Marijuana Business Magazine May-June 2020

May-June 2020 | mjbizdaily.com 65 permitted (and, in some cases, mandated) curbside or drive-thru pickups, which became immediately popular. Many customers will no doubt adopt the newly discovered convenience of cannabis drive-thru and delivery after physical-distancing measures are no longer necessary—but not everyone. After all this time spent at home, there’s no doubt some people will want to get out—at least in the short term. 3 Perceptions and Politics At press time, nearly 30 states and Washington DC had allowed mar- ijuana businesses to remain open after is- suing stay-at-home orders for residents. A number of cannabis companies followed up with instances of good corporate citi- zenship (see “Booster Shot” on page 66). And dispensaries were among the first retailers to proactively limit the numbers of people who could be in stores at one time—well before grocers and pharmacies adopted the practice. Industry veterans are hopeful these moves translate into political currency when the spread of the coronavirus slows and the public has an opportunity to assess how different industries fared. “This is an incredible opportunity for this space at a federal level. ... I don’t know of another industry that doesn’t need a dollar of bailout funds in order to create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next couple of years,” Cresco’s Bachtel said. “And you don’t even need to legalize cannabis at a federal level to do it. All you need to do is give banks protection and let us take these handcuffs off. Let us operate like a normal business.” 4 Management Behaviors A number of cannabis executives have lived through one crisis or another: from the stock-market crash of 1987 to the financial meltdown of 2008 to the vape crisis of 2019. But the coronavirus pandemic is clearly more severe than anything most North American executives have experienced. Still running on the momentum of change spurred by the vape crisis, some marijuana businesses are thinking about cost-cutting, personal safety and other challenges in new ways. This is evident in how cannabis executives are taking measures to secure their supply chains by finding more and diverse backup vendors in case a primary vendor stalls. (See “Supply Side Struggles” on page 56.) Still other executives are rethinking their need for real estate and other assets once deemed essential. “We were looking at a 50,000-square- foot space. … Now, I don’t think we need that much space. I think we can be more nimble and smaller, and we can incorporate hoteling space and we can have people work from home,” Bachtel said. “This is opening up my eyes to what could be a pretty material change in the way we think about our corpo- rate-office structure.” AK WA OR NV AZ MT WY NM ND SD ID UT NE KS OK TX MN WI IA MO IL IN MI OH PA NY KY WV VA TN NC SC GA AL MS AR LA FL CT MA RI VT NH ME NJ MD DC DE HI CA CO States allowing marijuana businesses to operate despite lockdown/stay-at-home orders* ©2020 MarijuanaBusinessDaily ,adivisionofAnneHollandVentures. AllRightsReserved. ■ Recreational and medical cannabis ■ Medical cannabis only *As of 10 a.m. MT April 2 PR AK WA OR NV AZ MT WY NM ID UT HI CA CO States allowing marijuana busin ©2020 MarijuanaBusinessDaily ,adivisionofAnneHollandVentures. AllRightsReserved. AK HI BusinessDaily ,adivisionofAnneHollandVentures. d. *As of 10 a.m. MT April 2 PR AK WA OR NV AZ MT WY NM ND SD ID UT NE KS OK TX MN WI IA MO IL IN MI OH PA NY KY WV VA TN NC SC GA AL MS AR LA FL CT MA RI VT NH ME NJ MD DC DE HI CA CO States allowing mariju na busine ses to operat despite lockd wn/stay-at-home orders* ©2020 MarijuanaBusinessD ily ,adivi ionofAnneH llandVentures. AllRightsReserved. ■ Recreational nd medical cann bis ■ Medical cann bis o ly *As of 10 a.m. MT April 2 PR AK HI sionofAnneHollandVentures. *As of 10 a.m. MT April 2 PR