With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1159085
Jeff Donnelly thinks any big effects on the alco- hol industry are at least several years away. But he figured that the company of pubs, restaurants and barbershops he's president of, Donnelly Group, might as well enter the cannabis game. "We've been dealing with the government and the same regulatory bodies for so many years, so it was kind of an easy transition for us," says Donnelly, who's expecting to have eight Hobo Recreational Cannabis outlets open across the country this fall, including four or five in B.C., which already has two. "Because once you're dealing with the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch, as it's called now, and you kind of weave through the bureaucracy for so many years, we just thought that with those relationships it would be something where we've done all the work." But that doesn't mean the procedure was pain- less, even for a company that has 20 locations in Vancouver and Toronto and is in its 20th year of business. "The process was terrible; it was so much red tape," Donnelly recalls. "I thought it might be easier for us. It was months and months and months. And paperwork. I've told people it's probably about 10 times harder to get a licence to retail cannabis than it is to get a licence to open a restaurant or a bar." Hobo is well positioned as one of the few regu- lated cannabis retailers in B.C., especially while the government is forcing grey-market stores to close. But Donnelly isn't sure how much impact cannabis drinks will have when they're legalized, especially because they can't be sold in bars or restaurants. It's also unclear if or when that day will ever come. "Eventually they're just going to say, Oh, these drinks aren't hurting anybody, let's just put them in bars," Donnelly speculates. "But the background checks and the red tape we went through to get a licence to retail this stuff, even though we have to buy it off the government, was absolutely incred- ible. I'm talking tens and tens of thousands of dol- lars and close to a year to get a licence. "So how are restaurants supposed to go through that process to cannabis-infused beverages? I don't see it. I don't know how it's going to happen, but I think one day a switch is going to flip and they're just going to say, OK, let's sell this." The pains of opening a cannabis shop in B.C. are very real for Andrew Gordon, senior vice-president of Vancouver-based Kiaro, a retailer that launched 40 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER 2019 $529 million ANNUAL CANADIAN MARKET OPPOR- TUNITY FOR CANNABIS-INFUSED BEVERAGES, ACCORDING TO A RECENT DELOITTE REPORT SOURCE: NURTURING NEW GROWTH: CANADA GETS READY FOR CANNABIS 2.0, DELOITTE