In 2023, Minnesota enacted a law allowing hemp products to be sold in retail stores outside a dispensary through special licensing. Liquor stores in general must abide by a strict list of items they can sell, and when the law passed, it gave them a much-needed lifeline as alcohol sales continued to decline.

Jon Halper, CEO of Top Ten Liquor, a chain of 12 stores in the Twin Cities area, seized the moment to bring in THC beverages and carve out a new category in liquor stores. Basket size has increased 25-30%, and most of those baskets include both THC and alcohol. Very few THC purchases are THC-only.

Halper has been a strong supporter and resource for the cannabis industry, sharing data-driven insights into consumer behavior and buyer preferences while actively educating his customers. He wants infused beverages to work, and he actively collaborates with brands to develop the best strategy for success and sends out a monthly newsletter explaining this new sector.

On November 12, 2026, hemp products will become illegal to sell at the federal level, but within Minnesota, low-dose hemp remains legal. From a state perspective, it stays legal for now.

Who Is Actually Buying THC Drinks?

Halper is keeping a sharp eye on who wants THC beverages and what they are looking for in terms of dosing and flavors. Gummies and shots are also strong sellers.

Interestingly, the least engaged demographic is 21 to 30-year-olds. Halper believes they are consuming cannabis through other formats like smoking or vaping, but they are not coming into liquor stores to spend $15 on a 4-pack of 10mg beverages. The price point is a barrier, and unlike older consumers, younger consumers are already comfortable shopping in dispensaries.

On the other end of the spectrum, Halper sees soccer moms embracing beverages as a way to take the edge off hectic daily life, along with veterans seeking emotional relief. For older consumers, sleep problems and insomnia are primary drivers.

With only 25% of his customers currently purchasing THC beverages or even aware they exist, Halper sees enormous room to grow. That untapped 75% is where his team leans heavily into education and sees low-dose 5mg beverages as a good entry point for the canna-curious.

The 5mg vs. 10mg THC Beverage Pricing Problem

Halper would love to see 5mg succeed, because a consumer who wants more will reach for a second one, while a 10mg drinker is likely done for the night. But the pricing math works against it. The cost difference between manufacturing a 5mg and a 10mg can is negligible for manufacturers, which means there is not enough price separation at retail to make the lower dose a compelling value. A 4-pack of 10mg runs around $14.99 versus $12.99 for 5mg, and for most shoppers, that gap is not big enough to justify half the potency. It is not like alcohol, where buying a larger format delivers a noticeably better deal and drives volume, the reason vodka is such a handle business.

Tolerance is the other factor. Regular consumers build it quickly, and within a few weeks of starting at 5mg, many find they need more to feel the same effect and move up to 10mg. Meanwhile, outside of Minnesota, some markets are already selling 50mg cans as their top seller, which tells you where habitual consumers tend to land.

How Jon Halper Is Using AI to Target the Untapped 75%

To go after that opportunity, Halper is turning to AI. He plans to run every customer basket from 2025 through an AI tool to identify the common factors among shoppers who made a THC purchase, what else they bought, and the correlations between their behavior and that of customers who have not yet entered the category.

The goal is to use those patterns to start targeting the right people with the right message. As Halper points out, large retailers like Target have the supercomputers and resources to do this kind of analysis at scale. AI levels the playing field for independent retailers who are working with leaner teams and tighter budgets.

Tackling the Price Wars

Halper’s goal is not to drive product prices down, even while working to stay the most competitive in the market. “I think it’s important we don’t bring the market down, and so we try and find that balance of profitability and competitiveness in how we price what we sell,” he said.

He has landed on $14.99 as the sweet spot for a 10mg 4-pack. His stores carry items priced at $17.99, $19.99 and above, but that is where the market seems to settle. He is not pushing prices lower, and he does not want to.

THC beverages are currently the healthiest margin category in the store, filling a gap left by declining alcohol sales. If those margins get compressed, the category stops doing the job it was brought in to do.

That said, he knows price compression is coming. As the category matures, prices tend to drift down. Add in the legal uncertainty at the federal level and the competitive pressure that follows, and he expects some consolidation in pricing, whether he wants it or not. When people start to panic or fight for market share, they reach for price as the lever. It benefits consumers, but it puts real pressure on retailers already navigating a shrinking alcohol business.

Brands Must Participate

Every retailer will tell you that a brand can’t generate sales velocity without a well-planned marketing strategy that aligns with the store’s promotional calendar. Halper stresses the importance of a brand’s in-store presence and won’t work with brands that don’t pull their weight.

The bar is high. He has brought in nationally recognized brands over the past six months, brands that performed well at other retailers, and some don’t make it into his top 100. The THC beverage space simply does not have the mass advertising or brand recognition that alcohol does. Outside of social media, most consumers have never heard of these companies. Even the bigger names might register with 2% of the population. The other 98% are walking in with no frame of reference.

That makes a brand’s in-store presence non-negotiable. Sales data matters, product innovation matters, but so does showing up, doing tastings, and telling your story directly to the customer standing in front of you. In a category where almost nobody walks in with brand loyalty, the shelf and the sales floor are where it gets built.

Breezy and the Rise of Experiential Retail in THC

A good example is Top Ten Liquor’s upcoming introduction of Breezy, a brand that produces dissolvable THC strips that can be added to any drink. Rather than just placing product on a shelf, Breezy is building end caps with a TV monitor to walk customers through the concept with a “Make It Your Own” message. That is the kind of commitment Halper is looking for.

The 3-Tier Holy Grail: Necessary Infrastructure or Costly Middleman?

Halper is not convinced that brands need to bow to the 3-tier system being touted as the only way to keep control of a highly regulated market. He feels some wholesalers are overstating their value.

From where he sits, wholesalers are not doing the safety and regulatory work they claim justifies their seat at the table. “I have never had a single wholesaler come into one of my stores, call me and say, ‘we want to work with your staff on safety or training,'” he said. “Not once. Never. Hasn’t happened.” He cards customers. He pays taxes. He handles compliance.

He would like to see them step up. Top Ten Liquor is currently working with a third-party company to place a compliance seal on every product in its stores, so customers can see at a glance that each item meets full state requirements. It is exactly the kind of initiative wholesalers could and should be driving. Halper actually referred the company to wholesalers first, thinking they were the natural fit. They did not take the lead.

What he sees instead is a money grab dressed up in the language of public safety. The big alcohol wholesalers are watching retail THC sales happen without them, and they are not happy about it. So they lean on scare tactics, lobbying Congress with the argument that a strict 3-tier structure is the only responsible path forward. Meaning, if you want to make it into mass retail, you go through them.

Halper also pushes back on the historical argument. The 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition, does not mandate a 3-tier structure. It essentially says alcohol is illegal unless a state legalizes it. The infrastructure that followed came later, shaped by lobbying and politics rather than constitutional requirements. And alcohol is the outlier. The gun industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and virtually every other heavily regulated sector in the United States operate without a mandated 3-tier structure. So why, Halper asks, does THC need one?

He is also frustrated because the extra costs get passed down to the consumer. That 30 to 35% wholesaler markup gets baked into the retail price. If the category is going to carry that kind of overhead, he would rather see it go to the government than to a middleman claiming credit for work they are not doing.

He is not anti-wholesaler. If a brand is scaling and needs efficient distribution, wholesalers earn their cut. That is fair. What he pushes back on is the manufactured urgency and the false premise that the category cannot function safely without them.

“If they’re the only way the category can be legal, and their fee is that it has to be strict 3-tier,” he said, “it’s a fee that we’re paying to get them on our lobbying side to get it done. I don’t like it, but I get it.”