Now more than 40 non-active Massachusetts cannabis business licenses
While consumers who are copping ounces of great weed for eighty bucks may be ecstatic, a lot of other Mass cannabis stakeholders are hurting, namely those on the seed-to-sale spectrum.
Even with year-over-year and frequent month-over-month overall adult-use sales increases, the market’s in a slump by many measures, and many can’t recover. In June 2024, the average retail cost of one ounce of flower in Mass was $143.53. Four years earlier, during the pandemic in June 2020, it was nearly $400.
All things considered, it’s no surprise that dispensaries and other kinds of companies are closing, from small independents that can’t keep up to much bigger players that are making strategic moves to prevent further losses during this enduring rocky period.
In that second group, Mission, a subsidiary of multi-state operator 4Front Ventures, closed its store in Brookline near Boston University. Mission stores in Worcester and Georgetown are still open.
To the west of Greater Boston, antiques shoppers may be saddened by the news of Heal Cannabis in Sturbridge closing.
And in Westfield, due west of Springfield, the Egyptian-themed Heka “abruptly” closed last Monday. According to MassLive, the company had struggled with not only stiff competition from other dispensaries, but from “years of litigation from disgruntled landlords and investors.” In 2018, the CEO told local reporters that the company’s larger operation would eventually hire 140 employees, with the Westfield store alone boasting “5,000 square feet with 18 cash registers.”
Citing declining revenue, Orange Cannabis Co. closed its retail store in Orange on July 15. In a letter to customers shared with the Greenfield Recorder, company execs wrote, “We are confident that the decision to close the store, while difficult and disappointing in the short-term, is in the best long-term interest of our company’s position in the Massachusetts market and for our continued success as a significant investor and employer here in Orange and central Massachusetts.”
In 2022, The Source+ in Northampton became the first adult-use store to shutter since recreational sales became legal in 2018 (Ethos closed its Lynn store earlier, but transferred its recreational retail license to its store in Dorchester). By last November, Boston Business Journal reported that the number of licenses no longer in operation rose to 16.
According to the most current available state data, 38 licensees that had commenced operations were non-active as of Aug. 8. That includes: three with a Marijuana Courier license; one Independent Testing Laboratory; 10 Marijuana Cultivators; two Marijuana Delivery Operators; one Marijuana Microbusiness; nine Marijuana Product Manufacturers; and 12 Marijuana Retailers. Another 270 with provisional or final licenses that never opened were also non-active.
Among the casualties, Eric Casey reported for Worcester Business Journal in April that TYCA Green Inc. permanently closed its Society Cannabis Co. in Clinton. The company was “facing a lawsuit in Worcester County Superior Court filed in December by Control Point Mechanical, a Shrewsbury-based air condition contractor” for an alleged $61,000 “breach of contract related to work on the building’s HVAC system and subsequent service calls.”
At the same time, new businesses are coming online. At the Aug. 8, 2024 CCC meeting, commissioners approved three new final licenses—two retailers, and one product manufacturer. As of that date, there were 692 licensees that had commenced operation across all categories—from 141 cultivators, to 118 product manufacturers, to 376 retailers.
Forty-seven additional applicants had final licenses in hand, with 623 more in the provisional stages.
