Like some sort of quaint, space-cowboy saloon, this month’s shop selection sits near our state’s border with Washington. Space Camp is nestled nicely next to the Columbia River Highway in Warren – where a small-but-stellar team of five is waiting to help you blast off.
Siblings J. Clark, Taylour Smith, and Allen Clark pilot this mission, fueled by the family brand erb. We sat down with J. and Taylour to learn more about the spark behind Space Camp. The company has grown in Southern Oregon since 2015 and has since expanded to a second farm in St. Helens. But it wasn’t until the 2020 market crash that they started exploring the idea of broadening their horizons. “We were farmers first, but we were getting squeezed and knew we had to become more integrated,” Clark explains.
In 2021, the brand acquired a Hillsboro processing facility and by 2023, they were ready to ride the rocket of retail. With a desire to avoid the over-saturation of Portland, they started looking for shop locations in surrounding areas. Destiny delivered as they made their daily commute to the St. Helens farm, stumbling upon the Warren location along the way.
At that time, Smith was building a career in the culinary, hospitality and tourism field, but the pandemic put things into perspective and she quickly realized that she wanted more control over her future. The stars aligned and she joined forces with Clark, who had been trying to bring her over to the dank side for some time. His history with Cannabis hails back to his days serving in Iraq and Afghanistan where he was introduced to its medicinal properties – replacing two of his prescriptions from the VA and his entire view of the plant.
In July of 2023, the siblings officially opened up shop with a space-themed location stacked with everything erb and much more. When asked about the original intergalactic inspiration, Smith aptly answered, “What’s more limitless than space?”
With no limit in sight, the team tells me about their latest endeavor called Ground Control: a coffee and snack shop right next door to Space Camp. The plan is to create a place where cosmic consumers can find goodies carefully curated to complement the fine flowers, extracts, concentrates and edibles sold in the dispensary. You can look forward to Ground Control’s grand opening, as well as the release of three new flavors of Space Puffs (erb’s out-of-this-world edibles) before the end of summer 2024.
