BudDigest

This story was republished with permission from Crain’s Detroit and written by Dustin Walsh.

Business was humming on Saturday at Bazonzoes’ three marijuana dispensary locations. Hundreds were in line to take advantage of the retailer’s large 42% discount to celebrate the 4/20 holiday.

Then it all started to fall apart as Bazonzoes’ point-of-sale system, Dutchie, began to experience outages. The cannabis retailer quickly adjusted by handwriting sales, calculating taxes and discounts using a calculator. Pandemonium.

“We were out for about two hours total,” said Erin McCann-Sabo, operations director for Bazonzoes, which has two locations in Lansing and one in Walled Lake. “We were already at a backup of 35 minutes to an hour and a half due to the sheer volume of people in line. We had to rely on our budtenders to quickly do math and transcribe METRC numbers (the state’s product tracking system). For people to hand-write METRC, excise and sales tax on a subtotal with various discounts is an exercise in not only math skills and patience, but in perseverance. Especially in front of 400 angry customers.”

The Dutchie point-of-sale system outages began at about 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, about 30 minutes after the west coast of the

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Midnight Greens is a new dispensary which opened last week in Washington Township (Gloucester County) on the Black Horse Pike (Rt 42).  

The new dispensary is located on the northbound side of Black Horse Pike not too far past the Whitman Diner and Garfield Ave, in a small strip of stores… with Midnight Greens positioned on the left side of the building.

Midnight Greens is owned by local resident Cindy Ortiz, who didn’t even try marijuana until her early 40s! Battling breast cancer at the time, a friend suggested she try marijuana to see if it would help Cindy cope with the pain and side effects of surgeries and chemotherapy.

Cindy was so happy with the benefits of marijuana, she decided to open a dispensary so that she could help others!

To be clear, Midnight Greens is an Adult-use recreational dispensary… anyone can walk in and purchase from the Washington Township dispensary.  You do not need a medical card to purchase.

Cindy is one of the first female dispensary owners in New Jersey, and realizing a woman walking into a dispensary

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24/7 cheese vending machine opens in Kensington

Perrystead Dairy in Old Kensington has opened a new cheese vending machine that is open 24/7!

PHILADELPHIA – Say cheese! A unique vending machine in Philadelphia was crafted with cheese lovers in mind.

Perrystead Dairy has opened what they are calling a “cheese dispensary” outside their North Hancock Street shop on the border of Kensington and Fishtown.

The machine is cashless, and open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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But it’s not just cheese, the machine is also filled with meats, jams and crackers.

So, whether you need to build a charcuterie board, or grab a late-night snack, your cheese needs are covered!

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After years of planning in close partnership with municipal leaders, the Garden State’s capital will become much greener. Theory Wellness will open Trenton’s first cannabis dispensary for medical sales April 25.

Located at 461 New York Ave., a redevelopment district right off Route 1, the company will begin with medical cannabis sales only, but plans to expand its offering to recreational sales in the coming weeks. As part of its commitment to the city, Theory will be engaging locally with nonprofits, including a generous annual donation to drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs, and will be supporting the city through added employment, tourism and tax revenue.

Theory said it has invested significantly in the local area, redeveloping a vacant building, providing significant green space and adding ample parking for easy and convenient access for customers.

“The planning and development of this project spans several years, and we’re grateful to the city for their continued partnership in making this vision a reality,” Brandon Pollock, CEO of Theory Wellness, said. “We’ve built a reputation on the East Coast by offering a very high level of service to our customers, and we are excited to bring our experience and hospitality to New Jersey.”

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This Trenton dispensary will be the first of its kind, resulting from years of partnership with local officials and significant investment in the Garden State’s capital.

TRENTON, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / April 24, 2024 / The Garden State’s capital will become much greener with the opening of the first dispensary in Trenton, as Theory Wellness opens for medical sales this Thursday, April 25th. After years of planning in close partnership with municipal leaders, Theory will open its doors at 461 New York Avenue at 10 a.m.

Trenton Dispensary
Theory Wellness to open the first dispensary in NJ state capital.

The store is located in a redevelopment district right off Route 1. Theory has invested significantly in the local area, redeveloping a vacant building, providing significant green space to the area, and adding ample parking for easy and convenient access for customers.

“The planning and development of this project spans several years, and we’re grateful to the city for their continued partnership in making this vision a reality,” shared Brandon Pollock, CEO of Theory Wellness. “We’ve built a reputation on the East Coast by offering a very high level of service to our customers, and we are excited to bring our experience and hospitality to

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April 20 is a day recognized globally for celebrating cannabis culture, but it’s also like the cannabis industry’s Black Friday.

Dispensaries offer deals designed to inspire people to flood their stores to stock up.

However on Saturday, dispensaries across the state using an inventory platform called Dutchie were hamstrung for hours by technical challenges, which caused many of their registers to go down or move at snail pace.

It was the second year in a row that a 4/20 sales surge caused the system to crash.

“Imagine running a restaurant where you have one burner working and you normally have 20 stoves operating,” said Nick Rinella, CEO of Hippos Cannabis dispensaries. “We had one burner going.”

Each Hippos location went from selling around 500 items per hour to less than 100 because of the issues the outages were causing, he said.

Dutchie is similar to the platforms major stores, such as Home Depot and Walmart, use to scan items at check out. However, Dutchie also has the special function of communicating with the state’s seed-to-sale tracking system called Metrc.

It keeps the stores compliant with the state’s stringent tracking requirements of marijuana products.

Rinella said all three Hippos dispensaries in Springfield, Chesterfield and Columbia faced delays all day

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This Trenton dispensary will be the first of its kind, resulting from years of partnership with local officials and significant investment in the Garden State’s capital.

TRENTON, N.J., April 24, 2024 (Newswire.com) – The Garden State’s capital will become much greener with the opening of the first dispensary in Trenton, as Theory Wellness opens for medical sales this Thursday, April 25th. After years of planning in close partnership with municipal leaders, Theory will open its doors at 461 New York Avenue at 10 a.m.

The store is located in a redevelopment district right off Route 1. Theory has invested significantly in the local area, redeveloping a vacant building, providing significant green space to the area, and adding ample parking for easy and convenient access for customers. 

“The planning and development of this project spans several years, and we’re grateful to the city for their continued partnership in making this vision a reality,” shared Brandon Pollock, CEO of Theory Wellness. “We’ve built a reputation on the East Coast by offering a very high level of service to our customers, and we are excited to bring our experience and hospitality to New Jersey.” 

Their impact is welcomed by leaders, including Mayor Gusciora,

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A second recreational marijuana dispensary has opened its doors in Gardner.

Joint Operations, a veteran co-owned business with stores in Mendon and Rowley, officially opened its newest location at 320 West Broadway in Timpany Crossroads Plaza on Sunday.

The establishment was hoping to open its doors one day earlier, on the coveted 4/20 date, but Daniel Lencioni said delays with the state Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) meant they would have to settle for the later date.

“The CCC delayed so we were just waiting for a very long time to open way before 4/20,” he said. “We were supposed to open on April 10, but here we are on 4/21. And I do believe that everything happens for a reason.”

The dispensary, which specializes in flowers, pre-roll, vaporizers, edibles and topicals, will be open daily 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., except for Friday and Saturday, when the shop will remain open until 10 p.m. each night. A daily blog on the Joint Operations website covers topics like “A Beginner’s Guide to Cannabis Consumption,” “Influential Women Within the Massachusetts Cannabis Industry,” and the “Surprising Health Benefits of Cannabis.”

New Philadelphia council passed an ordinance Monday to prohibit recreational marijuana dispensaries from opening in the city.The city voted to prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries in 2016.

NEW PHILADELPHIA ‒ City council has voted to ban recreational marijuana facilities from locating within the city of New Philadelphia.

“I think part of this is the message that we want to give to our youth and the people that live here and the businesses that we want to attract here,” Councilwoman Cheryl Ramos said, speaking in favor of the ban.

“The big thing is our message. This is a family-friendly community. So, we want to remain that way.”

Council approved the ordinance by a 6-1 vote on its first reading. Councilman Dan Lanzer cast the sole no vote, saying he objected to the fact that he was not given 72 hours’ notice of the Zoning & Annexation Committee meeting on Monday, where the issue was first discussed.

By NICK YAMASHITA

The Progress

Chris OFerrell shows mature canabis plants in one of the growing rooms at the Deep Roots production facility in Mesquite. PHOTO BY NICK YAMASHITA/The Progress

With 4/20 come and gone, Deep Roots in Mesquite celebrated with an open tour for the media showing the company’s innovative process as a standard for the cannabis industry.
“It is all about the quality of the product,” Senior Director of Cultivation Chris OFerrell said.

The tour began with the flowering rooms. This is where the process begins. The plants are divided up to two strains per room with pairings done according to whether the strains are able to be grown together.

“We have implemented top technological advances to help be more energy efficient and more top product in quicker time and less expense,” OFerrell said.

The spectrum of how far the science of cannabis production has come is constantly evolving, he explained. To keep up with the constant change Deep Roots has recently completed a $3 million investment and upgrades at its Mesquite facility.

OFerrell said the whole project began in early 2023 with full completion expected later this month. The process was divided into two phases and involved a

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