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Urban Leaf officially opened its doors in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood on April 18, and is currently serving about 200 customers per day.
In its first month of business, the store has been attracting a customer base mostly consisting of office workers over the age of 30 who commute to the city, said owner Joseph Abramov.
In a Q&A with NY Cannabis Insider, Abramov answered questions about what customers are buying, operating in Manhattan and challenges in New York’s legal weed industry.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
About how many customers are you seeing per day? How does that compare to your projections before opening?
At least 200 customers a day. I was thinking, ‘How the hell am I going to get 200 to 300 customers a day to walk through this door – not even on day one, let’s say day two or day three?’ And then, surprisingly enough, I realized that cannabis is in very high demand; people make their way to you, they find their way to you.
How many workers do you employ?
We have about 15.
What kinds of products are selling the most?
I would say pre-rolls are probably the No. 1 seller. And then I would say flower and edibles are probably competing with each other for No. 2.
What brands are selling the most?
We’re selling a lot of RYTHM, ayrloom and Holiday products.
Which demographics do you see as your target market?
Definitely not young crowds. We definitely don’t have a lot of people coming inside here who are in their early 20s. Most of our clientele, I would say, are probably 30 and up. What we actually have near us is a lot of office workers on Third Avenue – one street over. Corporate people usually come during their lunch hour. Then we have this 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. rush where people are on the way home after work. Only like 20% of our business are people from the neighborhood.
Can you describe your business experience outside of cannabis?
I’ve been a real estate investor for about 12 years.
How does that experience translate to running a cannabis dispensary?
My experience in real estate helped me up to the stage where I opened the store – meaning the construction was fairly simple, finding the store was simple because I had sort of access to certain programs. I was able to reach out very easily to landlords myself, partly because I knew what would make a dispensary tenant more attractive to these landlords.
That definitely helped me get a store up and running. But after that, it’s a completely different animal. Retail is a whole different game that I’m learning daily.
How much of a problem do illicit cannabis shops present to your business?
Manhattan is very dense: a lot of buildings, a lot of people. So each illegal dispensary would definitely impact the legal ones. And in my area, they’ve only shut down one of them. There are still three four operating across the street for me.
What state cannabis policies/regulations do you think are the most challenging to your business?
New York has weird regulations regarding marketing. For example, billboards and signage is legal, I believe, in New Jersey; but in New York, it isn’t legal. So there’s a lot of discrepancies between New Jersey and New York and it seems that New Jersey’s are way more lax and open. You can’t give discounts to your employees here – how do you explain to your employees that you can’t give them a discount?
What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs planning on opening dispensaries?
Educate yourself. Do your homework obviously and collaborate with the right professionals. Work with the right people. Go to events, constantly learn about new things, products, trends, regulations.