1. How is the new adult-use market in Connecticut?
Connecticut was another win for us as an industry and especially for Verano. You want to see continued acceptance of cannabis as whole. Last year it was New Jersey, this year it’s Connecticut. And Connecticut really fit into what we do as a company. We position ourselves in a medical market ahead of an adult-use turn-on and make sure we’re going to appropriately supply that market. We have a 217,000 sq. ft. cultivation facility, so you talk about being ready for an adult-use turn-on, we really feel we were a very significant component of that wholesale market and one of only seven dispensaries turning on.
2. How do you deal with hiccups in how markets open?
In this industry, we don’t ever get a fastball. It’s always a curveball. You go into each day planning for uncertainty. As an operator, you don’t want to invest too far ahead of growth. So in a market like New Jersey, it was supposed to turn on in August of 2021 and then it got pushed out to February 2022, then March, then April… you have to adjust.
3. What are your thoughts on the New York market?
New York is a market that’s going to have to fail before it succeeds. If you think of all the dynamics that are at play right now, what are you trying to accomplish in New York? It’s going to be a mecca—it’s the financial capital of the world—but it also has a massive illicit market. The idea there is that you want to transition that illicit market over to a legal market. How do you do that? You have to provide incentives and those incentives are availability of product, pricing of product and consistency of product. But you really do need the MSOs to come in and establish a tried-and-true market and then that trickles into other areas. New York is something we’ll watch and we’ll wait to see how that market develops.