Aspen dispensary worries company blowing smoke over closure

Green Dragon employees should not fear for their jobs — at least, according to management. 

In mid-October, owners of the Colorado and Florida marijuana dispensary chain notified the 59 Colorado employees at Green Dragon’s grow facility of upcoming mass layoffs due to closure. The announcement, mandated by the WARN law, requires employers to give notice before large-scale layoffs. 

Green Dragon said grow facility employees would be terminated by the end of company operations on Dec. 31. 

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At the Aspen Green Dragon dispensary, however, employees heard otherwise. Aspen Green Dragon Assistant Manager Jackson Landis said, when talking to his superiors, they were told not to worry.

“‘Don’t worry about your jobs. Everything’s gonna be fine,'” Landis said. “Our district manager, word for word, said, ‘I’m not worried about my job, so you shouldn’t be worried about yours.'”

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They only heard about the closure a few days earlier, when articles started circulating, Landis said. His district manager told him the company will close on Dec. 31 before reopening under new leadership as a new company on Jan. 1. 

The closure rumors emerged after Cory Azzalino, CEO of Eaze, Green Dragon’s parent company, announced weeks ago that the cannabis delivery service sold their assets on auction in August. 

“Management is working with the new ownership group of the assets who will determine whether operations will reopen after Dec. 31, 2024,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

He wrote that the employees will hear an official update on or before Nov. 15.

But the company in mid-October also notified the 113 Florida grow facility workers that they would be laid off by Dec. 31. The Eaze CEO reportedly told BusinessDen earlier this week that the company plans to close all 17 dispensaries in Colorado and all 39 in Florida. 

Because the employer will be shutting down, “All terminations covered under this notice are permanent and all employment at the site/plant will be permanent,” Eaze Executive Trey Handley also reportedly wrote in the WARN notice to Colorado grow facility employees.

Yet in Aspen employees were told to wait for the Nov. 15 update about the future of the company.

“It’s super frustrating,” Landis said about the lack of communication from the company. “I mean, we would like to know what’s going on.”

Brian Cooley, another Aspen Green Dragon assistant manager, said he thinks communication would be helpful to plan for his future.

“I mean, I’m not going to suddenly jump ship. I would just like to know what’s going on,” Cooley said. “At least then, I can make some plans, you know?”

While working for a previous Green Dragon store on Devereaux Street in Glenwood Springs, he said management only gave employees a week’s notice before shutting down the shop earlier this fall. He said non-company workers who came to manage ATMs at the former location had known a month in advance of the closure but had been told not to tell the Green Dragon employees. 

“They’re notorious for … not really telling us the truth,” Cooley said of the dispensary company.

Landis said the company has been in financial turmoil since he first came aboard in 2023. 

Financial problems started after Eaze acquired Green Dragon in 2021 to try to salvage their own financial hardships, he said. In 2022, Eaze sought out a $37 million loan from FoundersJT LLC, a company owned by tech billionaire James Clark, on the terms that the company could seize control of Eaze if they didn’t meet revenue goals, according to Law360. 

In August, Clark foreclosed and purchased Eaze’s assets at a public auction. 

Once referred to as the “Uber of weed,” Eaze plans to wind down its operations because of the change in ownership, as written by Azzalino in his mid-October announcement. The closure could cause nearly 500-employee layoffs between Eaze’s operations in California and Michigan, according to officials of the United Food Commercial Workers International Union.

In Colorado, apart from the 59 Green Dragon grow facility employees who received official notice of termination, employees of the 17 dispensaries across the state remain in the dark. Four Aspen and five Glenwood Springs employees will reap the consequences of the company’s final decision.

“The fact that they’re telling us ‘Everything is going to be fine,’ there’s this little peace of hope — maybe everything will be fine,” Landis said. “But I doubt it.”

Skyler Stark-Ragsdale can be reached at 970-429-9152 or email him at sstark-ragsdale@aspentimes.com.