A cannabis dispensary which opened this week in Harwood Heights hopes to provide the first drive-thru cannabis in Illinois, if state legislators working to legalize it are successful.
Ross Morreale, chief executive officer of Green Rose Advisors, said the third location of Green Rose Dispensary in the state is housed in a former bank and already has a drive-up space.
“We hope to do drive-thru sales here in the near future, so that was attractive to us,” he said, noting drive-thru would make sales easier for medical cannabis patients and people with disabilities.
Several state legislators, including Sen. Laura Fine of Glenview and Rep. Bob Morgan of Highwood, both Democrats, and others have been working to pass legislation that would allow drive-thru sales of cannabis at dispensaries, with a series of identity checks and safeguards in place.
Ben Isabel, Fine’s chief of staff, said, “At the end of the (spring) session we hit some snags in the negotiating process, involving smaller, independent (cannabis) businesses. It didn’t get across the finish line.
“But we are in negotiations to iron out the issues and have made some good progress.”
They hope to get the legislation passed in the General Assembly’s fall veto session or spring session, he added.
Fine has been in the forefront of leading on medical cannabis issues, and she hopes this legislation will expand access, he said, for all dispensary customers.
Asked how identity checks and security would work for drive-thru sales, Morreale responded, “The state will look at various options but overall, it will work very much like our pre-orders currently work. Pre-orders are half our business so we have a lot of experience in this area.”
Customers register on the company website and pre-order from the menu, he said. When they arrive at the store to pick up their purchases, they have to show staff their photo IDs with their birth dates, the dispensary scans those, and the customers pay for the product.
“With drive-thru service it could work much the same except people would not have to come in,” he observed. “They would show their photo IDs and pay at the drive-thru window after ordering their products via the website. It would not require a lot of extra steps.”
The dispensary would add security cameras to the drive-thru area, and it already has security staffing, he added.
The dispensary, located at 4660 N. Harlem Avenue, will be open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily and has free parking for customers, according to the company. It is Harwood Heights’ first cannabis dispensary. Green Rose opened its flagship store in Chicago’s River North neighborhood in November 2022 and its second dispensary in Lincolnwood in January.
The company plans a grand opening later this month.
