Ontario now has 1,000 cannabis retail stores
Canada’s most populous province opened its first cannabis retail stores on April 1, 2019. Exactly 880 days later, Ontario’s 1,000th store, 6 of Spade, opened its doors in downtown Toronto.
The shop was opened in late August by husband and wife, Jeremiah and Amiga Wheatle, who recently spoke with the Ontario Cannabis Store about their business.(PHOTO BY MARTIN OUELLET-DIOTTE/AFP/GETTY)
“A lot of our family and friends are part of the Rastafari culture, so smoking has always been a part of our lives,” Amiga Wheatle told the OCS. “But we’ve always understood it to be about more than just getting high.”
The shop features African art and a mural that includes Emperor Haile Selassie, Muhammad Ali, Madam C.J. Walker and Bob Marley.
As a Black-owned business, the Wheatle’s are also hoping to inspire other Black entrepreneurs in the cannabis industry.
“Knowing there are so few Black-owned stores, I feel privileged and humbled to be able to add our voices to that representation,” she says. “Hopefully it will open up more opportunities for Black people to get involved in the regulated cannabis space.”
In a blog post, the OCS highlighted a number of cannabis retail milestones, including Bodega, one of the first Black-owned retail stores in the province. Managed by Chanel Isaias, Bodega used to be home to Roywoods, the family-run Caribbean restaurant that has three locations in the city. During the pandemic, the family converted the Ossington Avenue restaurant into a cannabis store.
“We turned our dining tables into shelves, and our bar became a budtenders’ bar,” Isaias said. “The customers who were buying food from us just started buying cannabis instead.”
After a sluggish retail rollout, and months of trailing behind Alberta, Ontario now leads the country in the number of legal pot shops. According to the OCS report for 2020/2021, retail stores and the OCS sold 99,100,000 grams of legal recreational cannabis valued at approximately $840,100,000, representing a 182 per cent increase in volume over the previous year.
The pace of retail openings has accelerated in the past year, with the 420th retail store in the province opening just seven months ago.
In that same annual report, David Lobo, interim president and CEO of the OCS, predicted that the province could see some ‘right-sizing’ as a result of the proliferation of cannabis shops.
Still, when compared to booze, they are far fewer cannabis retail options across the province.
According to provincial data, there are 450 grocery stores across Ontario that sell beer and cider, 450 Beer Stores, more than 660 LCBO stores, in addition to 280 LCBO convenience outlets and hundreds of craft brewers and specialty shops.
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