The licensees, selected from a pool of 41 applicants, meet the state’s social equity requirements.
Connecticut’s regulators have approved their first batch of adult-use cannabis licenses after the state’s Social Equity Council voted July 12 to greenlight 16 cultivation applications.
The licensees, selected from a pool of 41 applicants, meet the state’s social equity requirements, which include specifications on income and residency, as well as a rule that the business is at least 65% owned by the social equity applicant, according to a local WTNH report.
“Our goal was and is to affirm that social equity applicants are true owners of their businesses,” said Social Equity Council Chair Andrea Comer at the start of Tuesday’s virtual meeting, according to WTNH. “Promoting equity in the cannabis industry is our primary charge.”
The Social Equity Council was created by the Legislature through Connecticut’s adult-use cannabis law, which Gov. Ned Lamont signed last summer. The council is meant to oversee the rollout of the state’s adult-use industry to ensure it benefits those most adversely impacted by cannabis prohibition.
The Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection received more than 37,000 applications in May and June from businesses looking to secure licenses for adult-use cannabis cultivation, manufacturing, packaging, transportation and retail, and 63% of those applicants self-identified as social equity applicants, according to The Connecticut Examiner.
The applications that the Social Equity Council approved this week are for cultivators who want to grow more than 15,000 square feet of cannabis, the news outlet reported.
A third-party firm reviewed the applications and recommended five in Hartford, three in New Britain, two in Bridgeport, two in Waterby, and one each in Middletown, Manchester, Southington and Stamford, WTNH reported.
Now that they have been approved by the Social Equity Council, the applicants must complete a background check through the Department of Consumer Protection and pay a $3 million fee to the state in order to secure a provisional license.
The names of the licensees have not yet been announced, according to WTNH.
The state will issue additional licenses through a separate lottery process, The Examiner reported, and Connecticut’s adult-use market is expected to launch by the end of the year.
The company is opening the dispensary in partnership with 3Fifteen Primo Cannabis.
In partnership with 3Fifteen Primo Cannabis, a Missouri-based medical cannabis company, Cookies is opening its first retail location in Missouri this weekend.
"We feel honored and excited to be the first cannabis company in Missouri to bring the iconic Cookies brand retail store to our patients here in the Show Me State," Jason Corrado, co-founder and CEO of 3Fifteen Primo Cannabis, said in a press release. "Cookies was born in California, has grown international, and today boasts a huge brand following due to their innovative products and proprietary strain genetics library. We look forward to supporting this thriving community by bringing this well-respected and top-selling cannabis brand to Missouri."
According to the press release, grand opening festivities will include live music, food, giveaways, and much more and will take place at 10 a.m. CST July 16. Visitors at the grand opening will also have the opportunity to win one year of free Cookies. In addition, "15 others will be chosen for an exclusive event with Berner on Aug. 6." Berner is Cookies' co-founder and CEO and is a rapper and entrepreneur from the Bay Area of California.
The company's new location will feature a variety of THC and CBD products and will include several of Cookies' in-house brands including, Lemonnade, Collins Ave, Runtz, Minntz and much more, according to the release.
Planet 13 co-CEO Groesbeck says "there really are no luxuries here" as the Las Vegas-based company navigates inflation and other economic challenges and offers advice for how the industry can approach this "uncharted territory."
Entertainment is not confined to inside casinos in Las Vegas, as tourists can catch the water show at the Fountains of Bellagio, which propel water more than 450 feet toward the sky, or simply stand and look up at the light displays at the Freemont Street Experience.
Planet 13 has embraced and embodied that entertainment culture in its SuperStore, apparent from the moment visitors step foot inside the dispensary, with its responsive digital koi pond and aerial orb show—it’s all about creating an experience and dazzling customers, especially tourists.
In building that 112,000-square-foot cannabis retail facility, there were lessons that founders and co-CEOs Robert Groesbeck and Larry Scheffler learned, and from their experience launching their first store, Medizin, in Nevada’s medical market before adult-use sales were legal in the state. But economic realities have shifted dramatically since they launched the Planet 13 SuperStore in 2018, and even since October 2021, when the company’s Harvest Health and Recreation acquisition in the Florida market was finalized.
While the company is known for its extravagant dispensaries, operations are now focused on maximizing efficiency in light of inflation and other economic challenges, Groesbeck says.
“As we tell our managers now, when you’re putting orders in to purchase, it’s not what you want, it’s what you absolutely have to have to operate,” he says. “There really are no luxuries here.”
In this conversation ahead of his session at Cannabis Conference, Groesbeck shares early lessons learned as he and Scheffler were building Medizin and later Planet 13, and how they are using that experience to navigate this next economic cycle. He also provides insights for how cannabis companies can operate more efficiently in this "uncharted territory."
Editor's note: Robert Groesbeck will speak at Cannabis Conference in the session “In The Black: Become Cash Positive By Avoiding These Expensive Cannabis Business Mistakes” from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Aug. 23, 2022, at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino. In this session, experienced cannabis operators will share ways that they’ve avoided (or learned from) costly missteps—from cultivation and operations to merchandising and marketing, to hiring and firing, retail sales strategies, product development and more. They will also share ideas for how companies can navigate the realities of the current economy.
Michelle Simakis: Can you talk a little bit about the experience of opening up Medizin in Nevada’s medical market, and one lesson that you learned or something that you did differently when you later opened Planet 13 for adult-use sales?
Robert Groesbeck: When we opened up Medizin [in 2016], we were in a medical market only. So, it was a bit challenging, to say the least. We realized early on that location means everything. It was a great location and still is. We probably have another half dozen or so dispensaries in near proximity. But at the time, [although] it was an ideal location, it was small and too far away from the Las Vegas Strip. We recognized that right away, we didn’t have the ability to expand, so it created some challenges. That’s one of the things that we learned early on, that location is pretty critical to execution, and if you don’t have the right location, things aren’t going to go according to plan in the long term.
MS: Considering you were operating in the medical market, was proximity to the Las Vegas Strip strategic from the medical market perspective or for long-term expansion into a future adult-use market?
RG: At the time, we didn’t know we were going to have adult-use. We felt pretty comfortable that the voters supported adult-use, and that turned out to be the case. (Voters approved a ballot initiative in 2016 to legalize adult-use cannabis.) But back in those days in Nevada, we had what was called reciprocity. So, we were able to take cards from other jurisdictions, primarily California of course … and so we were able to use those, which really saved us. Because I would say over 90% of our customers early on outside of Nevada were Californians. When we opened the business, it was always our objective and hope that the market would transition to adult use, which it ultimately did. There was a bit of a risk of course, because if it hadn’t happened, the medical market wasn’t viable, certainly in Nevada. I think the highest numbers the state ever got to were 27,000 or 30,000 [patients,] and that was not enough to support [the] dispensaries in the market at the time. (Editor’s note: There are now about 13,000 active medical marijuana cardholders in Nevada. According to an article published in the Las Vegas Sun in April 2018, in May 2017, there were 28,300 active cardholders.)
So, when we found the location where [Planet 13] is now, we jumped on it immediately. At the time, we were reliant upon those medical card holders from other jurisdictions, primarily from California, and most of them were staying on the strip. It was incumbent upon us to do everything in our power to draw attention to our facility so they would come out and see us. But we realized we were just too far. We needed to be much closer to our customer base. (Editor’s note: Medizin is about 5 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, whereas Planet 13 is just off the strip, about a mile from Wynn Las Vegas.)
RELATED: Planet 13: The Dispensary Disruptor
When rules were originally adopted and communities allowed cannabis businesses, they’d usually stick you in really undesirable areas. That’s really evolved considerably now. Now we’re locating facilities in traditional mall/retail settings, so things are improving from that standpoint. But at the start it was challenging. We didn’t have a lot of options, and with limited locations, you had to grab what you could to get open.
MS: Planet 13 reflects the Las Vegas entertainment culture, with interactive displays, an orb show – it’s all about the Vegas experience. It appears that no expense was spared, but Planet 13 reported roughly $62 million on the balance sheet at the end of 2021, (as recently reported in the June 2022 cover story in Cannabis Dispensary magazine.) How have you been able to do both things, where you invest in engaging experiences but without incurring debt?
RG: For us, Larry [Scheffler, co-CEO of Planet 13] and I both come from a school of thought that you don’t want to be burdened with debt. Debt in the cannabis space is extremely expensive, and a year ago, we didn’t anticipate how the markets were going to turn as they have. They are more troublesome today. Debt rates were coming down a bit, and it may have been more attractive to borrow, but now in light of the inflationary environment we are in, things are beginning to go back in the wrong direction We’re seeing exorbitantly high rates. We decided early on we didn’t want to get into the debt game because it’s risky and markets change, and you’ve seen that. Some would say we were lucky. Some would say we were visionary. I just know our balance sheet is strong.
We were able to fund our growth early on through the equity markets, and we were fortunate there that we got a lot of buy-in to the concept from our shareholders and capital markets. But that’s dried up now. There really is no vehicle there in light of where the economy is. We were very careful in how we were spending our money initially, and we were fortunate to have bankrolled in excess of $100 million at one point for future expansions and development, which allowed us to make that transition into the Florida market when we acquired the Harvest [Health and Recreation] license last October. So again, if we didn’t have that cash on the balance sheet, we wouldn’t be in a position to do any of that, particularly in light of the current market setting, so from that standpoint we were very fortunate. We are going to continue to be smart. We’re trying to cut costs where we can and run as nimbly as we can as we run through this economic cycle.
MS: The economic environment has changed quickly, as you noted. Can you talk about where you’re cutting costs or where it might make sense for other cannabis companies to look to as they are navigating higher costs for everything?
RG: We’ve taken a systematic approach to every operating expense and running through where we can cut costs, where we can reduce costs, and that starts from your ongoing contracts, whether it be security, maintenance, things of that nature. We’re looking to see where we can be more efficient and make cuts, at least short-term reductions just to be viable going forward. We don’t know how long this is going to last, but we do know our costs are going to go up. We’re no different than the folks at home trying to pay for gas and pay mortgages. We have the same obligations. We have fleets to run and fuel and insure. We have rent payments due on our various properties. It’s a challenging environment, so I think it’s incumbent upon anybody in this space to take a hard look at every component of your operating expenses and see where you can make cuts. As we tell our managers now, when you’re putting orders in to purchase, it’s not what you want, it’s what you absolutely have to have to operate. There really are no luxuries here. We are going to run as lean as we can, and we are going to weather to this storm. We are fortunate again that we don’t have debt on our balance sheet, so we’ve got staying power, we can ride this thing out. But I think we are going to see some massive changes in the near term.
MS: How does this economic downturn compare to the challenges of the COVID pandemic?
RG: We thought COVID was the most dramatic impact to our business certainly, the ups and downs there, and we transition out of COVID and now we jump into an economy that’s just horrific. I think this is much more challenging to be honest with you because it’s hitting us from all fronts. We were lucky during COVID, we were shut down completely for a period of time, but then we were deemed an essential business and allowed to reopen at limited capacity.
The problem now that we’re encountering is the customers want the product, they want THC and they want cannabis, but it’s like the barber or the nail salon—when times get tough, that’s the first thing people cut. It’s the things that they want to have and accustomed to having, but priorities are rent, gas and we’re seeing that. And it’s a challenging environment to find employees. It’s a really difficult time, and unfortunately, I think we have some headwinds to deal with.
MS: Are you seeing the same trends in the California market?
RG: Yes, we’re feeling the impact there. It’s just as acute, and in some respects, more so. The inflationary environment in Southern California is even worse than Nevada, fuel prices are substantially higher, rents are substantially higher. It’s a very tough environment and customers now are looking for bargains. Brand loyalty is not nearly as strong in this type of environment. It’s incumbent upon us as operators to offer those incentives to remain competitive and ride this out. Entry level, lower-priced brands … customers seem to be gravitating toward that.
MS: Where do you think cannabis companies have opportunities to operate more efficiently?
RG: Every company is unique. Take a look at your marketing budgets, marketing can get very expensive, very quickly. You have to market, you have to have your name out there, but at what cost? We’ve taken a real hard look at our billboards. Static boards are extremely expensive and it’s hard to quantify the value, but that’s just one example. We’re looking at every component of our operations to see if we can get tighter, get leaner. Unfortunately, with less traffic and with less revenue, you have to look at staffing issues. Do you make cuts, and if so, where and by how much? I think a lot of companies are making those hard decisions now. It’s the reality of where the market is.
MS: You mentioned you can ride out this economic downturn and weather this storm. What gives you hope right now?
RG: We’ve seen ups and downs in the industry …. Those of us that have been doing this for a while are pretty hardened to this. I just haven’t seen anything of this level yet. Particularly for the MSOs, the publicly traded companies, it’s just been a significant bleed for the last eight, nine, 10 months. We need a catalyst. And I don’t know what that catalyst is now. We’ve had a number of bills come out of the [U.S.] House, we’ve had senators talk about bills, the problem is everybody in Washington just talks. There’s no meaningful relief. We need banking relief desperately. We need tax relief. We need to get cannabis off of Schedule 1. This is absolutely critical to the long-term viability of this industry. And we just can’t get the traction or the attention that we need.
And tying back to my earlier point with debt, unfortunately debt was attractive. Debt made sense in a lot of instances because revenues were up, companies were growing at a very robust clip. But when things contract and you still have those debt payments and obligations and the interest rates associated with that, if not managed properly, that can result in a death spiral for a company. So, it’s a scary time. I tell my employees. I don’t sugar-coat it. We’re in uncharted territory in many respects. We just need some catalyst that will help. Unfortunately, we’re not getting any positive signs out of Washington or Congress, so we’re going to have to hunker down and mind your pennies and quarters. Unfortunately, we’re going to see some significant failures here in the near term in light of where things are going.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In the country’s Occitania region, farmers and processors are continuing a centuries-long tradition of producing hemp textiles.
The historic southern French region of Occitania is experiencing a hemp textile renaissance, and not with just any fabric, but with the durable, long-fiber denim fabric used in jeans.
Beside the fame of its historic wine region Languedoc, the area was once well known for extensive commercial hemp cultivation that supplied countryside weaving workshops.
Occitania’s climate is dominated by its proximity to the Mediterranean Sea, resulting in mild winters, hot, dry summers and warm autumns. It is the sunniest region of France, with more than 300 days of sunshine, but also receives sufficient summer rain to support hemp cultivation.
The mountainous landscape is intersected by fertile river valleys and rocky clay soils that are rich in limestone and well-suited for hemp fiber production.
The ancient Roman city of Nimes—situated in the heart of Occitania—is famous for its iconic fabric Serge de Nimes. Serge, which is no longer produced in France, was a sturdy twill weave fabric woven with hemp and dyed indigo. The material was used to make jeans and was later given the name “denim,” which is a term commonly used to describe jeans' fabric today.
France has a lengthy experience with commercial production of hemp fabric. During the 19th century, France exported the fabrics throughout Europe and to America.
Not only do denim fabrics originate from France, but so does canvas—derived from the word “cannabis”—a tabby hemp fabric that is a tightly woven, long-wearing and used for bedding, towels, sacks, tarpaulins, and other household and commercial textiles.
In the town of Castres to the west is the formerly family-owned weaving mill Tissages d'Autan, dating back to the 1930s, and the company’s contemporary motto is “Jeans will grow on the fields again.”
The factory partners with VirgoCoop, a business management consultant business in Cahors, France, which has the primary goal of accelerating the emergence of environmentally friendly and socially responsible projects, and its team is dedicated to promoting local and organic textile production.
“VirgoCoop strive[s] to grow and spin French hemp into textiles with the same nice quality as in the past,” explains Mathieu Ebbesen, co-founder and director of the Tissages d' Autan mill and president of VirgoCoop, adding that the first steps are renewal of organic textile hemp production and other fair-trade sectors in Occitania and beyond.
Ebbesen works to coordinate the efforts of hemp growers, spinners and weavers, while following his commitment to social equity and economic improvement within the community. He speaks knowledgeably about historical textile production, explaining that this region of Occitania became renowned for its quality wool production, adding that this is also something he wants to implement into the company’s branding strategy.
“When the cooperative started the weaving mill, we were determined that we would only produce hemp fabric from 100% hemp fibers. Today, I have changed my mind set,” Ebbesen says.
The mill produces new designs of exclusive fabrics using blends of wool and hemp. On the one hand, modern wool production poses environmental problems, as raw wool from France is shipped to China to be processed and then sent back as yarns to France. This unsustainable production model is something he intends to change by locally spinning and producing wool. On the other hand, there are many challenges with the processing and spinning of long-fiber hemp, which must first be surmounted before larger fabric volumes can be made of pure hemp.
Futura 75 is a European Union-approved monecious “industrial hemp” variety with a THC content below 0.3%. This cultivar performs well during the short, winter season in northern Europe as well as during the long, summer season in southern Europe. Futura 75 grows rapidly, and when sown in the spring, reaches up to 4 meters tall by August producing high fiber yields, or if left to mature, its seeds can be harvested in the autumn.
He believes that challenges with preparing and spinning long hemp fibers will be surmounted within 10 years, and the mill will have much larger volumes of high-quality hemp fiber to work with.
“Today France is the largest European producer of hemp seeds, and we will try to breed a variety that’s fit for the textile industry,” Ebbesen explains.
Processing hemp into strong denim fabrics with existing processing lines is a challenge. Therefore, Ebbesen says Virgocoop plans to breed a French monecious hemp variety that will be more uniform at harvest and which, in turn, will generate more homogenous fibers required by modern spinning lines. The company also plans to upgrade its current spinning machines to better handle long fiber.
“We know that our farmers appreciate the value of growing hemp in rotation before wheat and other field crops, and not especially for another purpose than this, but they must still remove the stalks from their fields. Therefore, we contract them and store the stalks they harvest and dry,” he says, pointing out that many farmers in Occitania receive €300-350 (or $305-356 USD) per each ton of bulk hemp stalks (5.0-6.0 tons/hectare or 2.2-2.7 tons/acre), and that there are both organic and conventional growers in the region. He keeps the doors open for all hemp growers but later plans to switch to just organic production.
Methods for Retting Hemp Stalks After they are stored, dried hemp stalks must be retted to facilitate removal of the bark by controlled bacterial decomposition of the adhesive compounds affixing the outer bark layer to the woody stem within. Retting can be achieved by soaking the stalks in water for one to three weeks or as the French farmers do, by spreading out the dried stalks on a grassy pasture to be wetted by dew and rain. Field retting is a simpler method than water retting because the stems do not need to be transported to shallow ponds that can become stagnant and contaminated with plant wastes, which at too high a concentration can poison natural watercourses. However, when stalks are field retted the fibers may also become darker in color and may not be as soft and fine as those processed by water retting. Regardless of which of these two methods is used, after sufficient retting time the stalks are dried again and stored until the bark is removed by decortication.
After they are stored, dried hemp stalks must be retted to facilitate removal of the bark by controlled bacterial decomposition of the adhesive compounds affixing the outer bark layer to the woody stem within.
Retting can be achieved by soaking the stalks in water for one to three weeks or as the French farmers do, by spreading out the dried stalks on a grassy pasture to be wetted by dew and rain.
Field retting is a simpler method than water retting because the stems do not need to be transported to shallow ponds that can become stagnant and contaminated with plant wastes, which at too high a concentration can poison natural watercourses. However, when stalks are field retted the fibers may also become darker in color and may not be as soft and fine as those processed by water retting.
Regardless of which of these two methods is used, after sufficient retting time the stalks are dried again and stored until the bark is removed by decortication.
Farmers in the area are interested in growing hemp, Ebbesen says. “In the future, we will easily contract farmers to grow 500 hectares,” he says, adding that first they need to acquire funding to purchase decortication and spinning equipment. “Fiber processing lines are costly, and we are currently deciding between investing in cottonization equipment or in developing improved long fiber processing.”
Cottonization is a modern technology in which bast fiber plants such as hemp and ramie are treated to release the fiber from the bark with a combination of pressure, alkaline water and enzymes.
Cottonized fibers are shorter and softer and can be spun with ordinary cotton or wool-spinning equipment. The advantages of cottonization are that the fibers can be spun faster, and it allows mixing hemp with other fibers in blended yarns.
The technology is used today largely in China, where most hemp textiles are woven with cottonized fibers. The disadvantage of cottonization is that shorter fibers produce a weaker yarn than long fibers; however, the method offers a more versatile and profitable way of processing hemp fibers that could provide a stronger economic position for both farmers and processers.
“Processing long fiber hemp into jeans will make them very expensive. We do not want to sell €300 (or $305 USD) jeans, and since the farmers would then receive only a small fraction of the price, cottonization can be the solution,” Ebbesen says.
“If we receive investment in cottonization, we will most probably blend the hemp with wool,” he adds, repeating that he is no stranger to mixing hemp with other materials. He also explains that blended wool and hemp fabrics have fantastic qualities, which can be used for other purposes than jeans, such as jackets, shoes and home furnishings.
For instance, wool adds warmth to hemp fabrics and reduces wrinkling. The two materials can either be directly blended in the yarn, or in the weaving mill's newly designed fabrics using wool in warp and hemp in weft—both techniques produce durable, yet soft fabrics.
“Cottonization equipment will be the costliest solution, so to move forward with it will likely require cooperation with other French hemp textile producers,” he says. He also emphasizes how important it is to keep production locally based, and how it is prohibitively expensive to transport bulky hemp stalks far from where they are grown.
(VirgoCoop is also selling hemp biomass. After the bark, which accounts for 30% of the weight, is removed from the stalks, the remaining hurds or shives from the woody inner core—about 60%—as well as stalk dust—about 10%—that can be utilized in other products.)
In ancient times, Ebbesen says, large farm fields were called “canabal” or “canaval,” both terms relating to “cannabis,” showing that hemp was extensively grown then. Hemp fabrics were locally made and commonly used, and vintage hemp textiles can still be found in households throughout the region.
“During the middle of 19th century, if a person wore hemp clothes to a festival, that was considered a sign of poverty,” he says. “But today wearing hemp clothing is a statement of sustainability.”
This opening will represent High Tide's 128th branded retail location across Canada, and 1st in British Columbia
CALGARY, Alberta, July 13, 2022 - PRESS RELEASE - High Tide Inc., retail-focused cannabis company with bricks-and-mortar as well as global e-commerce assets, announced today that its Canna Cabana retail cannabis store located at 10027 100 Street in Fort St. John, British Columbia will begin selling recreational cannabis products and consumption accessories for adult use at 4:20 PM local time today. This opening will represent High Tide's 128th branded retail location across Canada, and 1st in British Columbia, selling recreational cannabis products and consumption accessories.
"Our first organic store opening in British Columbia is a much-awaited and [a] very positive milestone for High Tide. This is the result of many months of hard work by our team as we navigated the regulatory process to enter the province. I am excited that we finally have the opportunity to bring our innovative discount club model, which has been a proven hit with our customers in the four provinces where we already operate, to British Columbia," said Raj Grover, Hight Tide CEO and president. "Combined with last week's announced acquisition of two operating retail cannabis stores in Vancouver through the Choom BC store portfolio, we are entering the province in a big way and are already almost halfway to the provincial store cap. With this foothold in British Columbia, I anticipate that we will be able to expand quickly through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions, putting us in a position to reach the cap of 8 stores in the coming months."
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