Olean is not where the cannabis story usually starts. It’s a small city in western New York, hard against the Pennsylvania line. At the edge of the Seneca Nation’s Allegany Territory, unregulated cannabis is technically just down the road. Most people chasing a dispensary license picked Brooklyn or the Hudson Valley. The team behind Jupiter Cafe picked here, on purpose.
That makes more sense once you know who’s behind the counter. Jupiter Cafe isn’t a startup that found a cause; it came out of one. The store is owned by Living Proof Inc., a veteran-founded nonprofit that has been doing economic-justice work in New York City for close to two decades. Living Proof was co-founded nearly twenty years ago by veterans alongside Nusaiba Jackson, an artist, activist, and entrepreneur. “Living Proof is a global business that creates shared value through Entrepreneurship, Education, and Exchange,” says Executive Director of the non-profit, Yvonne Washington. “We believe ordinary people working together can build Extraordinary Enterprises™. It was specifically founded to ensure marginalized communities are prepared to compete in a globalized economy.”
So when New York’s legal cannabis market opened, the dispensary wasn’t a pivot; it was the assignment. “Helping New Yorkers and CDI communities benefit from legal cannabis licensing is the most appropriate and aligned thing we could have done as native New Yorkers disproportionately impacted by drug wars past and present,” Jupiter Cafe Manager Kelby Powell says.
The store runs on a CAURD license, a program New York built for people carrying prior cannabis convictions. Getting one is supposed to be the hard part. Powell pushes back: “It was not hard,” he says, “What was and is hard in our communities is knowing how to fill out paperwork. Operationalizing the license without being taken advantage of is what is hardest.” What carried them through was their network, a landlord who believed in them, and a community that opened the door.
Their team describes the store as an incubator, a working classroom for legacy operators and anyone trying to break into compliant cannabis the right way. By their count, they’ve trained more than a hundred people across New York and helped spin up roughly ten businesses. Powell sees himself as a “CEO in training.” He says, “It’s been an awesome journey to build this dispensary from ground up; from nothing to something. We are now a staple in this community.”
The menu tells you what kind of staple it is. Early on, Jupiter Cafe laid down a line that they did not want to become Weed R’ Us. In practice, that means restraint, curating rather than stocking every big brand. “Our menu is composed of brands and products that have created a great relationship with Jupiter Cafe and resonated with our community,” says Powell. It’s also the line they draw against the gray market down the road. Not competing on price, competing on lab results and trust.
A year in, the lesson that stuck wasn’t a cannabis lesson at all. “All businesses are e-commerce,” Powell says, “Although we are located in Olean, we are based in the world wide web. Anyone anywhere can view our menu at Jupitercafe.store. The importance of our website, menu, and message is so critical for customers throughout the region seeking safe, secure, quality products. We continue to work to organically improve our online presence as we have grown our in-person community and customers.”
That’s the Jupiter Cafe bet, and it’s a different one. Not the fastest, cheapest, or flashiest. A dispensary run like a nonprofit’s proof of concept: that the people the drug war tried to bury can come back as licensed operators and bring the next hundred up behind them.
