A Minnesota mezzobusiness license is listed for $450,000

A broker is asking $450,000 for one Minnesota adult-use cannabis mezzobusiness license, with no real estate included. The figure is an asking price on a public listing. The page does not report a closed sale, a buyer's name, or an Office of Cannabis Management license number.

MN Cannabis Hub checked 420 Property listing 974457 on October 21, 2026. The listing was posted October 8, 2026, updated the same day, and marked active. The contact name on the page is C3 CRE, LLC, with the number 6502431997 printed beside it. The Hub did not independently verify that credential. Financing on the listing is cash or owner financing, and the highlight tags include seller financing.

This is a news brief about a public advertisement. The Hub does not sell cannabis, broker licenses, or vouch for the seller.

What the listing shows

The page describes the asset this way:

• One adult-use cannabis mezzobusiness license.
• "Paper license only," with no real estate attached.
• The seller says it is not a social equity license, and that ownership transfer therefore has fewer restrictions.
• The seller says only 50 adult-use mezzobusiness licenses were awarded statewide.
• The seller projects a $1.4 billion Minnesota market.
• Activity checkboxes on the form read retail/dispensary, cultivation, volatile manufacturing, and packaging/processing.
• The license-status field on the form reads "Active - Current."
• An attachment is named Minnesota-Cannabis-Mezzobusiness-License-Marketing-Package.pdf. The Hub did not retrieve that file, so this article does not describe what is inside it.

The location field is "Minnesota, USA." There is no street address, no city, and no trade name.

What the listing does not show

Several things a buyer would need are absent from the public page.

The listing does not give an OCM license number. Without that number, a reader cannot match the ad to a row on the state's licensed-businesses list. The words "Active - Current" are a field on the broker form. They are not a status the Hub confirmed with OCM.

The page does not show a purchase agreement, a closing date, or OCM's written approval of a transfer. Until those exist, $450,000 is what a seller hopes to be paid. It is not a recorded market price.

The $1.4 billion market line is the listing's projection. This article does not adopt it. OCM publishes sales and license counts on its own pages. Those are the figures to use when the question is how big the regulated market actually is. The license dashboard separates license categories. The August 2026 market report cites OCM's August 31, 2026 application and licensing tables, which counted 23 mezzobusiness licenses issued at that date, inside a total of 369 cannabis business licenses. That August count is not an October total. Issued licenses and lottery slots are different numbers, which the next sections separate.

The claim that "only fifty" mezzobusiness licenses "were awarded" does not match OCM's own June 5, 2025 lottery notice. That notice listed 50 social-equity slots and 50 general slots as available for the mezzobusiness lottery, with 207 social-equity applications and 41 general applications waiting. Being available in a lottery, being selected, holding preliminary approval, and holding an issued license are four different stages.

What the statute lets a mezzobusiness do

A mezzobusiness is the middle all-in-one license. It is larger than a microbusiness and still combines activities that standalone cultivator, manufacturer, and retailer licenses split apart. The plain-language map of every license type is the Minnesota cannabis license types guide.

Minn. Stat. 342.29, as posted by the Revisor of Statutes and read October 21, 2026, sets the operating limits. A mezzobusiness license, consistent with its endorsements, can grow cannabis, make concentrate, manufacture adult-use products, lower-potency hemp edibles, and hemp-derived consumer products, package those products, and sell plants, flower, and products to other cannabis businesses and to customers. Medical cultivation and processing are also on the authorized list when the license has the matching authority. The Hub is describing the statute, not saying this particular listing has every endorsement checked.

Size limits in subdivision 2:

• Indoor cultivation: up to 15,000 square feet of plant canopy. OCM may raise that cap to meet market demand.
• Outdoor cultivation: up to one acre of mature, flowering plants, unless OCM increases the limit. The statute caps any increase at three acres.
• Manufacturing: OCM must set a product limit equivalent to the flower that can be harvested from 15,000 square feet of canopy in a year, with room to raise it if the indoor canopy cap rises.
• Retail: with the appropriate endorsement, up to three retail locations.

Subdivision 4 limits how many of these licenses one holder can have. A mezzobusiness may also hold a cannabis event organizer license. Aside from that, the holder may not own or operate any other cannabis or hemp business, and may not hold more than one mezzobusiness license. The limit applies to every director, manager, and general partner.

Subdivision 8a says that within 18 months of receiving the license, the business must obtain at least two endorsements from this set: cultivation, extraction and concentration, production of consumer products, and retail operations. If it does not, OCM may suspend, revoke, or refuse to renew the license.

Subdivision 10 allows transport between the license holder's own facilities if the business gives OCM the information in section 342.35 and follows section 342.36. The listing's line about transport "subject to additional application requirements" points at that rule. It is not a separate transporter license.

Each retail counter still needs a local registration before it sells to customers. Minn. Stat. 342.22 requires a microbusiness, mezzobusiness, retailer, medical combination business, or lower-potency hemp edible retailer to register with the city, town, or county where the shop is located. A state license does not skip that step. The listing cites section 342.22 for the same point.

A license transfer still needs OCM

The seller's pitch is that a non-social-equity license is easier to transfer. The statute is more specific than that sentence.

Minn. Stat. 342.12 is the transfer section. Read October 21, 2026, it says:

• Licenses available to all applicants under section 342.14, subdivision 1b, paragraph (c), may be freely transferred, subject to the prior written approval of the office, unless the license holder has not received a final site inspection, or the license holder is a social equity applicant.
• A license issued as a social equity license may be transferred only to another social equity applicant for three years after issuance. After those three years, the holder may transfer it to any entity. The Division of Social Equity reviews the transfer, and OCM's prior written approval is still required.
• Preliminary license approval may not be transferred.
• A new license is required if the legal business structure changes, or if the licensee dissolves, consolidates, reorganizes, goes through bankruptcy, insolvency, or receivership, merges, or assigns substantially all of its assets for the benefit of creditors.
• Licenses must be renewed annually.

"Freely transferred" is the statute's phrase for the general-applicant pool, and it still sits next to "prior written approval." A paper license that has never had a final site inspection is outside that freer bucket. A preliminary approval cannot be sold at all.

Section 342.14, subdivision 6 is why "paper" matters. Within 18 months of preliminary approval, the applicant has to give OCM a real address, the local government, and any updated security plan. OCM then forwards the application locally, schedules a site inspection, and collects the license fee. Final authorization and the issued license come after that, or OCM sends a rejection. An advertisement that says "paper license only" and also says "active" is asking the reader to hold two ideas that the statute treats as different stages. Only the license number, on OCM's list, resolves which stage this one is in.

The pre-July 1, 2026 caps in section 342.14, subdivision 1b match the lottery math: up to 50 mezzobusiness licenses for social equity applicants and up to 50 for all applicants. The office was not required to issue the maximum. Beginning July 1, 2026, OCM must set how many cultivator, manufacturer, retailer, and mezzobusiness licenses it will issue. If it offers any, the social-equity count has to be at least as large as the open pool. A 2026 buyer should not treat the old "50 plus 50" ceiling as a permanent inventory of transferable licenses.

OCM's June 5, 2025 news release, "Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management holds first lottery", said selected applicants still had to pass background checks, file a labor peace agreement, secure a site and local approvals, and submit final business plans before a license would be granted. The lottery explainer on the Hub walks through that sequence. The public license lookup is where an issued license number can be checked. A listing without a number cannot be checked there.

What to verify before treating $450,000 as a comp

Someone comparing this ad with the cost of opening a store can use a short list. None of these items is on the public listing. The guide to opening a dispensary covers the rest of the build-out, which is a separate budget from the asking price of a license.

1. The OCM license number, the legal entity, and whether the public list shows the license as issued.
2. Whether the license was issued from the general pool or as a social equity license. That choice controls the three-year transfer limit.
3. Whether the holder has received a final site inspection. If not, section 342.12 does not put the license in the "freely transferred" category.
4. Whether any current document is preliminary approval. Preliminary approval cannot be transferred.
5. Written confirmation of the path for OCM's prior approval, including what happens if the buyer's business structure is a different entity. A structure change can require a new license.
6. Which endorsements are actually on the license, and the date the 18-month two-endorsement clock started.
7. Whether any retail site already has a local registration under section 342.22. Up to three shops are allowed only with the retail endorsement, and each shop registers locally.
8. What "owner financing" means in the contract: the price, the down payment, the security, and what happens if OCM denies the transfer.

The Hub is not a law firm and is not a party to this listing. Those eight items are the gaps on the public page, not a closing checklist from the broker.

A separate question is whether any shop is already operating on the license. The listing says no real estate is included. An issued mezzobusiness can look very different from a paper ad. Dankz in St. Cloud is one October 2026 example of a mezzobusiness with a retail endorsement and a storefront. The dispensary directory is the place to see which licensed shops are listed for shoppers. Elk River's decision to drop a city-run store is a different story: a municipal retailer license is not this mezzobusiness ad, and a city license is not counted against the same cap.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the $450,000 Minnesota mezzobusiness listing a completed sale?

No completed sale is shown on the listing. On October 21, 2026 the page was an active asking price of $450,000, posted October 8, 2026, for a license with no real estate included.

Does the $450,000 listing name the Minnesota license holder?

It does not. Listing 974457 names the broker contact as C3 CRE, LLC and does not publish an OCM license number, a trade name, or a street address.

Can a buyer transfer a Minnesota mezzobusiness license without OCM approval?

No. Section 342.12 requires the office's prior written approval. A general-pool license that has had a final site inspection may be transferred with that approval. A social equity license has an added three-year limit. Preliminary approval cannot be transferred.

How many mezzobusiness licenses did Minnesota make available in the 2025 lottery?

OCM's June 5, 2025 release listed 50 social-equity mezzobusiness licenses and 50 general mezzobusiness licenses as available that day. That is not the same figure as licenses later issued. OCM's August 31, 2026 tables, cited in the Hub's August market report, showed 23 mezzobusiness licenses issued.

Sources

• 420 Property, listing 974457, "Minnesota - Cannabis Mezzobusiness License," listed and updated October 8, 2026, status active when checked October 21, 2026: https://www.420property.com/listing/minnesota-cannabis-mezzobusiness-license/
• Minn. Stat. 342.29, cannabis mezzobusiness licensing and operations, Revisor of Statutes, read October 21, 2026: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/342.29
• Minn. Stat. 342.12, licenses, transfers, adjustments, read October 21, 2026: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/342.12
• Minn. Stat. 342.14, including subdivision 1b (maximum number of licenses) and subdivision 6 (final authorization), read October 21, 2026: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/342.14
• Minn. Stat. 342.22, retail local registration, read October 21, 2026: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/342.22
• Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management, news release, June 5, 2025, lottery counts including 50 social-equity and 50 general mezzobusiness licenses available: https://mn.gov/ocm/media/news-releases/?id=1202-690573
• OCM application and licensing tables as of August 31, 2026, as cited in the Hub's August market report: 23 mezzobusiness licenses issued. https://mn.gov/ocm/data-reports/application-data/

MN Cannabis Hub does not sell cannabis. This page is a news write-up of a public listing, not a paid placement and not an offer to sell a license.