Making history: first

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A line down the sidewalk.

That’s all anybody could hope for, and Empire Hemp founder Chris VanDusen and his eight suppliers — cannabis cultivators and processors bringing in product for the 204 E. Main St., Batavia Empire Hemp store beginning at 1 p.m. Tuesday — will happily and hopefully be watching the street side form with customers.

“For us, it's a huge thing for us. People always ask -- they want our THC products, and we haven't been able to sell to them because we're not allowed to. So to be able to have this opportunity is really great,” VanDusen said during a busy Monday of preparing for opening day of the Cannabis Growers Showcase. “So we have a range of products, flower products, prerolls, you know, a lot of whole flower from … all the other vendors are cultivators. So it's all their stuff. We're hoping that we have a line down the sidewalk is what we're really hoping for. We're just just hoping for a really big turnout. We just found out last week we got approved to do it, so you know we've been scrambling to get everything out there.”

Greenside Cannabis, in partnership with Dank, Buffalo’s first licensed adult-use dispensary, and Empire Hemp Co., is hosting the WNY Cannabis Growers Showcase, a pop-up adult-use dispensary for licensed cultivators of high-quality cannabis products, which will run from 1 to 7 p.m. every Tuesday through Saturday through Dec. 30.

Not only will it provide local shoppers with opportunity to purchase certified cannabis products, but the showcase opens the door for Empire Hemp to sell its THC products as well. Typically, the industry doesn’t allow for one company to be grower, processor and retailer, VanDusen said, and this will allow his company to sell his products through Dank as the retailer set up within Empire Hemp.

He’s got three flavors of THC gummies and three flavors of vape cartridges, plus more being developed in the lab to be launched soon, he said. Other participating cultivators and processors include Greenside Cannabis, Tarot Tokes, Flwr City, and House of Sacci, vendors “all the way from Jamestown to Niagara Falls to Rochester and everywhere in between,” he said, with a range of flower, edibles and vape products.

All participants are licensed by the state Office of Cannabis Management and are therefore authorized to sell directly to consumers. Would he have liked a larger window of more hours and days? Yes, of course, VanDusen said, but the OCM worked this out and adjusted the schedule to make it six hours a day for five days a week, “and we said, ‘no problem, that works,’” he said.

“But to be able to sell, so what it's gonna be is, we're partnered with Dank as the dispensary (from Buffalo), and they have set up their cash registers within our store. So they’re like a dispensary within our CBD store,” he said. “I think what it's going to be is, right now, they're looking at is like after January 1, there won't be any more, but if they don't get enough dispensaries opened by that time, I think they will extend it because it's the only way small brands can survive.”

Dank has been operating at 501 Main St., Buffalo, for six weeks and has been doing “excellent, way better than we thought we’d do,” owner Aaron Vancamp said. Not that he didn’t see the big influx at the start, but then expected traffic to ease up a bit after that, Vancamp said, and that’s not what’s happened.

“But it's actually increased and been increasing a little after that. So it's been really good,” he said. “We've become more efficient, though. So like, we're getting the customers, we still have the line. But then it's just like the rest, learning the payment processing and things like that to just get the customers out quicker.”

So they’ll be bringing those lessons to Batavia for some brisk sales in what VanDusen said will be a two-part process of checking IDs at one station and then cashing people out at the second one. Overall, Vancamp believes this showcase might just be a lifesaver for those in the cannabis business.

“It could be something that possibly saves the industry. It’s in dire straits, with the amount of stores that are open and the fresh crop coming in, people really need outlets to take care of that fresh crop if we could get a lot of these open and places like Batavia, where there’s like a good solid population, and Batavia’s been very welcoming of us, it wasn’t really tough, they were very glad to have us, and double the amount of revenue that we’re going to generate for them,” he said. “So basically, we think this could be something that saves you on the street for the time being until they can get more stores open and get things organized on the retail side.”

What are the benefits of these pop-ups? Convenience, established hours and locations for point-of-sale, and a coded product that a consumer can check to get the breakdown of how many milligrams it contains of THC or CBD, he said.

“That’s especially helpful in dealing with the vapes or the edibles because you can actually break down your dosage and figure out what exactly you need,” Vancamp said. “In the other market, you don’t know what you’re getting. Sometimes it could be better. Sometimes it could be worse. Sometimes it could be something horrible. They’re dealing with old products or something like that. And you’re just better off with a more safe route here.”

How can customers trust the product? It’s all been lab tested, and each product has a certificate of analysis (COA) to prove that every one of them has been tested and is safe to consume, VanDusen said.