Dispensary opens along Hiawatha Ave.

The people buying items at Longfellow’s recently opened cannabis shop, Levitated Dispensary, aren’t who you might expect.
It’s older couples, women, college kids, and people from all walks of life. “It’s not the stereotypical kind of cannabis users that you would expect interested in a wide variety of products, from the edibles to the flower to pre-rolls and vapes,” said co-owner Bryan Longville.
“A lot of people are looking to cannabis for a lot of different effects, not just recreational fun but also for functional effects, as well.”
When people come into the store a budtender asks what they’re looking for and helps guide them to what product might work best.
On the cannabis black market, people don’t really know what they’re getting. Is it clean? Has it been tested? “You just kind of get what you get,” observed Longville. “Consistency is something I’m excited to be able to offer those folks that maybe tried cannabis and just didn’t think it was for them, or are looking to get an effect – maybe to replace pain medication, sleep medication, things like that.”
Minnesota became the 23rd state in the nation to legalize adult-use cannabis, and dispensaries began opening last year.
Two of the four co-owners of Levitated own the next-door beer, wine and liquor store, Elevated, which also sells some THC items. The goal of Levitated is similar to Elevated, observed co-owner Tom Boland. “It’s to navigate the product in a way that isn’t pretentious but you still have the staff to support the education side.”
Co-owner Ryan Widuch added,”You have some people coming in who know exactly what they want and we want to provide value and convenience for them. But there’s other folks that are looking for a bit more guidance. So we want to be able to have that aspect covered, as well.”

FRIENDS SINCE MIDDLE SCHOOL
Longville has know the owners of Elevated Beer, Wine and Liquor in Minneapolis since their Sunrise Middle School days in White Bear Lake. He, Widuch, Boland and Mark Paulson were drawn together by music, skateboarding, snowboarding and Magic: The Gathering. They stayed in contact through college. Widuch spent some time working in commodities on trading floors in Chicago. When he returned to Minneapolis, they all gathered at Bolland’s Longfellow house and launched into home-brewing. They scaled up an operation that took over his whole basement. Like many other home-brewers, they had ambitions to open a brewery, and so they launched Longfellow Brewing Company, LLC. But by 2009, with a dozen or so breweries already in the state and more on the way, they put the dream on the shelf. After a year or two, they started talking about opening a craft brew specific shop.
They saw a couple examples, such as Four Firkins and Ale Jail, and were intrigued. “It seemed like a much more aproachable business because you could do it with very limited square footage and have fun with it,” said Widuch. When they found the building at 4135 Hiawatha Ave. it was bigger than what they needed just for the craft beer concept, and so they pivoted to doing a full-service liquor store with a craft beer store within it. When you walk into the store, the left side features craft beers, both chilled and unchilled. “Then it opens up to the rest of the liquor store as you keep going in,” said Widuch.
Their first tasting was with Kevin Welch, who was with Boom Island Brewing at the time. He’s currently renovating a building along Minnehaha Ave. in Longfellow and opening Mixed Culture Brewing with his wife. He was one of many brewery people they’ve invited in to interface with customers.
Even craft beer nerds might need wine for dinner or Bloody Mary mix for Sunday, Boland remarked, and so they aimed to be a one-stop shop.
It’s what they’re continuing with the expansion of Levitated – that one-stop shopping experience, whether it is for beer, wine, liquor or cannabis.
“No matter where you are in your learning process, you’re going to find a great experience,” promised Widuch.

JUST KEEP TALKING
How do you run a business with four partners? With good communication and specific roles, the partner say.
Elevated owners Boland and Widuch have spent 14 years figuring things out between the two of them. Boland, who formerly worked for RBC, manages technology, HR, payroll and accounting. Widuch is the primary buyer for the liquor store, managing over 4,000 active SKUs.
Longville and Paulsen are on the Levitated side. Operating remotely from Montana, Paulsen handles social media, website development and digital operations. Longville is the general manager of Levitated, overseeing staff hiring, training and day-to-day management.
They have written partnership agreements and a weekly meeting at 3 p.m. on Wednesdays.
“We value each other’s perspectives,” said Boland. “We all kind of have little areas of expertise but I think that we all have input on most decisions and dialog.” They are fortunate to have similar standards, he added.
“Just keep talking,” urged Widuch. “Because if you stop talking, that’s when you have a problem.”
Boland said they have a time and place where they talk about business, and make space for the personal, too. They seek to keep those things separate, although they can’t be completely. “The business is a specific thing that we’re working on together, and our relationships inform what we bring to that. But it’s a separate thing,” stated Boland.
Elevated has gone through some tough periods that stretched Widuch and Boland, including the growth of the business and three nights of looting that followed the murder of George Floyd.
“Your understanding of how your business partner works gets better,” said Widuch. “I think you grow individually, and the relationship grows that way too. We’ve been doing this since we were 30 years old and now we’re in our mid-40s. Some of it is just working together and some of it is just maturity and experience.”
“Going into business with friends is probably not for everybody,” remarked Paulsen. “It relies on a really high degree of trust. It also requires the ability to not take anything personal and stay committed to what is best for the business.”

EXPANSION INTO THC
Widuch and Boland expanded Elevated with a second location in White Bear Lake in 2015, and continued to take over more and more of the Minneapolis building as they grew.
Longville joked, “If cannabis ever gets legalized and you’re ready to open a dispensary, I’m your guy.”
And then it became legal. The daycare next to them had moved out and the space was available.
Because so many breweries are producing the THC beverages and low-dose hemp products, they already had relationships in place and didn’t need to create all new networks. “We were among the first to have a really deep and robust selection of THC drinks and edibles,” said Boland. “And that’s where we started to see different folks, people we weren’t expecting to be customers in that category.”
“We also brought the prices way down,” observed Widuch. When hemp-derived THC edibles and beverages became legal in Minnesota in 2022, “it was completed unregulated. You didn’t even need a license, except the one restriction that liquor stores couldn’t sell them.” Companies were taking 50-60% margins, but they worked to bring it down to beer margins.
“It was a really nice experience for our customers to be able to have that exposure to the product at affordable prices,” said Widuch.
To encourage Elevated customers to check out Levitated next door, they’re offering various promotions, including a 20% discount at Levitated if you spend $25 or more at Elevated and show your same-day receipt.
“There are a lot of great possibilities for value between both entities,” said Widuch.
He added, “We want to build businesses in Longfellow that the community can embrace and be proud of, and maybe be a destination.”
“It’s a great place to live and we’re proud to be a part of Longfellow,” stated Bolland, who has lived in the neighborhood for nearly 20 years.
“I am biased, but there is no other neighborhood that offers this level of character, intrigue, recreation, and high quality people,” said Paulsen.

REGULATING THE INDUSTRY
Before they could launch Levitated, they provided input to the City of Minneapolis on regulations. Initially, the policy proposed would have ruled out dispensaries that were within 500 feet of schools. Since Elevated opened, a charter school, Friendship Academy of the Arts, opened nearby at 3320 East 41st Street, within the 500 feet limit. They worked with Ward 12 Council Member Aurin Chowhury to align the dispensary rules with liquor store rules, which have a 300-foot regulation.
When they opened the liquor store, they worked with then-council member Sandy Colvin-Roy on a conditional use permit to have a retail store along Hiawatha, which was then zoned industrial. The area has since been completely rezoned.
Levitated owners are paying close attention to Section 280E in the federal tax code. As cannabis remains classified as a schedule one controlled substance federally, it means that businesses can’t deduct “ordinary and necessary” business expenses. Cannabis is moving to schedule three.
“Once this rule change is finalized, we should see prices at the register start to come down at all dispensaries across Minnesota,” said Paulsen. “That’s needed. Everyone wins there.”
Federally, there’s also the issue of a ban initially scheduled to take place on Nov. 12 that has been pushed to Dec. 11 that will limit hemp-derived products and affect gummies, beverages, tinctures, vapes and other full-spectrum CBD products.
Things are complicated because cannabis is legal in Minnesota but illegal federally.
“We’ve learned that government is just people, too,” said Boland. “It feels likes its a big, faceless thing. People talk about moneyed interests or whatever, but there are people doing their best in these positions. The best thing you can do for your business is engage with some of them.”

Read the article from the Longfellow Nokomis Messenger that ran shortly after Elevated opened in February 2013.