If you missed today’s Pop-Up event, the Adult Use Pop-Up Dispensary will continue weekly and run Tuesday-Saturday 1:00PM-7:00PM until December 30, 2023.
The first Pop-Up Adult Use Dispensary was held at Empire Hemp in Batavia Tuesday.
Greenside Cannabis in partnership with Dank, Buffalo’s first licensed adult-use dispensary, along with Empire Hemp Co., held the first WNY Cannabis Growers Showcase at 204 East Main Street.
“It’s kind of a store inside of a store. This is all Dank, they have their own employees, they take care of all the money, they have the dispensary license, we have the place for them to do it,” says Shelly Wolanske, COO of Empire Hemp.
“Basically, they’ve taken their dispensary and moved a little miniature one here, like a copy of it,” says Chris VanDusen, CEO of Empire Hemp.
“All the products you see, each one is a different cultivator that is packaged with their own flower ingredients, pre-rolls, and we have them on display. They have their own little spot on the shelf and then we have budtenders, they are our employees, that go and help the folks make a decision on what kind of product they’re looking for.”
VanDusen says the NYS Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) finally decided what they were going to do after leaving so many cultivators without a place to sell their product.
“Originally they were going to do a farmer’s market and it was going to be a two-day event, then the OCM said you can do it at a brick and mortar. This is a great opportunity for us to do it. We’re acting as the host and have our own gummy and vape products for sale here.”
Van Dusen says the traffic in and out of the store was pretty steady all day.
“It’s exciting that we have this opportunity. This is a lifeline for us, without this, that’s devastating for us. To not have that many dispensaries is really difficult for the amount of processors there are. There is too much product and not enough places to sell. We are going to be doing more of these around WNY, this kind of bypasses the current dispensary set up.”
Wolanske says the community in Batavia has been very supportive.
“We have such a great supporting community, down from the City Manager to City Council. There are growers and places like CBD stores that don’t have the supporting community, they have to go out and fight to get their products sold. The City of Batavia has been supportive of cannabis the whole time.”
VanDusen says Empire Hemp has been just winging it as of late.
“We got approved to do this last week, so we had to throw this all together over the weekend to pull this off. It’s been successful and we’ve had a lot of happy customers going through the door, and I think they’re really happy to finally be able to buy safe, tested cannabis in Genesee County, and to be the first to that it’s very exciting.”
Video interview with Shelly Wolanske/COO of Empire Hemp and Chris VanDusen/CEO of Empire Hemp 204 East Main Street in Batavia.
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