Challenges with Direct Delivery in BC

Janeen Davis of Joint Venture Craft Cannabis, Colin Bambury of THC Canada, and Sydney Hayes of The Green Pineapple shared their thoughts on what’s been challenging and how Direct Delivery might help.

You can watch the replay of The State of Craft episode 19 here.

For those who don’t have time to watch the full episode, here is a summary of some of the points discussed.

• BCLBD is new to the industry, and doesn’t understand all the background and needs. They are often trying to implement policy without proper consultation.

• Challenges in orders – it takes a long time to get product through LBD. Especially for rural stores. It results in Inconsistent deliveries and sometimes no product to sell to customers. Direct Delivery allows for more product on the shelf.

• Product has to go from rural to Vancouver and back to rural, which makes no sense.

• It’s being treated as a pharmaceutical when it should be treated as an agricultural product the timeline to market matters since it degrades. We need to protect product integrity with proper cooling.

• BCLBD slows down the process and creates more room for environmental conditions that degrade the product. It’s a perishable good.

• Producers should be able to choose where their brand is sold and have relationships with retailers.

• Producers don’t know which stores bought their product.

• In current conditions, it’s hard to order large quantities

• Stores know their customers and what they want – direct distribution would be much easier to get what they want.

• Direct delivery will cost more, not less for micros. Logistics will cost money and billing will go through LBD even if product is direct.

• There is a worry that Direct Delivery will benefit larger operations with a large diversity of customers.

• We need to focus on how to build a sustainable industry rather than how can we make money.

• We need incentives for both producers and retailers to legalize so all their partners come on board as well.

• Private retailers need to be able to sell online. We won’t transition more legacy growers while LCBBD controls online shopping.

• In Ontario, producers can give out samples to retailers. Not so in BC.

• People don’t want to buy from the government – so they end up buying illegally.

  Watch the episode on YouTube.
  
  

This article was written in tandem with Mike F.