The owners of a new mom-and-pop pot shop quickly learned that the local cannabis business can be a bit cutthroat.
“It is a really, really tricky, tricky market right now, and it is competitive,” says Robbie Weeks. She and her husband, Hunter Weeks, recently opened The Jungle House in the green house on S. Ashley previously occupied by Liberty Cannabis and Greenstone Provisions before that.
“Four days after our grand opening, our Google page got shut down for three weeks,” she recounts. They suspect a competitor reported them to Google for supposedly deceptive content. The time the search giant took to process their appeal cost them some early visibility, especially crucial for a family business since bigger industry players can better afford paid placements on such sites as Weedmaps and Leafly.
The Weekses strive to compete on personal service and responsiveness to consumer feedback. Hunter holds a day job in tech sales, but he or Robbie is on-site most of the time, as they live nearby with their two school-age children.
They’ve redecorated and redesigned the space so that customers enter from the front door. They also validate an hour of parking in the lot across the street.
Robbie, who grew up on a farm near Belleville and has a background in trade show marketing, is especially excited about the house next door, which they’ve also leased. They’re in a bit of a race with Crave Cannabis on Research Park Dr. to launch the city’s first on-site consumption lounge. Their vision includes an Amsterdam-style café on the ground floor and special events such as dinners, yoga, and art shows upstairs.
“We’re really hoping that we can get that open and make it a very unique, Ann Arboresque space,” she says.
The Jungle House, 338 S. Ashley. (734) 821–5369. Daily 9 a.m.–10 p.m. thejunglehousea2.com
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