MINNEAPOLIS — The seventh annual Legacy Cup wrapped Saturday at Surly Brewing Festival Field, and NativeCare left with the hardware that matters most to the people who grow and roll the product: Best Infused Pre-Roll.

That trophy is not a surprise to anyone who has been watching the Red Lake Nation brand since it opened Minnesota’s first adult-use dispensary on August 1, 2023. It is still a big win. Legacy Cup is the Midwest’s largest cannabis festival. Judges and the public score finished retail products. NativeCare sponsored the VIP Lounge, showed up with the team, and brought another cup home to Red Lake.

The brand put it simply after the awards: the win belongs to the growers, the rollers, and everyone who refuses to cut corners.

A Native-owned company with four doors open

NativeCare is tribally owned by the Red Lake Nation. Four retail stores are open now:

  • Red Lake — the original, on the reservation
  • Thief River Falls
  • West St. Paul
  • Maplewood — the fourth location, and the second in the Twin Cities

That is the footprint that started as one shop in northern Minnesota and now runs from the reservation to the metro. More stores are in the works. New flavors are hitting shelves as cultivation keeps turning out weekly harvests.

The flower is the point. NativeCare runs one of Minnesota’s largest and most advanced tribal cultivation operations, growing, processing, and packaging on Red Lake Nation land. Pre-rolls are full flower — not trim, not shake. The same standard that put infused pre-rolls on the cup stage is what shows up in the jar.

High Times covered NativeCare when Red Lake made history as Minnesota’s first legal adult-use shop. Three years later, the story is no longer “first.” It is “still setting the bar.”

Why this cup win lands

Minnesota’s adult-use market is crowded now. That makes a category win at Legacy Cup mean something. Infused pre-rolls are a craft product: flower has to be right, the concentrate has to be right, and the roll has to hold both without falling apart in the bag or on the flame.

NativeCare already has a Legacy Cup track record. Last year’s run included Best Infused Pre-Roll and other adult-use trophies. This year’s Best Infused Pre-Roll is the latest proof that the grow and the roll are staying consistent while the company scales.

For a Native-owned operator, the optics matter too. Red Lake opened the state’s first legal rec counter when a lot of Minnesota still had nowhere to buy smokable, Minnesota-grown cannabis. The compact with the state opened the path off-reservation. Jobs followed — more than 100 employees, the large majority tribal members. The cup is public recognition. The stores and the payroll are the longer win.

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A personal note from time spent in the state

When I was in Minnesota, NativeCare was the only smokable Minnesota-grown cannabis I could reliably find that I actually wanted to smoke. When I am in Minnesota now, it is still the only cannabis I would smoke.

That is not a slogan. It is the reason this weekend matters. You can open doors and drop new flavors all year. If the flower is not there, none of it sticks. NativeCare’s grow is why the infused pre-roll won, why the VIP lounge was packed with the brand’s people, and why the Maplewood and West St. Paul counters feel like the same company that started on Highway 1 in Red Lake.

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What comes next

More stores. More flavors. Same grow.

NativeCare is not whispering its way through Minnesota anymore. Four retail locations, a cultivation program built for volume and quality, and another Legacy Cup trophy in the infused pre-roll category. The brand that opened the market is now competing at the top of it.

Find NativeCare in Red Lake, Thief River Falls, West St. Paul, and Maplewood. Ask for the infused pre-roll that just took the cup. Then ask what else just came off the tables up north.

Minnesota’s first is still Minnesota’s finest. This weekend, the judges said so too.

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