Marijuana is a booming business in CB

Majority of customers are not from Colorado

On Monday afternoon, I decided to pay a visit to the three marijuana dispensaries in Crested Butte. As I entered the waiting room at the Acme Healing Center there was a guy who looked about 30 coming out of the back room. He was fit and looked like a mountain biker.

 

 

 

 

As I sat on the couch at the Crested Butte Wellness Center, a middle aged couple, probably in their late 50s, came in. “This is our first curious adventure,” the Oklahoma woman told the dispensary’s manager, Parker McLoud. They walked out with a sealed white envelope containing a candy bar.
Riding my bike to Soma I entered the waiting room and the couch is filled with six dudes, some with dreads, all on their iPhones writing reviews on Facebook or Weedmaps.com.
When I leave, I find out they are members of a band in town to play a local establishment later in the week.

The marijuana stores are very busy this summer
The retail marijuana business in Crested Butte is booming. With three marijuana dispensaries actively selling recreational (and some medical) marijuana, all three are busy and seeing a wide variety of customers.
“We opened April 1 and the business has exceeded our expectations,” said Soma co-owner Lee Olesen. “Since July 1, we’ve done about 1,400 transactions. It’s been a busy start to July.”
“When the summer season hit, the out-of-state client visits just soared,” said Olesen’s partner, Chuck Reynolds. “I bet we are seeing about an 80/20 percent split, with out-of-towners being the majority right now.”
Reynolds said their record day was the Thursday before Friday, July 4 but the Fourth was close behind. “We are starting to see a bit of a weekend trend now but you never know. Sometimes it will be a constant stream on a Tuesday,” he said.
The stream of business is steady at Acme as well. “We can probably average a hundred people a day during the summer,” said the store’s general manager David Niccum. “Both the Crested Butte and the Ridgway stores are working very efficiently. It’s a new industry and we are constantly learning new lessons but the customer base is amazing.
“Those fears that having marijuana dispensaries in town would keep tourists away can probably be eliminated,” Niccum continued. “We see people from all over the country come in every day. There’s no stereotypical stoner out there. They are young and old, conservative and liberal, rich and poor. We are finding out that everyone smokes marijuana. It can be sort of a funny crowd in there together sometimes.”
McLoud said that aside from some rainy afternoons deterring foot traffic from Elk Avenue over to the marijuana zone near Belleview Avenue, Crested Butte Wellness has seen a constant flow of business since getting its retail license in place earlier this month.
Reynolds and Olesen had owned a medical marijuana dispensary in Boulder near the CU campus but they closed it after opening Soma. “In Boulder the clients were a bunch of 20-somethings with bad backs,” described Reynolds. “Here, we are seeing a big part of the business coming from people probably 45 years old and older. We see a lot of people in their 60s and they love that it is legal now. They say they never thought they’d see the day. Some come in and want to test the waters. Others smoked in college and want to try it again. Some still smoke illegally in another state and want to purchase it legally. It’s all over the board. We’ve had people from every state and several foreign countries come in already. People are psyched and can’t believe it is legal.”
McLoud is seeing a similar trend at the Crested Butte Wellness Center, which sells both recreational weed and medical marijuana to those older than 21. “We opened for recreational sales just a week ago and I’ve had to hire more staff. I’d say 80 to 85 percent of the people coming in are from out-of-state,” he said. “We initially thought we’d see people my age in their late 20s when we started selling retail marijuana but we are definitely seeing people my parents’ age in their 50s and 60s here to hike or fish.
They are hearing about the medical benefits of marijuana and want to try it and since they’re in Colorado and don’t need a medical card, they are going there. I see it as access to clean medicine.”

Educating the clients…
In that vein, McLoud said his employees are trained to help people understand how to use legal marijuana. Many prefer edibles to smoking and he said that while the state considers 10 milligrams a single dose, his bud-tenders advise newbies to cut that in half and eat 5 milligrams to start.
Soma has a similar policy, given all the press on the potential hazards of edibles. “We try to be very educational about the edibles and advise people to start slow,” said Reynolds. “We do a lot of educating when people come in. It’s not like you buy a bottle of whiskey and drink the whole bottle at once. It’s the same with a candy bar.”
Reynolds said the state has recently implemented improved testing measures for edibles and that should help curtail some issues of people ingesting too much marijuana at once.
Niccum too understands the responsibility of running a marijuana dispensary. “It is such a new business and I think Colorado is helping to change the mind of the country,” he said. “People come in to buy it recreationally and use it medicinally. We have a responsibility to educate customers and tell them to be careful with their dosages. We remind them to keep the product secured and warn them about using and driving. It’s all a big part of the business.”
Crested Butte Fire Protection District EMS coordinator Mike Scott said the department has responded to a few marijuana calls from visitors this summer but it is not a regular occurrence. “We’ve had a couple of calls but nothing of consequence,” he said.
Crested Butte chief marshal Tom Martin said his department has not had any major issues with the local dispensaries but is keeping an eye on the abundance of marijuana being sold to tourists who might not know how to handle the increasingly strong strains, especially with the edibles.

From young adults to great grandparents…
This new legal business is attracting a wide range of demographics. “We get kids who are 21 and people coming in on their walkers,” said Niccum. “I had an 86-year-old grandmother in the Ridgway store come in to try it for the first time. She was with her daughters, who were in their 60s. They were shopping as a family. In fact, I’d say the majority of our customers are older than 50. Our smallest group is probably the 21- to 25-year-olds.”
Reynolds said the business sees a lot of couples walk through the door as well as single people and even parents with their adult kids. “That sort of surprised me,” he said.
Olesen said he’s noticed a few people come in on their 21st birthday. “They came here instead of going to a bar,” he noted.
He said that as busy as they are, it’s not exactly an easy business. The state and local taxes on their product are about 20 percent. “And there’s probably another 20 percent in penalty tax from the feds since we can’t take standard business deductions like other businesses,” he said. “There are no general and administrative expenses we can deduct. So it’s almost like we pay a 40 percent tax on what we sell when you figure in expenses.”
And Niccum said they are selling everything they have. “People walk in and are amazed,” he said. “It’s almost always their first time buying legal marijuana and we help them with their choices. People are wide-eyed when they walk in. We are selling bud and we are selling edibles. People have their requests and we are learning what people want. But they will buy everything.”

Where is the industry going?
“Overall, I’d say we have exceeded the expectations we had for the business,” said Reynolds. “June was a lot busier than we thought it was going to be. We think spring is the slower of the off-seasons so we anticipate August, September and October to be busy as well.”
The Soma owners anticipate the wave of enthusiasm will continue across the country as more and more states legalize marijuana. “They are great people,” said Reynolds. “A lot of them are buying for the medical benefits now that it is legal recreationally. Others just buy it because they like it.”
“I expect it will just get busier and busier,” added Niccum. “There is still a bit of an intimidation factor walking into a marijuana store,” he said. “As the years go by the stigma will go away.”
“Part of our job is to instruct them on how to use it comfortably and how to dose safely. People tell us they haven’t smoked in decades and we inform them that the marijuana is very different these days,” McLoud said. “We stress customer service and accurate descriptions of what customers should expect.”
McLoud said tourists know they can’t take their leftovers home so they buy it by the gram instead of the ounce. In fact Coloradoans can buy an ounce a day while out-of-staters are limited to seven grams per day.
“I tell them that they can’t take the marijuana home with them,” McLoud summarized. “But they can take home the real information and let people know what’s really happening in Colorado with marijuana. They can get the honest word out.”
Niccum said the citizens of Crested Butte have been very welcoming. He said those in the hospitality industry—waitresses, bartenders, bus drivers and front desk clerks—help the tourists find the local weed stores. He is pleased that there have “been no protests, no bad mouthing of the stores, no negativity in town from people who may not agree with the business. Crested Butte has been very patient and very good with this new industry and I think it will pay off as the word spreads and more people will come here specifically for the opportunity to try out this industry in a good place. I think it really is drawing more tourists to Crested Butte.”