Popular cannabis brand is finally in Fresno. Why some waited 22 hours to meet its CEO
As a brand, Cookies doesn’t have customers, it has fans; guys like Alan Duarte, who camped out in a parking lot for 22-hours for a chance to meet the company’s CEO at the grand-opening of its Fresno cannabis dispensary on Sunday.
“I spent a pretty good amount on money here, but it’s worth it,” he said.
Duarte spent $500, all told, on cannabis products, yes, but also on a t-shirt and sweat shirt and other branded merchandise, some of which was designed specifically for the Fresno store.
More than that, he got the chance to meet Berner, the rapper-turned weed entrepreneur who started the brand in 2010 holds a kind of celebrity status among customers.
“It’s an inspiration for the Latino community,” Duarte said.
Berner built the company from the ground up, at a time when weed culture wasn’t as accepted as it is now.
“He grinded it out, went out of his way to do that for us.”
The brand opened its first retail store in 2018 and quickly expanded to some 60 retail locations in 20 markets. There are Cookies stores north of Fresno in Merced and Modesto.
The brand opened a store and consumption lounge in Coalinga in 2021.
Duarte was at that grand opening as well.
Cookies Fresno opened at 11 a.m. and by noon, a line of hundreds of customers stretched through to the back of the shopping center. Most of the the people in line had never met before, “but they know each other because of Berner and Cookies,” Duarte said.
The Cookies lifestyle
Inside, the dispensary was crowded with customers browsing Cookie’s various cannabis strains, packaged in brightly colored containers made to look like ice-cream with names like cereal milk, triple scoop, and BernieHana Butter.
But a corner portion of the store is dedicated to the Cookies other merchandise.
There are branded T-shirts, sweat shirts and back packs, along with assorted smoking implements and accessories (think rolling trays and glass pipes).
The Fresno store has a run of exclusive merchandise.
These are T-shirts and sweat shirts done in collaboration with FTK Construction, the marketing and design company known for creating the iconic Nickle Nickle Nine (559) logo and also helping rebrand the Fresno Grizzlies.
The designs have a local flare.
One is a take off of the Me-n-Eds pizza logo.
It says, Me-n-Cookies, with a Grizzly bear and a Bulldog, representing Fresno’s two sports franchises.
Another has a drawing of a tree that’s also an ash-tray with the cookies logo and the words “Ashing trees in Fresno.”
It’s a clever bit of word play connecting cannabis culture and the Spanish translation of the city’s name.
Fresno love since day one
Berner has paid particular attention to the Fresno store opening. Even before the meet and greet, he had been personally calling for job applications and talking up the store on his social media.
But then, Berner has been coming to Fresno to perform for a decade at least.
In a interview with The Bee last year, he said his earliest memories as a rapper performing in front of an actual crowd were in Fresno.
“Markets like Fresno are what made me,” he said.
“There’s a loyalty there.”
Promoter Brad Jaurique used Sunday’s store opening to break some concert news and announce that Berner would be headlining this year’s Fresno Smokeout concert, April 20 (4/20 for the smokers) at Granite Park.
Tickets are on sale now.
Four dispensaries now open
Cookies is the second dispensary to open in Fresno in the last two months.
The Station opened on Shaw Avenue near First Street in November.
They join two other shops (Embarc and The Artist Tree) that opened on the same day in July last year.
That’s four openings in the three years since the city first began the process of awarding its allotment of dispensary licenses (21 split evenly across the seven council districts). According to the city, the remaining license holders have all completed their conditional use permit applications, which the businesses need before they can begin working on building permits or actual construction.
A majority of those have had their CUPs approved, the city said.
At least two other dispensaries (Culture Cannabis Club at Fresno and Bullard Avenues and Dr. Greenthumb’s on Fern Avenue in the Tower District) could be opening sometime next year.
