Retail Cannabis in Canada, Part 1: Slow Growth but More Opportunity as the Legal Weed Market Matures

As a liquor and cannabis license consultant, Rebecca Hardin, lead consultant at Thrive Liquor & Cannabis Advisors has been keeping an eye on the performance of each provincial government’s implementation of retail recreational cannabis since legalization in October 2018. The rollout of retail cannabis in Canada has been slow and uneven from province to province, and supply shortages have caused frustration for both consumers and store owners. These are the growing pains of Canada’s new retail cannabis market. While some would-be investors might think that the “pot of gold” they once dreamt of was the result of hype or wishful thinking, we are still very much at the beginning of Canada’s retail cannabis era and things are bound to improve by leaps and bounds.

One only has to look at the growth of recreational cannabis sales in Colorado to see what growth for retail cannabis in Canada might look like over the next 5 years. Recreational cannabis became legal in Colorado in January 2014. In that first month, sales were $14 million; sales for June 2019 were over $122 million. Each year, Colorado’s legal weed sales increased by $200+ million. In 2014, there were $303,239,699 in sales and by year end 2018, annual sales were $1,213,517,589. Colorado MED (Marijuana Enforcement Authority) has licensed 576 retail cannabis stores to date.

The rollout of retail cannabis stores in Canada was hit and miss. Alberta’s cannabis retail implementation was the best in Canada, with the largest number of retail stores, on a per capita basis, and largest percentage of national sales. According to Arcview Market Research, although Alberta has only 12% of Canada’s population, the province’s cannabis retailers sold 38% of all legal retail cannabis sold in Canada in 2018.  Other provinces, like Ontario, were latecomers to the bricks-and-mortar retail arena. Ontario didn’t open retail stores until April 2019, even though reports from Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI revealed that most sales were coming from retail stores and not online.

The table below shows total retail cannabis revenue for each province since legalization.

Adapted from Statistics Canada “Table 20-10-0008-01 Retail trade sales by province and territory (x 1,000)” and “Mapping Canada’s cannabis stores: from dense supply to zero footprint”, Globe & Mail. Number of stores by province added to the table by Rebecca Hardin.

The number of stores and store density per 100,000 population don’t necessarily correlate to higher sales, because are a number of variables that must be considered: store locations, supply, the legal definition of age in each province (“adult cannabis use”), to name a few.

Read part 2 of this post.

If you’re considering starting a recreational cannabis store in your province, contact us and receive guidance from an experienced cannabis license consultant. We’ll guide you through the application process – significantly increasing your chances of application approval.