Pot in high demand
DEMAND FOR LEGALIZED CANNABIS DRAWS LINEUPS, HEAVY WEB TRAFFIC ACROSS CANADA
Cannabis was “flying off the shelves” in retail outlets and online stores across the country as Canadians looked to make their first-ever legal purchase of recreational pot and participate in the historic cultural moment.
Less than 24 hours after Canada became one of the few countries around the world to legalize cannabis for adult use, some private retailers were either sold out of supply or were tending to long lineups and expected to run out by the end of the day.
Newfoundland and Labrador cannabis retailer Thomas Clarke said he sold out of his cannabis supply late in the afternoon on Wednesday, and he doesn’t anticipate receiving more products until next week.
He opened his store, Thomas H. Clarke’s Distribution, at midnight in Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s, N.L., but was turning away customers by the afternoon.
“Most of my friends and people who were gonna come today were going to come after work and now I gotta let down thousands of people, which is really bad for business and for my nerves,” said Clarke.
He said he sold out of the 100 pre-rolled joint packages 30 minutes after midnight. Canopy Growth Inc. and Aurora Cannabis were the only two suppliers in the province with products available for the first day of sales, he added.
Wednesday marked the opening of what’s expected to be a massive market for legal sales in Canada — as much as $4 billion in the first year, according to a report from consultancy Deloitte.
Still, Canadian investors were less enthusiastic than consumers, as many of the industry’s biggest players saw their stock prices fall on Wednesday.
Canadians eager to make their first legal purchase of recreational cannabis were met with long lineups at retail stores, technical glitches online and a relatively limited product selection.
Jimmy’s Cannabis in Martensville, Sask., had a lineup of more than 100 people at one point and had processed more than 200 orders by mid-afternoon, said co-owner David Thomas.
“We ran out of one strain, so we still have plenty, but it will go fast here,” he said, noting his supply might run out if demand continued at the same pace.
Meanwhile, the Natural Vibe on Water Street in St. John’s was only selling ingestible cannabis oils, after selling out of all other cannabis products at around 11:30 a.m.
Most Canadians’ first purchase of legal adult-use pot will likely be online, as there were relatively few retail stores ready on Wednesday. What’s more, the stores are unevenly spread across Canada’s vast geography.
While Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick had around 20 stores open in each province, some of the most populous provinces, such as British Columbia, had just one location ready. Ontario won’t have any physical stores until next year.
Shopify Inc., whose e-commerce software had been chosen by provinces including Ontario and several private retailers, said Canadian cannabis websites were processing roughly 100 orders per minute. The websites powered by Shopify also processed “hundreds of thousands of orders” in less than half a day, added company vice-president Loren Padelford.
Alberta’s cannabis sales portal saw a wave of traffic after it went live at 12:01 a.m., prompting the Alberta, Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis commission to put online customers into a virtual queue to avoid an outage.
“While the site had been rigorously tested, the surge of users quite simply exceeded our expectations,” said a spokeswoman for the commission. By 12:50 a.m., the queue had cleared and by 11 a.m. it had processed more than 5,000 orders.