the manufacturing portion taking up 55,000 square feet. The rest is under construction to build out the cultivation side, where the plants will grow, which Bronfein said, should be completed in April.
The division gave its final OK for the manufacturing facility to begin operations on Jan. 2.
While Curio Wellness is in charge of operations, the facility’s license is actually in the hands of the ownership group, VMO-Ops Inc. It’s a collaboration between Viola and Village brands, which is owned by former NBA player Al Harrington and Dan Pettigrew, along with St. Louis entrepreneurs Larry Hughes and Abe Givins.
Since the cannabis industry began in 2019, VMO-Ops has been the only Black-owned vertically integrated cannabis company in Missouri, having two dispensary licenses and one manufacturing and one cultivation license.
But Pettigrew said the pandemic made finding investors difficult to get the manufacturing and cultivation sites off the ground after securing licenses in December 2019.
Now, the group will be asking the state to approve a request to transfer the manufacturing and cultivation licenses to Curio Wellness. That process could take up to a year, though it may take longer depending on how prepared the applicants are, the division’s spokeswoman Lisa Cox told The Independent.
Until the application is approved, VMO-Ops is still responsible for everything that happens at the facility, “regardless if a licensee has a management agreement in place with the proposed transferee,” Cox said.
Though the licenses will eventually change hands, Pettigrew said his group will remain involved.
“Without getting into the details, we have a significant ownership stake potentially in Curio, so we’re not all the way removed,” he said. “Curio has gone out of their way to make sure that not only are we contributing, but they’re making products specifically for us to our specs.”
Givins called the partnership with Curio “unique.” Though VMO won’t be the license holders ultimately, he said, “It doesn’t change the partnership and the influence that we’ll have on the market as a whole.”
As a consumer himself, Pettigrew called the Curio quality “unbelievable.”
“We look at this as kind of an upgrade,” he said. “We don’t look at it as selling out.”
