Progress 2021: Q&A with The Green Jar co-owner Bailey Stuart

The Green Jar is one of the first cannabis retail outlets that started in the Mat-Su Valley. Bailey Stuart, Caleb Saunders, and Christopher Farris own and operate the facility, striving to provide a professional and inviting environment for their customers.

Stuart participated in a question and answer interview to discuss how they’ve adapted to the pandemic over the last year.

Q: Generally speaking, how have things been over the last year?

A: “Overall, they have been well, considering what our community has gone through, and that’s for the entirety of our industry. We’re all doing still pretty well. We all saw the same hit as any other industry, but we’re still continuing to be operational. For us, it’s been perfectly fine. I haven’t had to lay off a single employee. Nothing but positive has come from all of this for us.”

Stuart took a moment to explain some of Green Jar’s background, and said, “We’ve pretty much, us owners, have been participating in every single marijuanua patrol board from the conceptualization… So, all of us owners understand where regulations come from and why they were formed. We wanted to be a business that just changed stereotypes and show that we could be just as professional as any other industry. So obviously when COVID-19 came around, that was a great opportunity to show our professionalism and ‘how do we handle this?’”

Q: So, things have been working pretty well then?

A: “Yeah, they have been. When COVID-19 hit, we had a lot of decisions to make. We work directly with the public… At the end of the day, there’s a lot of people and their bottom line is that paycheck… If they were exposed, thought they had symptoms or knew they had COVID, they were automatically on paid leave, which incentivised our staff to call out and reduced any exposure to the staff here, which thus reduced risk to the customers, which is our biggest concern.”

Q: What are some other ways you’ve adapted to the pandemic?

A: “So, we had done the call-in ordering. So, you can call in or order online. We prepare your order. We had stands outside where you would park your car. We would give you a call when it was time to come in. We reduced the amount of customers in the store immediately by that mechanism. It helped a lot. Just implementing online ordering was a huge one. It just reduced the amount of time and exposure customers and staff had in the store.”

Q: Had you been doing online ordering before this?

A: “We had, but we hadn’t rolled it out as strong as we did with COVID-19. It wasn’t as well known… Because of the whole COVID-19, many people were looking for online orders, so it helped propel that system.”

Q: What were some of the biggest challenges "Green Jar faced this year?

A: “The biggest challenge was the public safety of our staff and the public. That was huge for us… It would be minimizing the exposure risks of our staff and customers, and implementing that paid medical leave. That was the solution to our biggest problem.”

Q: Financially speaking, would you say that you’ve done okay?

A: “We’ve done okay. We’ve done just fine because we were able to continue to serve our customers, and our customers saw what we were implementing… At the end of the day, I want people to feel comfortable and feel like they’re in a professional environment when they come to our store.”

Q: How do you think the cannabis industry as a whole has been doing this last year?

A: “Actually, it’s still been doing really well. They’re still continuing growth. They’re still continuing to open retail, cultivation, even testing through COVID-19. For us, our industry, it had momentum to help through COVID-19, and still continuing to go forward.”

Q: Do you have anything coming up that you want to mention?

A: “Yeah. I want to mention our four year anniversary is coming up, March 25, and we invite our community to come celebrate with us. We’ll be holding giveaways all day. We’re just excited to celebrate with them.”

Green Jar is located at 4901 East Blue Lupine Drive. Suite E off the Parks Highway. For more information, call 907-631-3800, email info@greenjarak.com, or visit thegreenjarak.com.