The Higher Company to roll out cannabis delivery in Central New York

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In the next few weeks, Mike Golden, co-founder and co-owner of CAURD business The Higher Company, expects to launch a weed delivery service that will cover much of Central New York.

For years Golden and partners have run the cannabis lifestyle brand The Higher Calling, which sells T-shirts, hats, and other merchandise with marijuana-related slogans to help end the stigma. Now that they’re officially entering the legal weed industry, The Higher Company has plans for delivery, brick-and-mortar retail and consumption space.

Golden spoke with NY Cannabis Insider last week about The Higher Company’s plans, ideas for a physical dispensary space – which may include a consumption – and how operating in Central New York differs from downstate.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Where are you in the process of launching your business?

We just got our temporary delivery-only location approved, and we’re still in the process of identifying a retail space we want to go with. We absolutely have plans to open a brick-and-mortar retail location – probably within the next six months. But THC To Go from The Higher Company will be up and running in the next few weeks.

Everything with cannabis, as you probably know, involves extra steps. Setting up a business account isn’t something that you can do on the same day – you’re not going to go and show your ID and just walk out with a business account, it’s going to be a weeks-long process. Everything has a few extra steps but it’s coming along good. And we’re excited to start delivering and also excited for grower showcase events as well.

What is your delivery area?

It will be mainly like the Greater Syracuse area. So, it’ll be Onondaga County, some of the immediate surrounding counties, like Oswego, Madison. Basically, Syracuse and a 20 to 30-mile range will normally be the radius that we’re serving, but some days we will have delivery options open in other areas.

The Higher Company also has another great cannabis-related business called TokaBocca, which is a cannabis themed restaurant. So, we’ll be doing what we call dine-in delivery on some days. If you’re eating at TokaBocca restaurant, you can scan a QR code to THC To Go and make an order and your order will be there before your dinner. We will have some limited options like in the Utica, and Herkimer areas, and Old Forge.

Starting out, what kinds of products are you planning to carry – in terms of types of brands and in terms of flower vs. vapes vs. edibles?

It will probably be about half and half. In the industry right now, flower makes up about 40% or 50% of the market, then there’s vapes and edibles and dabs and all the rest. We definitely plan on having a wide selection of products – just as wide as people have in the actual brick-and-mortar dispensaries. One of the most wonderful things about the program is all of these products are manufactured right here by New York farmers.

Some of the key brands we will carry that I love – and we’ll have more – are ayrloom out of Beak & Skiff, there’s a product coming out by Bison Botanicals, by Canna-House out of Buffalo, Flower City out of Rochester, for flower products and also CBD tinctures. Tonic by Tricolla Farms is another example of just great, super talented, super bright people here in industry. I don’t want to leave anyone out, but man, these people have some great products, they’re great people, and have been doing great community work. I’m looking forward to putting their stuff out there.

Tell me about the differences you think there will be in operating a delivery service in Central New York versus New York City?

New York City is a little bit of a different monster, and things are a little bit more consolidated. I think you’ll see New York City delivery services using more options like scooters and bicycles, like what you see in the city for all sorts of other delivery services and carrier services. The city never sleeps, as well, so I imagine maybe they might have later operating hours.

We’re a little bit more spread out, up here in upstate than downstate, so I think options like bicycles and scooter delivery wouldn’t be as effective. But the way the greater Syracuse area is set up, we have big suburban towns like Clay and Cicero. So, I feel like there’s like little pockets where you could maybe do 20 to 100 deliveries in a day, just those, little specific areas.

Another thing I think will be different: we will have a minimum order range for delivery options, like a minimum order of about $100, and probably $20 to $25 delivery fee. And we’ll also have some subscriber options and different customer levels like a premier VIP member can be able to get free delivery.

How many employees will you have when you launch?

We’re taking in some resumes — we’re going to start with probably about 10 employees. Then I anticipate us going to probably 20 employees after the first month of operation, if everything goes well.

You’re planning on opening a brick-and-mortar dispensary as well, do you have any plans to differentiate that shop from others?

As you know, retailers can have a special use permit to have a consumption site on site. So ideally, with the partners having great success with the cannabis-themed restaurant TokaBocca, I think that we would like to have one of those attached to — or in the same lot as — the dispensary. And, of course, we’d like to have a retail clothing element as well, which we can use to continue working on alleviating the stigma associated with cannabis. So ideally, our dispensary would come with a cannabis-themed restaurant attached, so you could go for a bite to eat, you could just be going to check out some of the hats or shirts and say, ‘hey, let’s get a drink or two or pre-rolls, and hang out.’

In terms of sales and growth, what are your short-term and long-term goals?

In the first year, we think that we’ll probably have at least 100 to 200 orders a day for deliveries, and we’re planning to continue to grow. We’ll be looking to grow to a second and third location. The second location will almost likely be in the Mohawk Valley area. We definitely are planning for expansion and planning to have three The Higher Company stores over the next couple of years. I think it’ll be a fast pace. I think the first year will kind of fly by as well. And we’ll continue employing people in the community, which is a great thing as well. That’s what this is all about.