Green Girl: Kelly Young of Torch Cannabis Co. | Features

Holistic approach to self-care

By Jillian Manning | Jan. 29, 2022

Kelly Young owns a dispensary, but her goal isn’t to get you high. Instead, at Torch Cannabis Co. in Central Lake, Young promotes a holistic approach to self-care.

“My whole passion has been around helping people get access to [cannabis],” she says. “To learn how it works with their bodies so they can become their own health and wellness advocate.”

Hometown Girl
Young was born and raised in northern Michigan — delivered, in fact, at a roadside park at Birch Lake while her parents were on the way to Munson Hospital  — and has always considered the area home. Her name is a familiar one north of Traverse City, as her father Richard (Rick) Young has been the proprietor of the Village Market in Elk Rapids since 1974. Young herself did stints in the family business, both in Elk Rapids and at the family’s grocery store in Central Lake.

“In 2011, my brother and I bought the Central Lake grocery store,” Young says. “The footprint size of the store wasn’t big enough to really sustain all that we put into it to make it a good community grocery store, so we knew we needed to expand it to make it bigger.”

The Young family purchased two buildings next door, planning to tear them down and rebuild, but community backlash put the plans on hold and the buildings sat vacant. Then the Dollar General opened down the street and “literally crushed” their business.

Young says the family was left with a tough choice: Let all of their employees go — or let one of the owners go. She decided to depart, which kicked off the new and winding journey she’s found in the cannabis field.

A Pipe Dream
At the time, cannabis had not yet been legalized in Michigan, but Young saw promise in the emerging industry and wanted to get a foot in the door. She started researching the market and discovered a unique opportunity: cannabis extraction. Farmers growing cannabis often only use part of the plant, and extraction experts process the “waste” in a lab environment to separate chemical compounds like CBD (an essential component of medical marijuana) and non-psychoactive TCHA, which has an array of therapeutic uses.

Young acknowledges becoming a cannabis extractor was quite a leap from owning a grocery store, and she laughs as she recounts her decision. “I basically turned in the keys to my Lexus and bought a one-ton pickup truck and a $50,000 piece of extraction equipment and set off to start a new life. I really didn’t know what I was buying or what I was doing other than it was filling a need in the market.” 

In those early days, Young was one of only two mobile cannabis extractors in the entire country, traveling to states like Colorado and California with her truck and trailer. Her work in extraction made her realize the myriad of uses for cannabis, leaning into what she calls “geeky mad-scientist stuff.”

“I found out that when I make oil, I can make it from hemp, or I can make it from marijuana,” she explains. “I did a lot of R&D with CBD products and figured out how to make my own CBD products.” That experimentation was what allowed her to find a way home. 

Highs and Lows
Young returned to Michigan in 2018 ready to start a cannabis self-care revolution. She began selling a line of CBD products called MyTCBD at farmers markets around the region. She launched a nonprofit called Free Relief, which gifted free THCA oil products to cancer patients and veterans with PTSD. And she started wondering what a brick-and-mortar location could look like.

The answer brought her back to her days at the Village Market. Young recalls thinking to herself: “I have these buildings in downtown Central Lake that are old and decrepit, that should be torn down. And I’m going to try to make a marijuana dispensary out of it.”

The path wasn’t as simple as she’d expected. To open a dispensary, Young had to get approval from the Central Lake community. The first time she got her request on the ballot in March 2020, it didn’t pass. The second time, in November 2020, it was on the ticket that sparked the Antrim Country election issues. When the results were finally confirmed, she discovered her measure had passed by a single vote. 

Years in the making, Torch Cannabis Co.’s storefront at 7957 State St. in Central Lake opened November 17, 2021.

A Growing Business
The reception from the community has been warm, Young tell us. Her products offer a unique entry point into cannabis: Rather than being a “pot shop” for folks looking to get high, she’s helping people address health and wellness concerns. Her core customer is over the age of 50 and is often looking for help with sleep or pain.

“They’re tired of the pills that the doctors are giving them, and they’re tired of drinking their way through trying to cope with life,” says Young. “I offer people a one-on-one personalized approach. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t treat, diagnose, or cure … but I can tell you an Indica is traditionally known to help people sleep, and Sativa is traditionally known to help people stay awake and be productive.”

She adds that those personal consultations are important since “everybody’s body is different,” and diet, exercise, alcohol or caffeine use, and overall mental health can play a role in how cannabis affects a customer’s body. 

As the demand for her services grows, Young has big plans for the next stages of Torch Cannabis Co. Starting in February, Young will offer delivery service to towns like Traverse City and Petoskey, and this summer she’ll launch a new product line.

With all those balls in the air, Young had to make the difficult decision to close down her nonprofit, Free Relief. But that doesn’t mean her outreach to those communities is at an end.

“Anybody who has cancer or veterans with PTSD that were interested in Free Relief can come to the dispensary and get a free bottle of CBD,” she says. “That’s all part of this whole mission. It’s not about what you’re getting: it’s about giving back.”