BudSpace™: Now You Too Can Pay Rent to Pretend You Still Work in Weed
- Boof du Jour
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
The scene outside the BudSpace flagship in downtown Kalamazoo feels like a 2019 dispensary soft opening — if everyone inside had been fired, evicted, and still owed their old coworkers money.
I’m here on assignment from Boof du Jour, reporting live from what might be the most dystopian attempt yet to “restore community” to a workforce that was never supposed to unionize. BudSpace, the nation’s first co-working lounge for ex-budtenders, opened this week to a standing-room-only crowd of former cannabis retail employees, all still pretending they’re “between gigs” instead of permanently unemployable in an industry that replaced them with kiosk iPads and junior ops managers named Tyler.
The Premise: Sad WeWork for the Culturally Unemployed
According to the founder—a former Assistant AGM from Bloomz in Battle Creek who asked to only be referred to as “Zach M”—BudSpace was born out of necessity.
“After we all got laid off, we needed a place to keep our routine,” Zach M explained while hotboxing the server closet. “We don’t have jobs anymore, but we still wake up early, hit the dab bar, and talk shit about old coworkers. That doesn’t just go away.”
BudSpace offers exactly what you'd expect from a real estate startup that somehow raised money from both a crypto NFT fund and a social equity grant:
$249/month base membership (includes 1-hour daily booth reservation and 40mg edible credits)
Shared lockers with leftover dispensary polos and claw clips
Free WiFi, but only if you’re watching strain review YouTubers from 2016
BYO Tablet, no POS systems allowed
Zero job opportunities, unlimited delusion
The Decor: PTSD Chic
The moment you walk in, you’re hit with a rush of trauma: exposed brick, motivational quotes from old SOPs, and the smell of improperly cured prerolls.
One room is themed after a dispensary back office—complete with a fake time clock, a half-broken label printer, and a mirror so you can practice your “I’m a Lead now” face. Another is built to look like the break room from a Lume Cannabis location, including a cracked Keurig and passive-aggressive HR flyers about compliance with no health insurance in sight.
A makeshift “training theater” plays old corporate onboarding videos on loop, including the classic “Never Admit You Smoked the Product” and “How to Convince Customers the Discount Is a Privilege.”
The Members: Unemployed But Extremely Active on LinkedIn
BudSpace is packed with familiar faces: that one budtender who called out every Sunday but could break down terp profiles like a sommelier. The girl who cried during inventory. A guy who still claims to be “in distro.”
“I don’t miss the customers,” said one member who was terminated for vaping live resin carts in the bathroom of a Bazonzoes. “But I do miss having somewhere to go and pretending it mattered.”
Several members have launched “brands” inside BudSpace, including:
Sadie’s Stash – handmade roach clip earrings
SuperBud Solutions – a deckless consulting agency offering “vibe curation”
Litigator™ – a weed-themed trivia night that costs $40 to play and ends in tears
The Pitch Deck: A Masterpiece of Delusion
The BudSpace business plan is printed on Risograph paper and smells faintly of Lemon Cherry Gelato. It promises “cannabis-adjacent community empowerment without the labor exploitation”, which is a fancy way of saying “we don’t actually pay anyone.”
They plan to expand into Ohio, Missouri, and other “post-hype” markets where the weed boom busted just enough to leave behind hundreds of displaced hourly workers still clinging to their employee discount card in case it ever gets reactivated.
“We’re like the YMCA for burnout,” said co-founder and former Greenlight supervisor Rachel M., who was last seen huffing CRC runoff through a silicone Nectar Collector in the bathroom.
Job Fair This Saturday
BudSpace is hosting a “career day” this weekend where various MSO reps will show up to collect resumes they have no intention of reading. Attendees will be offered one-on-one resume coaching from someone who once did inventory at Terrabis and now sells affiliate CBD in DMs.
The event includes:
“Compliance Cosplay Contest”
A “Tuck Your Shirt In” workshop
Free headshots (you may only pose with a MedTech barcode scanner)
Because in 2025, the cannabis workforce isn’t being rebuilt — it’s being memorialized. BudSpace isn’t a co-working lounge. It’s a mausoleum with WiFi.
If you missed the grand opening of BudSpace™ — don’t worry. You can still pay rent on the dream.