There is a row of colourful, but faded rugs of different sizes hung just so on a wall, a few oversized plants and some understated, retro furniture.
âYou walk into the store and there is a clean, contemporary sense of bohemia in there,â says Harrison Stoker, vice-president of brand and culture at the Donnelly Group.
Itâs known for running popular bars, taverns and nightclubs around town. This store on Granville Street in Marpole is the companyâs latest venture and one of two Hobo Recreational Cannabis locations for adult, recreational use in Vancouver that it hopes will become eight across B.C.
The launch comes after the province, in March, revised down its estimates for tax revenues from cannabis sales from $200 million to $68 million over three years, in part, as stores have been slow to open.
âWe were really thinking of southern California. Itâs like a boutique homeware store you might stroll into,â says Stoker. âWe wanted to make the whole thing really disarming. We know there are still a lot of people who feel a little bit intimidated by the thought of going to purchase cannabis, legally or otherwise.â
There are rows of glass display cases arranged in different categories with names, descriptions and signs that are akin to your average Vancouver yoga class schedule, coffee house or craft beer pub menu.
Customers can opt for product in the category of Move, which is âTHC dominant,â or Lift or Balance, which is âequal parts THC to CBD.â There is Calm and Rest, which has âindica varietals with plenty of THC and less CBD to gear down for some serious rest and relaxation.â
Pot businesses usually have names that riff off the obvious like leaf and bud as in Love the Leaf or Budaboom. There are ones with puns like Crowsnestâs Classy Joint.
For the Donnelly Group, there is a lot in the word Hobo. Thereâs been some social media attention about it âmarginalizing homeless people,â but Stoker says âour staff and our demographic donât make those associations.â
Instead, Stoker says itâs about âthe verb to hobo. The idea of readily dropping your worldly possessions and travelling that was championed in the late 19th century when the railways were being developed in North America ⦠Weâve all read a lot of Jack Kerouacâs On The Road and other books of people who are hobos.â
That whole living-life vibe that Hobo is going for has met some regulatory bumps, however.
For one thing, Stoker notes the storeâs opaque front windows that comply with regulations in B.C. To compare, at Donnellyâs first store in Ottawa, which opened in April, âwe didnât have to make the windows opaque. You can see right into the living room (environment) before you even touch the door so you immediately establish trust and comfort, which is really powerful.â
âWeâll make every effort to work with the city and the province to soften some of the policies on storefronts. We want to be a great neighbour. We canât do that with opaque windows. People canât understand what it is.â
On the flip side, itâs impossible, says Stoker, to compare robust sales in Ottawa and make projections for stores in B.C. for other reasons.
In Ottawa, the store is having to close down two days a week because âwe are selling out of our allocation of about 25 kilograms per week in about four-and-a-half days.â
In B.C., the whole framework is different, plus âthere is an incredibly strong black market here thatâs pretty notorious around the world and that is something we are fully prepared to compete with in the long term.
âI think for our expectations of performance here, weâve had to temper them considerably with the understanding that itâll take a few years to shift the pie to this adult, recreational-use model.â
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