The slow road towards opening Estevan’s lone cannabis retail outlet continues for Jimmy’s Cannabis Shop.
The company has received approval to purchase product for its Estevan location, and they hope to have an on-site inspection by the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) this week. They also want to have the permit from SLGA this week.
Without the permit, they can possess the products, but they can’t sell it.
The business also received the permits for Battleford, Martensville and Moosomin.
John Thomas, who owns the company with his brother David, said previously they hoped to open before the end of the month. Now they don’t know when it will happen, but they expect it will occur before the end of the year.
“We had made an order for Estevan and we were just going to store it in one of our other stores, until Estevan was allowed to hold it, but the producer was unable to fulfill that order,” Thomas said.
It would be a big disappointment for the company if they aren’t open in Estevan this year, because the store is ready to go.
The company hired its staff members for Estevan last week. They waited until now to hire the staff because they didn’t want to hire employees, only to make them wait a lengthy period of time to start work.
“We’ll probably do a few days of training, but essentially it comes down to when we can have the product in the store,” said Thomas.
Jimmy’s Cannabis Shop has run into another issue that is facing cannabis retailers throughout the country: a lack of supply. That supply shortage forced them to close their Martensville outlet.
“When we opened Martensville, there was no Saskatoon store open. So we had Saskatoon people essentially driving to Martensville, as well as the Martensville community. So that’s why Martensville sold out so quickly.”
Thomas said he knew there were issues related to supply of cannabis, but he was surprised by the severity.
“We knew the supply was going to be tight, and we were kind of restricted on our orders, but I was surprised that then our orders didn’t arrive. I thought if you made the orders and paid for the orders, then I expected they would be here.”
More and more cannabis suppliers are being legalized all the time, and he expects the issue will gradually improve.
The company had its outlets in Martensville and Battleford open on Oct. 17 when it became legal to possess less than 30 grams of cannabis in Canada. Those were two of seven outlets in the province open on legalization day.
Thomas pointed out that one of the few stores in the province is in North Battleford, so there is a normal level of activity for the North Battleford and Battleford stores.
He said Jimmy’s Cannabis Shop worked hard to have two retailers open on Oct. 17, and they were working hard to have Estevan open as well, but they knew everything would have to be in place for that to happen. Any setback would cause them to miss that deadline.
Discretionary permit issues kept them from being open locally on Oct. 17.
He has said in the past that Moosomin would be open later than Estevan.
