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Retail Brew

Cannabis

Andrew Adam Newman

retailbrew.com

America’s booze cruise has entered choppy waters, with 

 of Americans in July telling Gallup they consume alcohol—the lowest since Gallup began tracking drinking behaviors in 1939.

But it’s decidedly smoother sailing for cannabis-infused beverages, with sales expected to 

 from $1.1 billion in 2024 to $1.38 billion this year, and to more than triple by 2032, to $4.19 billion, according to a report by Whitney Economics, a cannabis business consultancy.

Now 1906—the 10-year-old cannabis brand—is introducing its first beverage. But unlike popular canned flavored beverages like 

, the company is introducing 1906 Spirits, a neutral cannabis spirit meant for mixed drinks like cosmos that it’s calling “the vodka of cannabis.”

A 1.25-ounce shot contains 10 milligrams of THC, and with 5–10 milligrams being popular 

 dosages for edibles, cannabis users will have a sense of whether they want to start with a half or full shot for their maiden voyage.

It’s the first beverage for 1906, which specializes in THC tablets that contain plant extracts and claim specific effects, with product names like Bliss, Chill, and Genius.

Peter Barsoom, founder and CEO of 1906, said he’d been hoping to introduce a beverage since the brand launched in 2015.

“If you think about the three legal intoxicants or psychoactive substances that we have—nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol—two out of those three are in something that we could drink,” Barsoom told Retail Brew. “We are used to consuming psychoactive substances in a liquid format, and so the evolution into THC-based spirits is consistent with market and consumer demand.”

 as more Americans adopt a sober-curious lifestyle, but Barsoom said they may fall short for some consumers.

“Mocktails are great, but they lack the feature that we often look for in alcohol, which is, ‘I want to feel less stress, more relaxed [and a] reduction in social inhibition,’” Barsoom said.

Posts promoting 1906 Spirits on social media claim that it also spares users one of booze’s downsides: a 

The product launched in September online and in about 75 liquor stores in New Jersey, with plans to introduce it in liquor stores in other states including Texas, Florida, and Tennessee, Barsoom said.

Its THC is derived from the hemp plant, which means that because of a 

 in the 2018 farm bill, its sale and distribution do not face the same 

 of restrictions as other cannabis products.

While vodka brands gravitate to clear bottles to highlight clarity, 1906 Spirits is slightly opaque and is bottled in matte brown glass. Its design, by Joe Doucet x Partners, has a broad-shouldered silhouette reminiscent of 

While the new product is not yet served in any bars, it is Barsoom’s expectation that it will be someday, and that informed its design.

“I can’t wait for the day that it’s sitting next to a bottle of Hendrick’s” in a bar, Barsoom said. “The design inspiration definitely came from the belief that it’s got to look gorgeous behind a bar.”

Side-by-side photo of the 1906 Spirits bottle alone, and being poured into a martini glass to make a red cocktail with a lime.

1906 Spirits, the "vodka of cannabis," promises a buzz but no hangover

1906 Spirits is the first beverage from the decade-old 1906 brand.

This ‘vodka of cannabis’ promises a buzz, no hangover

Unlike Times Square, a tourist destination that many 

 would rather drive carpet staples into their gums than go near, Grand Central Station, that marvel of beaux arts architecture with its dramatic arches, marble staircases, and 125-foot muralled ceilings, can warm the cockles of even the most jaded New Yorker’s heart.

Now NYC Bud, a cannabis retailer, is paying homage to the terminal, with a new store in Manhattan that’s a whimsical scaled-down version.

 The interior of the new Manhattan location of NYC Bud, a scaled down replica of Grand Central Station. 

, which is in Midtown on West 39th Street, the rounded ceiling is the same shade of green as in Grand Central, as are the murals of constellations rendered in gold paint. The familiar walls and intricate decorative details are made from Venetian plaster, the floors are topped with marble, and numbered signs over doorways are identical to the original’s signs for tracks.

A structure in the center, a replica of Grand Central’s circular information booth, functions as a display case. Still to come: a replica of the 

It’s the second transit-themed store for the retailer, whose original NYC Bud in Long Island City is modeled after a New York 

, complete with a replica of a subway car.

Credit Giancarlo Pinto, who along with Jonpaul Pezzo is a co-owner of NYC Bud, with designing both stores. Asked on a recent tour for Retail Brew of the store if he had a design background, he answered with a single word, “No.”

But after a beat, Pinto added a one-word clarification: “Legos.”

The interior of the new Manhattan location of NYC Bud, a scaled down replica of Grand Central Station. 

Befitting a devotee of the plastic bricks, there’s a child’s sense of play here, albeit for a decidedly adult product, when it comes to both the design and the shopping experience.

After ordering cannabis products from tablets positioned near the displays, shoppers can see their names on monitors that resemble departure boards, with status “In Progress,” at first, then “Ready.”

Then they proceed to a replica of three ticket windows to pick up the purchase from budtenders. While it adds nothing to the Grand Central Station verisimilitude, there’s a retro touch here. The secured stockroom with all the cannabis products is in the basement, and once the orders are pulled, they’re put on a dumbwaiter and arrive in that room behind the ticket windows.

“We don’t call it a ‘dumbwaiter,’” Pinto said. “We have a smart waiter.”

The location and opening date for the next NYC Bud are TBD, but it will be a variation on the theme: very New York, and transportation-oriented.

“More than likely,” Pinto said, it will be “a New York City streetscape from the ’90s to early 2000s with cars and everything.” He said they’ve already acquired a 1989 Chevy Caprice that they hope to park in the store.

“It’s New York as a backdrop with cannabis in the foreground,” Pinto said.

If they all seem a bit less serious than your average retail store, remember: They call it recreational cannabis for a reason.

“The reality is that cannabis is fun and it shouldn’t be taken seriously,” Pinto said. “It shouldn’t be just so retail-oriented, where we’re just trying to make it transactional.”

NYC Bud is a scaled-down replica of Grand Central Station

NYC Bud’s first location was modeled after a subway station. 

Why this new cannabis store is a scaled-down replica of Grand Central Station

Erin Cabrey

 spotlight Retail Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click 

Ilya Shmidt is VP of sales and retail operations at The Flowery, a cannabis retailer operating 19 locations in New York and Florida.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? 

I help people get their weed—legally, safely, and with the best experience possible.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? 

Before building cannabis brands and diving into cannabis retail, I actually started in accounting. Numbers and spreadsheets were my original grind; now I use that same precision to scale operations and build high-functioning teams.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on?

 Launching The Flowery in New York has easily been one of the most exciting and rewarding challenges and in just over a year, we’ve become the largest cannabis retailer in the state. Breaking into a new market—especially one as competitive and high-profile as NYC—pushed our team to innovate and move fast, while still maintaining the culture and quality we’ve built in Florida since 2018.

Which emerging retail trend are you most excited about right now, and why?

 Drive-thru cannabis. It brings us closer to the kind of instant gratification people expect from modern retail, and it’s something that’s been held back by regulation. Seeing the industry slowly embrace it feels like progress—both for the consumer and for the normalization of cannabis overall.

 I keep it simple—just a good cup of tea.

Worst piece of advice you’ve received? 

Going to college will get you further in life.

What was your favorite retail product when you were 15, and what’s your favorite retail product now? 

When I was 15: Topps Chrome basketball trading cards. Now: Sneakers. I find myself buying more dad sneakers now for better back support. A close second would be Mountain Valley Spring Water!

Coworking with Ilya Shmidt

He’s VP of sales and retail operations at The Flowery. 

While the last presidential election may have found the cannabis business leaning toward Kamala Harris because of her years of advocacy for cannabis 

, the Trump presidency may benefit the industry in another way: His being in office makes people want to get 

Among US cannabis users, 50% said they would be consuming 

 of it during the new presidential administration, according to a Harris poll commissioned by Royal Queen Seeds, a Barcelona-based company that markets cannabis seeds to home growers.

Most likely to increase their intake: women aged 21–34, with nearly 6 in 10 (59%) saying they’ll consume more.

It will come as no surprise that the most likely to be reaching for another edible are those watching their stocks do jumping jacks during 

, namely users with household incomes of $100,000 or more. Among that income bracket, 55% of current users said they expected to consume more cannabis during this presidency.

But while their customers may be buying greater quantities these days, the cannabis industry is no different than others when it comes to decrying the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

Tariffs are “a direct threat to profitability and scalability,” Arnaud Dumas de Rauly, a cannabis consultant and chair of trade group VapeSafer, 

 MJBizDaily. “The cannabis industry is dangerously exposed to global supply-chain risks—many of which just got a lot more expensive overnight.”

Made in Xiaolin CEO Chris Louie draws on one of his company's cannabis cigars, or cannagars. 

Half of cannabis users say they’ll consume more during Trump administration

Women 21–34 most likely, with 59% apt to use more cannabis during Trump’s presidency.

When Bryan Gerber started at George Washington University, he was a pre-med major, and hoped to one day take over his father’s OBGYN practice. But during his senior year Gerber, who by then had switched to a business major, told his roommates, Ravjot “RJ” Bhasin and Henry Kochhar, that he had an idea.

“I said, ‘Hey guys: Birchbox for stoners—what do you think?’” Gerber told Retail Brew. “And they were like, ‘You’re an idiot. There’s no way that’s gonna work.’”

But he ended up winning over his roommates, who signed on as business partners for the venture, Hemper.

A couple weeks after Gerber graduated, in June 2015, the business officially started, albeit modestly, as they shipped out their first monthly subscription of cannabis products they curated from other companies, including rolling papers and pipes, to about 30 subscribers.

Nearly a decade later, Hemper is thriving, with headquarters in Las Vegas with nearly 60 employees and a 40,000-square-foot warehouse. And one reason is that while one of its inspirations may have been Birchbox, which has undergone massive 

 since 2021, Hemper steered its own course and didn’t put all its eggs in one subscription box. 

About two years after launching its subscription boxes, Hemper started manufacturing its own accessories, with a focus on whimsical designs. These days, for instance, its pipes include one shaped like a cartoon blue 

; its bongs include one that looks like a Chinese takeout 

Hemper steers away from familiar cannabis imagery like tie-dye.=

“We don’t use Rasta colors, we don’t use weed leaves, we don’t use 

 logos, we don’t use any of that stuff because it’s not really what consumers are looking for anymore,” Gerber said. “The whole ethos behind Hemper was you could have [the products] on your bookshelf, your coffee table, and whether it was your girlfriend, your mother, or your grandmother, you wouldn’t be embarrassed.”

Today, Hemper has more than 30,000 monthly subscribers, but as the brand has gained popularity, it has bolstered its e-commerce store, which sells products à la carte, and which now accounts for 60% of its revenue, Gerber said. It also has a brisk wholesale business, accounting for 25% of revenue, with the products available in more than 10,000 stores.

As for subscriptions, which put Hemper on the map, today, they account for just 15% of its revenue. But far from being a weak link, Gerber sees the boxes as a springboard for its products—and integral to its success.

Subscription boxes are what Gerber calls a “paid test market,” with the twist being that it is the market itself, in the form of subscribers, rather than the brand, that is doing the paying.

When Hemper launches a product in its subscription boxes, which it does for about 80% of its new designs, “we get feedback from like tens of thousands of consumers overnight, and then we go to our distribution retail partners,” Gerber explained. “They can see exactly…how much we’ve sold, what the customer ratings look like, and they can actually make an educated decision whether they want to distribute the product.”

Reminiscent of Peak Design, which launches products on 

 not because it needs capital but rather because it considers the crowdfunding site an essential marketing channel, Hemper uses its subscription box as a launching pad and proof of concept.

The subscription box is “our Trojan horse marketing outlet,” Gerber said.

Hemper also owns a manufacturing company, Hara Supply, which makes products, primarily the popular pre-rolled cones that are simpler to twist joints with than flat papers, for other brands. Between Hemper and Hara, the company now boasts annual revenues in the low “nine figures” (more than $100 million), said Gerber, who declined to be more specific.

Not a bad haul for a company Gerber dreamed up in college a decade ago, and about which his own mother was dubious in its earliest days.

“My mother called me every week for about a year and a half,” after Hemper launched, Gerber recalled. “She said, ‘What are you doing? You’re an idiot. You need to sign up for grad school.’”

Gerber’s response may have elicited an eye-roll from his mother at the time, but turned out to be prescient.

“I said, ‘Mom, this is better than an MBA. Just trust me.’”

Hemper went from ‘Birchbox for stoners’ to a retail juggernaut

CEO Bryan Gerber says the subscription box is a springboard to test and market new products. 

How Hemper went from ‘Birchbox for stoners’ to a retail juggernaut

The cannabis industry, like many of its more ardent consumers, tends to march to the beat of its own (jam band) drummer, and that certainly holds for its biggest sales events.

The biggest shopping days for cannabis retailers is not Black Friday or Cyber Monday but rather April 20 (a wink to the common cannabis term, 420) and the day before Thanksgiving, known as 

This year’s results are in, and they’re nothing to sneeze—or cough—at. Sales revenues at dispensaries increased an average of 91% over a typical Wednesday, and the average cart size was up 9%, to $70.80, according to Dutchie, a point of sale and e-commerce platform used by more than 6,500 dispensaries in the US and Canada. 

For the year thus far, it marked the second-biggest sales day of the year, with 4/20 the best with 17% higher sales, per Dutchie.

“While not as well-known as 4/20, Green Wednesday is quickly becoming a premier cannabis holiday and a vital day of business for cannabis dispensaries,” Dutchie CRO Spencer Scott stated in a press release. “And as more Americans swap alcohol for cannabis, the popularity of Green Wednesday will just increase.”

For Jane Technologies, another digital platform for the cannabis industry that’s used by more than 2,500 retailers and brands, total sales on Green Wednesday were up 101% over the average of the three preceding Wednesdays; the average cart size of ~$90 was about 10% higher than the three preceding Wednesdays.

At Ayr Wellness, a publicly traded cannabis company with more than 90 dispensaries, and numerous brands of products across raw flower, edibles, vapes, beverages, and more, revenues on Green Wednesday were up 82% compared to the average over the previous Wednesdays in November. But just because it’s cannabis doesn’t mean everything’s dope: sales on the day were down 7% compared to last year.

A store clerk hands a customer a shopping bag printed with a cannabis leaf. 

Green Wednesday was second biggest day of year for cannabis sales

Only 4/20 was better, per Dutchie. 

In the cannabis industry, hopes are high by definition (and inhalation), but those hopes were dashed on Election Day, when all three recreational cannabis measures on state ballots failed.

Voters in Florida, North Dakota, and South Dakota rejected the proposals, leaving the tally of states with legal 

“It feels like a gut punch,” Roz McCarthy, founder and CEO of Florida-based Black Buddha Cannabis, said during an 

 Zoom panel on LinkedIn hosted by MJBizDaily the day after the election.

 voted against the measure, and South Dakota, where 

 rejected it, Florida’s proposal had popular support, with 

 voting in favor. But in the Sunshine State, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment in 2006 that raised the threshold to pass future constitutional amendments to 60%. (That 2006 amendment passed, ironically, with 

 of the vote, meaning it didn’t meet the threshold of votes that it instituted for constitutional amendments that followed it.)

In an October YouGov survey, 45% of respondents said a Kamala Harris presidency would be 

 for the cannabis industry, nearly three times as many (16%) who thought a Donald Trump presidency would be better, with 13% thinking they’d both be equally good and 26% not sure.

 when he posted on Truth Social that he was in favor of reforming some cannabis laws, including supporting the recreational cannabis proposal in his home state of Florida.

 before the election, Trump also announced that he supported the proposed reclassification of cannabis from what 

 a Schedule I drug—“drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” including heroin and LSD—to a Schedule III drug, which includes testosterone and Tylenol with codeine.

For cannabis retailers, the significance of rescheduling is that under a provision, 280E, in the tax code, they cannot write off major operating expenses, including payroll, utilities, rent, and marketing. However,if cannabis were rescheduled to a Schedule III drug, they would be able to write off operating expenses like other retailers.

Another possible reform on the horizon, the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (

) Banking Act, would help cannabis retail businesses, who often are 

 by banks because the drug is illegal under federal law, by codifying that banking transactions with state-licensed cannabis businesses are lawful. Trump also seemed to signal that he supported that, too, writing on Truth Social that if elected, he’d “work with Congress to pass common sense laws, including safe [sic] banking for state authorized companies.”

But do a few comments late in the campaign mean that Trump will make cannabis reform a priority?

David Culver, SVP of public affairs and lobbyist for the US Cannabis Council, said in September in 

 that Harris was a “champion for cannabis reform.”

But during the recent Zoom panel, Culver said he plans to “hold [Trump’s] feet to the fire” when it comes to his pre-election reform promises.

“This is not the ideal situation, and certainly not what we were hoping for, but we are in a position that we are going to be able to get some stuff done next year,” Culver said. “I’m going to be standing in line as soon as that Trump transition office opens with my little nerdy notepad with a bunch of requests. So let’s keep our chins up.”

Less optimistic was William Garriott, chair of the Law, Politics, and Society program at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, who’s researched US cannabis legislation for the last decade.

“Cannabis legalization was not a priority during [Trump’s] campaign or his previous presidency,” Garriott 

 in The Conversation on November 5. “Though Trump backed Amendment 3 for recreational use in Florida, his support was tepid compared with priority issues like immigration. The fact that the measure failed and is unpopular within the Republican Party does not create much incentive for him to put the issue at the top of his agenda once he returns to office.”

A ballot box with a cannabis leaf symbol on the side, illustrating a vote on marijuana legalization.