Entering New York Cannabis
New York legalized adult-use cannabis in 2021, but the storefront rollout was anything but instant. By the time the first Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary licenses started getting handed out, an entire shadow market had already moved in — sticker shops, "gifting" lounges, and storefronts selling whatever a wholesaler would put on a truck. The legal market started behind, and the people building it knew they were going to have to earn back trust that the unlicensed market had spent a decade collecting.
Good Grades is part of that first wave of licensed New York cannabis retail. The team came to the table with a question that sounds simple and is not: what does a legal dispensary owe the block it operates on?
Opening in Queens
The answer started with a location. Jamaica, Queens has a long, real relationship with cannabis — culturally, historically, and on the corner. Most of the early national press about legal New York cannabis was about Manhattan: SoHo storefronts, Union Square launches, lines around the block. Jamaica did not get a license in the first round of headlines. Good Grades opened on Jamaica Avenue anyway, because the dispensary's job was to be the legal option for the people already buying — not to chase the tourist crowd in another borough.
The Jamaica Avenue store opened in 2023. From day one it operated like a neighborhood business: regulars on a first-name basis, a menu that paid attention to what the block actually asked for, and staff who lived nearby.
Community Mission
Forty percent of New York's cannabis tax revenue is earmarked for communities harmed by the war on drugs. That money only exists when people buy from licensed shops. Every legal pre-roll, gummy, or cart Good Grades sells funds reentry programs, job training, housing support, and youth programming through the state's Community Reinvestment fund. The illicit shop two blocks over does not. That is the policy difference, and it is one of the reasons the dispensary takes the legal-versus-illicit conversation seriously instead of treating it as marketing.
Educational Focus
Most people walking into a legal dispensary in 2026 have never had a real conversation about what they are buying. The cannabis on today's shelves is more potent, more processed, and more specifically formulated than anything the average person tried in 2010. Good Grades trains every budtender to slow that conversation down — what is the difference between THC and CBD, what do terpenes do, why does an edible take ninety minutes, what tolerance actually means, what to do if you over-do it. The store is built so that a first-time customer can leave with a low-dose gummy and a confident plan, and a longtime smoker can leave with live rosin and a new favorite strain.
Forbes Recognition
Forbes contributor Janet Burns has covered the dispensary twice. The first piece, in March 2023, was about the launch of the dime-bag concept and the deliberate decision to keep a legal entry price point that competed with what New Yorkers were already paying on the street. The second, in January 2024, looked at what the store had become a year in — the educational model, the customer experience, the community footprint. Both stories are collected on our Forbes coverage page, with original summaries and direct links to the articles.
Building Delivery
A single storefront can only serve the blocks immediately around it. Delivery is how a licensed dispensary actually competes with the unlicensed market across an entire borough. In 2025 and 2026, Good Grades expanded same-day licensed delivery across every neighborhood in Queens, into Nassau County, and out along Long Island. Same menu, same lab-tested product, same ID check at the door, same receipt that proves the tax was paid.
Building Cannabis & Culture
The other half of the work is editorial. New York cannabis is a culture, not just a category — it lives next to hip-hop, sports, food, fashion, and neighborhood history. Cannabis & Culture is the dispensary's editorial hub for the kind of writing that usually doesn't fit on a product page: strain reviews, athlete profiles, gift guides, deep dives on the cultivators behind the jars. It exists so that walking into a Good Grades — physical or digital — feels less like shopping and more like joining a conversation that's already going.
That's the whole story, and it is also the start of it. Visit us on Jamaica Avenue, read the press coverage, or shop the live menu.