WNY pot growers enjoying the highs and bemoaning the lows at harvest time

Tom Szulist and Alexis Heim are happy with their harvests but navigating a brick wall of bureaucracy at the Office of Cannabis Management getting their microbusiness farm stores up and running.

Lisa Keller? She wishes she had never gotten into the cannabis business to begin with.

Western New York’s second annual cannabis harvest is in the books, and farmers’ feelings about the industry run the gamut.

It shows the mixed bag of results growers are getting as they try to make their living supporting the cannabis market in New York State.

While some growers are gaining a foothold and finally getting their heads above water – finding their niche and making their way onto consumers’ shopping lists – others are still fighting to claw their way out of the hole they found themselves in after what many have called a botched rollout of the state’s recreational cannabis industry.

Their plight was made worse when bills designed to help struggling farmers were vetoed by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

House of Sacci is a local success story. It brought in its most bountiful harvest yet this autumn, and dispensaries clamor for its products.

Its luxury, hand-trimmed cannabis and hand-tucked pre-rolls are carried in more than 60 stores across the state and growing. They’re displayed on signature golden shelving and asked for by name.

“Our brand has gotten traction and is considered not your average cannabis in New York,” said CEO Mike Casacci. “Stores are saying, ‘Your reputation precedes you.’ “

It’s a far cry from when the company produced its first harvest, only to be met with a dearth of dispensaries in which to sell it.

“That was the gut punch for every single cultivator that only had so few stores that it was impossible for all hundreds of us to get into all of them,” he said. “Mathematically, it didn’t make sense.”

Competition for shelf space was so fierce, he often couldn’t even get in the door at a dispensary to make his sales pitch.

But that has changed.

“We’re getting three, four phone calls every other day, asking for product samples,” he said. “So, we’re doing really good.”

Szulist has customers waiting for his “amazing crop,” too, but he hasn’t been able to sell it to them directly as he had planned.

He has a built out, retail store for the Innocence Cannabis brand he is bringing to market with his once falsely imprisoned partner Valentino Dixon. Built into a converted and renovated barn in Appleton, it has sat vacant and unused since March. That’s because the state Office of Cannabis Management is dragging its feet on the final approvals it needs to transfer its well-established cultivator’s license to a microbusiness license.

“The original legislation guaranteed us a fast track to go from a conditional license to a permanent one,” Szulist said.

Attempts to reach the state since June, and appeals made at an OCM Cannabis Control Board meeting, have gone unanswered.

“My license still has not gone through, which is absolutely ridiculous, costing both the state and me tons of money,” Szulist said.

Because of the holdup, he was not allowed to distribute products he already had processed, and they have since expired, he said.

“I’ve also been running software that they told us was going to be required and that has cost me over $18,000 and it still is not being required because [the state] cannot get the interface to work,” Szulist said.

He said the state’s rollout of the legal cannabis market has been “brutal.”

“It has hurt all of the people they called upon to ask to help, like us,” he said.

Szulist has been successful with his Singer Farm Naturals CBD, and there is an audience waiting for his Innocence Cannabis, which goes against the prevailing trend of maxing out THC potency and instead focuses on matching strains of cannabis to the body’s specific cannabinoids.

Everything is ready to go, but the OCM has fallen silent in the last stages necessary to get the doors open.

That silence is something that has led to widespread criticism of the OCM.

And it’s something Heim at Greenside Cannabis in East Concord has been facing as well. Greenside transferred from a cultivator license to a microbusiness in April.

Her retail space in East Concord is ready to go, save for a final visual inspection required by the OCM.

“It’s literally a FaceTime call,” Heim said.

But despite emailing the OCM daily asking to schedule that final inspection, she had heard nothing for three weeks. Finally, she recently received an appointment for the inspection, which is scheduled for Tuesday.

“We have to have our point-of-sale and seed-to-sale tracking systems up and running, which is over $1,000 a month,” she said. “So we’re burning money with no end in sight.”

Greenside is sold in about seven local dispensaries.

“All of the stores we’re in are very supportive of the local brands, and they want to carry the local, small farmers. So we really appreciate that,” she said. “Especially Dank, Devil’s Lettuce and Green Philosophy, they really focus on carrying the smaller farmers because they know that their business means a lot to us.”

Selling direct to consumer at her own farm stand, however, would allow her to sell at higher margins.

“We are struggling, obviously, so being able to sell our product here would definitely help us,” she said.

Keller co-owns Weaver Road Farms in Chautauqua County. She has failed to gain a foothold in the state’s oversaturated market, and continues to fall behind.

She said she hasn’t made any money so far on cannabis sales and is deep in the hole, draining her savings to stay afloat.

Her farm vehicles have gone unrepaired, she can’t afford to have the brakes fixed on her truck, and she let go of her health insurance to save money.

Meanwhile, she faces more expenses and regulations required by the OCM.

She wishes she could go back in time to before she went into the cannabis cultivation business.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” she said.