'High' Grades: Meet Brooklyn's First Legal Recreational Dispensary

FLATBUSH, NY — Good Grades is already at the head of its class.

The shop was New York's first woman-owned cannabis retail dispensary and is now the first store to legally sell recreational cannabis in Queens and Kings County.

And in their entrepreneurial-minded family, co-owners and cousins Michael and Extasy James are hoping to set a precedent by creating a legacy family business.

"Business requires you to grow... It's been great learning to work off of each other's strengths and weaknesses," Michael James said. "You want to like who you work with."

After a successful opening in Queens, Good Grades opened a pop-up at a former T-Mobile store on Flatbush Avenue near Beverly Road in October. The pop-up will remain open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Sunday until the end of the year.

Obviously, the store is not for college students under 21 — but the name is a riff on the immersive learning environment on a college campus, Michael James said.

With walls covered in local art, music and an interactive whiteboard, Good Grades' Brooklyn location will school locals on more than just good weed.

“You may come for cannabis, but you may leave with lessons in music, lessons in art,” Michael James said.

The name is also a riff on a cannabis grading system that scores the quality of a product — and Good Grades only sells the highest-scoring New York products, Michael James said. In true collegiate form, "budtenders" will offer shoppers educational information about the market and product safety.

As Good Grades expands, so too will the city's cannabis market.

The state's Office of Cannabis Management in September voted to significantly expand applications for cannabis cultivation, processing, distribution and retail. Since the decision, new dispensaries have opened on the Lower East Side, Astoria and Harlem.

The state has also embarked on an educational campaign as the market expands — including a meeting Nov. 1 at Medgar Evers College to help hopeful business owners navigate the application process.

Having grown up in the era of cannabis prohibition, being at the forefront of legal recreational cannabis sales has been a powerful experience, Michael James said.

"It's surreal," he said.

As a lawyer who's worked with the State Liquor Authority, James was familiar with the "anxiety-provoking" licensing process, he said. And with his family full of business owners and entrepreneurs, Good Grades was a "no-brainer."

"It's an honor, it's a privilege to be at the forefront in the industry," James said. "We don't take it lightly."