Business is getting back to usual at Bay Area cannabis stores.
After initially declaring dispensaries were non-essential when the San Francisco shelter-in-place order went into effect March 17, city health officials and political leaders quickly reversed themselves and determined cannabis is an essential medicine during the coronavirus outbreak, paving the way for shops to reopen.
As the Bay Area Reporter noted, many did just that, although some have reduced hours so it’s best to check their website or, even better, call before you leave the house.
At the Castro Apothecarium, 2029 Market Street, changes make shopping safer for customers and staff, said store manager Cali Manzello.
In a telephone interview with the B.A.R., Manzello said the company has taken precautions to be sure there is minimal contact between customers and staff, including a six foot distance from the counter where customers can use an iPad to scroll the menu, replacing the paper product. The tablet is wiped down between uses, she said.
The Apothecarium is operating with a smaller staff and shorter hours since the stay-at-home order went into effect, although there were no layoffs, officials said. The store is planning to resume delivery service soon but until then it is doing in-store consultations. It recommends people order online for pick up if possible.
The LGBT-owned Sparc has seen a dip in business since the stay-at-home order went into effect. Of its five Bay Area stores, only one, Love Shack, located at 502 14th Street in the Mission, is temporarily closed.
In an email to the B.A.R., SPARC CEO Erich Pearson wrote, “We were lucky to have launched our new delivery and in-store pickup platform online a few months ago. So, we are very busy delivering and doing curbside pickup. Sales are down quite a bit. However, we have managed to not lay off any employees.”
In the meantime, during the shelter-in-place order, the San Francisco Office of Cannabis will continue to process permits and respond to permitting inquiries.
According to the office’s newsletter, it is operating “under reduced capacity” and will only be able to respond to inquiries with a status report. Some office staff are working remotely while others have been summoned as emergency service workers.
Out & About offers CBD products. Photo: Courtesy Out & About
New product launch In late March, entrepreneurs in Southern California launched a new cannabis wellness company, after successfully raising $1.5 million from a dozen angel investors. Based in San Juan Capistrano, the new company, Out & About, was founded by two men with strong ties to the LGBT community: a gay man, Wayne Carkeek, and Ralph Fascitelli, a member of PFLAG.
According to the company’s promotional material, Carkeek grew up in a small town in Montana and came out shortly after a four-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps. The company plans to give a minimum of 5% of all proceeds back to the LGBT community.
Products from Out & About are THC-free and contain CBD, a non-hallucinogenic chemical compound that is made from marijuana. Products, available on the website include gummies, capsules, oil tincture, sugar-free mints, and dog treats.
SF’s 4/20 event canceled Although Golden Gate Park remains open, the organizers of San Francisco’s annual 4/20 cannabis celebration on Hippie Hill said that the event has been canceled.
According to a statement from the organizers, “We take the health and safety of the public, our staff, vendors, and all of our sponsors very seriously. We feel it’s our responsibility to do our part to minimize social gathering and potential spread of this virus in the community.”
Organizers said that they are working with local city departments, as well as community partners and will announce further details when they know more.
“Thank you for understanding and support. See you next year,” the statement concluded.
After trying for years to open a cannabis business in San Francisco, Ray Connolly and his husband, Desmond Morgan, will open the doors of their first dispensary, in the city’s Castro District.
“We’re two married gay men opening up a dispensary in the heart of the gay neighborhood, so the mapping of it is really perfect,” Connolly says.
Eureka Sky, which opens Jan. 25 at 3989 17th Street, received the first equity cannabis business permit issued by San Francisco’s Office of Cannabis. The roughly 2,300-square-foot dispensary storefront is owned by Connolly, Morgan and equity partner Chris Callaway. Equity partners and owners in San Francisco have been negatively impacted by cannabis prohibition or meet other criteria that allows them to receive government support as they enter the cannabis industry.
With plans to be open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, Connolly says Eureka Sky will sell flower, edibles, pre-rolls, concentrates and CBD pet products. The company has hired a chief technology officer, Steve Delavan, as well as a buyer, and plans to soon hire a staff of budtenders.
Connolly’s and Morgan’s decision to open a dispensary has roots stretching back decades. Both their fathers and Morgan’s stepfather died of cancer when they were young. These members of the older generation didn’t consume cannabis, and Morgan notes it wasn’t legally made available to them. But more recent medical studies stating the benefits of cannabis, including for cancer patients, helped prompt Connolly’s and Morgan’s decision to join the industry.
“I’m a longtime cannabis supporter and user, but it was one of the compelling events when the results started to come on just around the medicinal use, that we decided to get into the cannabis industry,” says Connolly, who worked as a software executive for 23 years.
Morgan, who was employed in the pharmaceuticals and biotech space for about 20 years, learned about the endocannabinoid system more than a decade ago while employed at a company that worked on a diet pill.
“I think cannabis has got such a bad rap for the longest time, because it was just clumped together as being a drug,” Morgan says. “Yet a lot of people don’t realize the medicinal benefits of cannabis and that our bodies have our own mechanisms [for receiving it] in terms of the endocannabinoid system — it’s all natural.”
Photo courtesy of Ray Connolly
Eureka Sky’s interior
In addition to Eureka Sky, Connolly and Morgan plan to open a second dispensary, called Sea Weed, in Fisherman’s Wharf. They and equity partner John Wood are still building out the space but plan to open in March.
Pending the receipt of a permanent permit, Connolly and Morgan aim to open Sea Weed at 2627 Taylor Street. It’s the same address where they tried to set up a medical dispensary in 2015, prior to the passage of Proposition 64, but, Connolly says, were driven out by surrounding businesspeople who opposed a cannabis shop in the neighborhood.
“At that time, the merchants of Fisherman’s Wharf literally rented a Greyhound bus, and they had their employees and the owners and managers all go down to city hall and fight it,” Connolly says.
In the intervening years, San Francisco examined the economy of Fisherman’s Wharf and learned that having one or multiple dispensaries to serve tourists and residents could be beneficial for the neighborhood, Connolly says. “When I went back to them the second time, they had a different point of view of opening up a cannabis dispensary,” he says.
Equity in San Francisco’s cannabis program
In San Francisco, permits are currently only being issued to equity applicants, equity incubators and operating cannabis businesses.
To apply for a permit, equity applicants must first be verified with the Office of Cannabis. And to be verified, prospective applicants must meet the following criteria:
The verification process for prospective equity applicants opened in March 2018, and the Office of Cannabis began accepting applications in May of that year, according to a spokesman from the office. As of Jan. 23, 325 equity applicants have been verified, the spokesman says.
Once they are verified, applicants will then take steps such as work with San Francisco Planning to find a location, register with the city and state, consent to a background check and disclose ownership materials, according to the Office of Cannabis website. Furthermore, they must follow multiple security steps, and apply for and receive city permits from departments such as Planning and Building Inspection.
In Connolly’s and Morgan’s situation, equity partners Callaway and Wood approached them about working together, Morgan says. Callaway was arrested in 2000 for cultivating cannabis for the terminally ill, according to hoodline.com. Wood also had previous ties to cannabis; he was good friends with renowned cannabis activist Dennis Peron, Connolly says. (Both Callaway and Wood were unavailable for interviews before Cannabis Dispensary’s deadline for this story.)
As more municipalities legalize cannabis, Connolly says San Francisco’s equity program can provide a model for helping the people who played a role in creating the industry when it was still a black market.
“There are individuals who have been impacted by things that had transpired in their lives because of cannabis, that may have found themselves not being able to get jobs or not being able to keep jobs,” Connolly says. “So, this is a program where business owners like Desmond and I can actually help the individuals that helped build the cannabis industry.”
Software for San Francisco’s equity applications
To streamline the review and processing of equity applications, the City and County of San Francisco has teamed up with government technology company CityBase. San Francisco already used CityBase’s management and payment tools, so it asked the company to see if they could be used for cannabis permitting.
The system’s software gives applicants unique identifiers and allows to fill out documents without having to continually repeat steps, says Josh Goldstein, CityBase chief product officer. At the same time, various city departments involved in the application and permitting process, such as Planning, Fire and Police, can log in and access pertinent information.
Having a simple and reliable system for processing applications and issuing licenses and permits helps San Francisco address equity in the cannabis space, Goldstein says.
“Part of it, I think, is just really just making the user interface simpler, I think is a step toward equity in and of itself, because you’re inherently penalizing businesses that have less resources — smaller businesses,” he says. “The more regulatory barriers you have up, the more you’re discriminating against those, in my opinion.”
Replacing outdated or manual systems can allow governments to provide more equity to businesses and residents, says Liz Fischer, CityBase chief customer officer, adding that her company’s work with San Francisco on cannabis applications, permitting and licensing is an explicit example.
“What’s interesting to me, as someone who works with local government clients and tries to solve the access and equity equation from a lot of different perspectives, is these problems are relevant to every person doing business with local government,” Fischer says. “But because cannabis is newly legalized and is therefore a new business industry … the government side has a chance to consider these things from the ground up, like the entire permitting process, licensing process and the steps in that process that either aid or prohibit someone from participating.”
Since recreational pot was legalized in California on Jan 1st of 2018, its citizens have witnessed intriguing developments of the already popular cannabis industry. New verticals, products, and services have been popping up all across the state (and the country).
Pot farmers, pot deliverers, dispensaries, edible producers, startups trying to service the cannabis players, hospitality industry offering cannabis tours, etc. And the list is only expected to get longer.
This year, the International Cannabis Business Conference is happening in San Francisco in February. It is suitable as SF is the technology hub of the world and legalization of cannabis there unsurprisingly would lead to the rise of new, relevant opportunities to expand and transform a fast-evolving industry.
So, what have we seen so far in this space?
All-in-one cannabis shops
What’s unique about California is that the new legalization laws allow the dispensaries to actually serve and allow consumption of weed onsite as long as it meets each city’s fire and safety codes. Out of the 10 states which have legalized recreational weed, only California has these stipulations.
This led to dispensaries, there are 46 in San Francisco today with additional 47 applications in review, creating a new kind of social lounges where you can learn about, buy, consume, and share cannabis all at once.
West Hollywood took the lead initially by issuing 8 licenses early on for smoking lounges and we saw some amazing, never-seen-before lounges opened up such as this cannabis dispensary in West Hollywood with bars and other facilities to integrate cannabis further into the culture and social fabric in California.
We see now San Francisco following suit with 10 lounges and counting. It is quickly reshaping the cultural landscape.
Cannabis tours
The hospitality industry did not miss this opportunity to provide unique tours that most people cannot get anywhere else in the world. Cannabis farm and dispensary tours instantly became popular among the curious visitors want to experience the booming world of cannabis.
City tours with a visit to cannabis lounges and weed (instead of ‘wine’) country tours are on the rise. Sonoma and Napa Valley, the most popular tour spots in the bay area, have also embraced this movement and quickly integrated cannabis into the wine culture, offering weed and wine tours. This trend is expected to grow exponentially as now restaurants and the edible producers try to reach wider customer segments in this new (legalized) industry.
After years of cannabis enthusiasts hunting down the underground cannabis culinary scenes, now restaurants and culinary experimentalists can openly offer the wider public a new cuisine with endless possibilities. Given the various forms in which cannabis can be consumed, we know the cannabis industry is only going to produce more, never-before-imagined products we will be able to enjoy.
Cannabis deliveries
If it exists, it should be deliverable. That’s the motto of our century. While the cannabis lounges and tours are definitely successful at luring us out of our homes, cannabis deliveries also have expanded to make the consumption far more convenient when we’re feeling lazy.
These delivery services range from instant delivery within the local dispensaries to deliveries from available dispensaries across the entire state, expanding the options available to consumers much more quickly. Some offer more specialized services for those who need medicinal marijuana so that they are able to make decisions based on their pain and conditions.
