Eric Cooper turns marijuana into family business

Kyler Roberts, Contributing Writer
February 24, 2015

Post by Monkey Grass Farms.

Eric Cooper is a man who has worked hard all of his life, and now he runs a successful marijuana producer/processor in Wenatchee called Monkey Grass Farms.

Monkey Grass Farms was the largest producer-processor in the state last year, with more than $1 million in sales in their first six months of operation.

But weed wasn’t Cooper’s first outlet, as he went from mobile homes to trucking to contracting to nursing.

Why did he decide to take the leap into marijuana?

“It’s a family thing, I think that’s what got me into it because I knew the whole family could get into it and have a lot of fun, while also making some dollars,” said Cooper, who was born and raised in Wenatchee.

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Marijuana not Cooper’s first taste of business

Cooper went to school at Washington State University and left college after about three years to pursue big business opportunities. In 1978, he went back to Wenatchee to start working with his dad, who owned a mobile home and recreational vehicle business. When his dad retired in 1984, Cooper and his brother took over the business. They sold the business to start their own trucking company to service the mobile home industry. They then received general contracting licenses and started building several hundred houses in Wenatchee in 2000. When the housing business bottomed out in 2007, Cooper went to nursing school and worked as a registered nurse for a few years. Cooper says when he got tired of the “time clock” jobs, he decided to open up a legal medical marijuana dispensary. The dispensary has gradually grown into the producer/processor company that is Monkey Grass Farms. “I guess that makes me an entrepreneur,” Cooper said. “I’ve owned my own businesses, but this is the first business where I’ve had an outside partner or two, but it’s working well.”

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Monkey Grass Farms is a family

All of Monkey Grass Farms’ 30 employees are close relatives or friends. Each has his or her own responsibilities, such as his wife, who is the processing director, or his daughters, who are the sales and marketing directors.

Cooper’s son, however, branched off to run his own retail store.

Ryan Cooper runs The Happy Crop Shoppe in Wenatchee, and he says that it’s convenient having a lot of local product from Monkey Grass Farms.

“It’s great,” he said. “I definitely enjoy being able to buy weed from my dad and sell it in my store. There’s not a lot of people that are able to do that.”

Impacting the marijuana industry in Washington

The Monkey Grass Farms brand is becoming well known across the state, thanks in large part to Eric Cooper’s daughters’ work in social-media marketing. “Social media, it is what it is,” Cooper said. “You don’t do business without it anymore.” Cooper says that posting on the company’s Facebook page about a certain product strain will lead to more purchases of that strain at the retail stores they work with. “We have a really good brand out there,” Cooper said. “We are well liked by our retailers and our customers. What’s making us different is having quality product in quality packaging.”


Cooper says he approaches this as a food-agriculture business.

“It is like growing hops for beer, you know,” Cooper said. “It is an agriculture business and we treat it as such.”

As an indoor-grow operation, Monkey Grass harvests year-’round. Cooper said 150 plants are harvested every week, producing about 30 to 32 pounds of sellable dry bud. This allows orders to be ready to ship to the retailers every Thursday or Friday.

Post by The Happy Crop Shoppe.

Retailers like doing business with Monkey Grass

Ryan Cooper is one of Monkey Grass Farms’ biggest retail customers, but it isn’t just because of the family relationship.

Ryan understands his father’s expertise in business.

“Very savvy, very industry-knowledgeable and able to accomplish a lot on starter companies,” Ryan said of Eric Cooper. He calls his dad “outgoing and driven.”

Another frequent buyer is New Vansterdam, a retail shop in Vancouver, Wash.

“Monkey Grass Farms is extremely receptive to the desires of their community,” said New Vansterdam’s manager, Shon Harris, “and that’s very important when it comes to any business, especially a large grower.”

Harris also praises how Eric Cooper and Monkey Grass make changes to their product when a customer has a problem.

“Monkey Grass has a vision for this industry, and we appreciate the
work they are doing,” Harris said. “You have growers and you have business
partners, and we’re happy to see a company like Monkey Grass in this
industry.”