COVID-19 causes cannabis to adapt and engage
COVID-19. It’s a term we hadn’t heard 6 months ago – and now it’s a part of every conversation we have in today’s current “normal.” Cannabis operations in states where operators are up and running are quickly making changes on the fly to ensure they can serve patients needing medicine with delivery or curbside pickup. But the industry is doing far more than just that. Since the social distancing and isolation announcements from the White House began a few short weeks ago across the country, cannabis companies and those serving cannabis consumers have been quickly taking action to help their fellow man and adapt to continue industrial momentum.
Webinars
Our friends at COVA have scheduled a free webinar to help address the need to quickly move dispensaries who are open to a delivery model. The webinar intro touts the following: While cannabis sales in US surge amid the coronavirus outbreak, consumers are not only stocking up, but changing the way they shop. With the shift to e-commerce, dispensaries need to rethink how they can continue to serve customers and deliver cannabis to the people who need it the most. The webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, March 30 and you can register here if you’d like: COVA DELIVERY
BDS Analytics has quickly launched a “COVID-19 Impact on Cannabis Markets” webinar series. Although the series has already begun, there is a new installment on April 1, if you’re interested in learning more: COVID-19 Impact Series
More webinars are set to be scheduled for the next weeks from industry service providers.
Cannabis Doing Good
Glass House Farms gives back to the local Santa Barbara community in multiple ways to help with COVID-19 efforts. The company recently donated 1,000 lab gowns to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, which needed masks, gowns and other personal protective equipment. Glass House Farms operates 500,000 square feet of pesticide-free greenhouse space, so the company has a large inventory of gowns that are used as part of the company’s strict biosecurity protocols. In addition, the company started and launched “Keep the Lights On” a program to help support the local restaurants in Santa Barbara that have been forced to reduce operations due to the pandemic.
“We’re a very tourist and hospitality town, and with every restaurant and bar closed, that’s probably 80% of our economy,” Farrar said.
The Farmacy, Glass House Farms’ dispensary brand is buying its employees’ lunches from local restaurants through take-out orders. In addition, all the cannabis farms in the area, which Farrar said represent about 1,000 total employees, are ordering take-out lunches for their employees, as well.
“They’ve cut down to take-out only, so we’re going to try to step in and be their biggest take-out customers that they’ve ever had, ordering 1,000 meals a day to help them keep on keeping on throughout all of this,” said Graham Farrar, the founder and CEO.
In Hawaii, Aloha Green Apothecary is producing hand sanitizer for its employees and patients, with plans to ramp up production as much as possible to donate hand sanitizer to other businesses and organizations in the state. You won’t find them broadcasting that or patting themselves on the back, but Cannabis Business Times is happy to sing the praises of these efforts.
“We’re sitting on a lot of ethanol and other alcohols because of the extraction process, we had a lot of ethanol available in our lab, and the scientists in the lab said it’s not too difficult to make hand sanitizer. We just have to make sure it meets at least 60% alcohol content to be effective, according to the [World Health Organization]. We already make topicals … [and] a bunch of [other products] that are similar. We just don’t make a cleanser, but we thought, why not? We’ll give it a try so we can at least stock up our own retail dispensaries with sanitizer, as well as our office,” said Tai Cheng, a spokesperson for Aloha Green Apothecary.
Emerald Harvest, the global hydroponics nutrient manufacturer, has joined the battle against COVID-19 with their own efforts aimed at aiding the community, local government, and national health organizations. Known well for their aid during the California fires by offering space for people to live in if impacted by the fires, Emerald Harvest has teamed up with Hawthorne Gardening (a division of Scotts Miracle-Gro Company), and is offering the company’s facilities and capabilities to the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and the government of California for storage, supply staging, or medical use. To help the hydroponics industry during the pandemic, Emerald Harvest has dedicated its stainless-steel mixing equipment—normally used for mixing fertilizers—to produce thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer. The bottles will be donated to those in need through distributor Hawthorne Gardening and at hydroponics retail stores.
CannaCraft in Santa Rosa, Calif., found itself in dire need of hand sanitizer for its own employees and to ensure safety during retail deliveries. Like Aloha Green Apothecary, CannaCraft’s team already procures ethanol that they use for product manufacturing at their 40,000-square-foot facility. Similarly, because they produce topicals, they had other valuable items on-hand already, like aloe, and thousands of pump containers, which coincidentally were leftover from the state’s “pre-regulatory era,” Devitt said. “We had initially used them for our topicals, but they weren’t child-resistant, so we discontinued that packaging … That was sort of a delightful consequence of regulation,” said Tiffany Devitt, CannaCraft’s President of Wellness.
MizBiz, the recently formed women-in-cannabis group formed in St. Louis has solicited friends and neighbors of members to donate supplies with MizBiz members making drop-offs and deliveries. In partnership with Fit and Food Connection, MizBiz would invite any readers of Greenway to participate in local efforts. They will accept any type of food, or gift certificates to stores or Amazon will also be accepted. Contact Gabi Cole at gcole@fitandfoodconnection.org if you have questions or food, or would like them to pick up the food for you. Their pantry is in north St. Louis, but items can also be dropped off at the bin at the Fit and Food Connection’s P.O. Box, located at the UPS Store at 8816 Manchester Road, St. Louis, Mo. 63144.
- Know of a specific way the cannabis industry is adapting to or assisting in the time of COVID19? Email us at tips[@]mogreenway.com.
These are only a handful of the many cannabis industry efforts that have popped up virtually overnight to help address the pandemic. As Missouri continues down the path to fully operational facilities, it’s never too soon to engage with the local community and demonstrate social responsibility. If you are in the cannabis industry, now is a great time to consider what assistance you and your teams can provide to those in need while we wait out this critical time where many of us are anxious to assist those who need help.
