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Jeremy Rivera was ready to open Terp Bros dispensary in Astoria, Queens, in early August, until a court injunction prevented him and hundreds of other licensees from opening new cannabis retail shops.
Fortunately, Terp Bros was able to get an exemption, and the store officially opened for business Oct. 17. Today, Astoria’s first legal dispensary employs 18 full-time workers and serves up to 400 customers per day.
Rivera, a Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary licensee who also owns J&A Building Consultants in New York City, sat down with NY Cannabis Insider to talk about how business is going, and how the future looks for Terp Bros.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How is business going so far?
It really has been good. We’re not in that high-end bracket where we’re doing $100,000 a day, but we’re comfortable. We see 350 or 400 customers on a busy day; on a slow day, we’re doing about 150.
We see a lot of recurring customers, we see a lot of neighborhood customers that are shopping with us two, three, four times a week. So, for what we wanted Terp Bros to be – which was a community location where people in our community in the neighboring Queens area felt comfortable going – it seems like we’re in the process of building that to completion.
How does that compare to your projections?
Honestly, we didn’t know what to project, and we didn’t really assign any goals except just getting open. We’re self-funded and we’re a smaller location, so we didn’t have any expectations, we just needed to get open, and continue building as time went on. We didn’t place expectations on ourselves, we just wanted to make sure that the atmosphere was correct, that the staff was educated and trained in hospitality and retail.
How many employees does Terp Bros have, and how many of them are full-time?
We have 18 employees, and everybody’s full-time. I like to compare budtenders to servers: everybody has side jobs, everybody’s doing their own thing. So we’re very open with scheduling with our budtenders and our fulfillment staff because we do understand that these could be the next entrepreneurs of the industry. We want them to remember that Terp Bros is focused on helping them build themselves. We want to give them the independence and ability to do their own thing, we want them to become their own entrepreneurs. So we’re very flexible with our schedule, we’re very flexible with our staff, we consider our staff like family.
What kinds of products have been selling the best so far?
Flower is the number one consumer choice. People are most familiar with flower and they understand it. They can look at it, and say, ‘this has beautiful trichomes, this looks amazing, look at the THC percentages.’ So flower is always going to be the No. 1 purchase by our consumers, especially for Terp Bros.
The second-best seller is pre-rolls and then close to that is vapes. Beverages do really, really well – surprisingly – especially in our area, which is highly concentrated with bars and restaurants. Beverages are one of our biggest sellers. We have people that come in and buy 12 packs of the cannabis beverages, and then we have some people that come in just for one.
Are there any brands that are performing especially strongly?
Every store is different, and it also has to do with the budtenders – the budtenders are the gatekeepers of the industry. I always like to say, budtenders sell what they like, they sell what they enjoy, they sell what they taste and love.
Electraleaf is a big hit, FlowerHouse is a big hit, urbanXtracts is a big hit. I’d like to say they’re all big hits. I have an even array of products that sell well, from $25 eighths all the way up to $60 eighths.
Jenny’s does very well. The Jenny vapes do very well, the Jenny chocolates do very well. The Pure Vibe edibles do very well, the Chef for Higher edibles do very well, Off Hours does very well. So again, there’s an ass for every seat out there.
Based on the customers you’re seeing, what would you say are Terp Bros key consumer demographics?
I’m seeing a lot of 35 and older walk in the door, and I also get a lot of traction from 45 and older. I even have a good consumer base that’s like 65 and older, you know, retirees, people who are using cannabis for ailments – I have people that are using cannabis for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other conditions. I have a couple of customers that have autistic children who are in their 20s, and they’re utilizing the tinctures to help settle them down a little bit.
Then we have our straight recreational users who had been working with companies that were drug testing – maybe they had a city, state or federal job – and now that they’re retired, they’re like, ‘Hey, I can smoke now.’ There are also still a heavy amount of canna-curious people who have never consumed cannabis before, who are coming in for just general information and to try certain things in small doses.
It also depends on the day and time. On Friday nights, I can have a crowd of people from ages 22 to 32. As indoor quality is going to come out, and brands that people recognize start to come out, I think we’re going to touch into that 21 to 25 age group. But right now I see a lot of an older crowd, I see a very mature crowd coming in.
How much of a problem do illicit shops present to your business?
Again, every area is different, but one thing that New York City as a whole has in common is that anywhere you can go in New York City you’re going to find a ratio of at least 50 illegal dispensaries for every licensed one.
I’m the first licensed dispensary in Astoria, and just in our neighborhood there has to be maybe 200 illicit shops – so I’m outnumbered 200:1. I try not to look at the illicit market as competition, because I like to feel that the consumers who are purchasing legal are doing so because they know it’s a safer option.
Not until all the illicit stores are shut down are we going to have an even playing field for these legal businesses to flourish. It’s not fair that we’ve worked so hard to get the licenses and we’ve sacrificed so much in our personal lives and our business lives to accomplish opening these stores, and yet, you can open an illicit store as quickly as 30 days. We’re not on an even playing field. These stores have the ability to market better, they have the ability to use credit cards, they have the ability to do customer rewards, because there’s no regulating body to govern over them.
Speaking of competitive pressure, what are your thoughts on medical cannabis Registered Organizations opening adult-use dispensaries? Are you worried about competing with them, as these stores come online?
When we got into the CAURD program, we were promised that the Registered Organizations were not going to be able to operate for three years; that turned around, and they’re now able to operate sooner. To tell you the truth, I’ve had multiple people from ROs come to my shop and try to sell me products – indoor products at a cheaper price than New York cultivators and processors. But for us at Terp Bros, I like to say we stand on what’s right.
I am not going to put RO weed on my shelves. We’ve been through too much with the injunctions, we’ve been through too much with the shutdowns, we’ve been through too much financially, emotionally, to allow the RO brands in our store, when there’s so many New York State cultivators and processors that have been through the struggle with us – and they have great products.
I wish we could have kept them out of the adult-use market for longer, to allow the smaller businesses in cannabis to develop their marketing and to earn some money so that we can compete in an even arena. But the truth of the matter is, as we all know, these ROs have big purses – larger purses than a lot of the CAURDs are able to afford.
What are your long-term plans for Terp Bros – whether that be expansion, building up the company and then selling, or something else?
We’re looking to become a New York cannabis brand that’s recognized throughout the whole state. We’re not looking to sell – especially not selling to an MSO, or an RO – we’re looking to truly create what we all wanted: generational wealth. I’m looking to create a corporation, I’m looking to create an entity that’s gonna be able to provide more jobs to provide help in the infrastructure of legal cannabis.
We’re looking to expand. We would love to get our second and third location eventually. I don’t believe selling the business is in the future. I want to be able to pass this on to my children or my family or my staff members who are developing their own lives and their own entrepreneurial businesses. We’re looking for Terp Bros to be a household name, when it comes to legal cannabis in New York.
Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs currently applying for a license to open a dispensary?
At Terp Bros we keep an open-door policy – I have at least two or three CAURDs a week that stop by my shop to ask me questions. I keep an open-door policy for anybody who is looking to get into the industry. I’ll let you know how a built-out store looks, what worked for me and what didn’t.
I would always suggest to people that are getting into the cannabis industry to stay strong, negotiate and know who you’re doing business with. You should understand who you’re getting in bed with, and look at the long term. You can’t just think about today and next week, you have to think of the next quarter and then next year.
Understanding where you see yourself now and where you project yourself to be in the next year is very big. Slow and steady wins the race, you don’t have to always think that you have to compete with other dispensaries; you have to be yourself, you have to do what’s true to you.