CHICAGO — With less than 48 hours to go until marijuana shops open their doors to the public, operators are figuring out what to do if they run low on marijuana.
For months, dispensaries have been bracing for a shortage. Nearly every state that allows recreational marijuana has had stores run out or run low during the first days of sales.
Some Illinois dispensaries say they’re already having difficulty keeping enough marijuana in stock for the medical marijuana patients they currently serve. And demand for marijuana should only grow during the early days of recreational sales, when long lines of customers are expected to wait for hours in the cold. As Illinois dispensaries await their final shipments of marijuana before sales start Jan. 1, many are preparing to limit how much customers can buy as a way of managing supply.
“We’ve been planning ahead and stocking up,” said Neal McQueeney, principal officer of Midway Dispensary near the airport. “Since they signed the law, everybody’s been really working toward limiting the inevitable shortage … to make sure if you can’t get everything you want, at least you get something.”
Dispensary operators say marijuana flower, the dried buds that can be smoked, could be among the first items to sell out.
The marijuana industry has spent months preparing for the rollout of legal cannabis. Many of the state’s 21 growing facilities are expanding capacity, but construction takes time, and so does growing marijuana.
Bedford Grow started making plans to triple capacity at its growing facility in Bedford Park as soon as Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the recreational cannabis law last summer, said Paul Chialdikas, vice president of sales and marketing. But the marijuana grown in the new space isn’t expected to be delivered to stores until April.
In the meantime, the marijuana it provides to dispensaries is selling out almost immediately, Chialdikas said. The marijuana products he made available to dispensaries last week sold out in 12 minutes.
A year ago, a batch of Bedford Grow’s products would not have sold out, let alone in a matter of minutes, Chialdikas said.
But the marijuana industry in Illinois has changed drastically from a year ago, in part because the number of medical cannabis patients in the state has doubled. Those patients will be shopping at the same stores as recreational customers.
To help manage inventory and meet demand, MedMen plans to limit recreational sales to four hours per day at its dispensaries in Evanston and Oak Park starting Jan. 2. Spokesman Christian Langbein said the restricted hours are temporary, and come after a full day of sales on Jan. 1 to everyone.
Illinois law requires dispensaries to make sure they have enough cannabis for medical patients. That means if supplies run low enough, retail locations may sell only to medical patients. Illinois lawmakers have raised concerns about potential shortages, and the Pritzker administration has said it will monitor supply to make sure medical cannabis patients have enough.
Supplies are already running tight.
“It’s getting a little bit harder to keep some of even the medical inventory in stock,” said Kris Krane, president and co-founder of 4Front Ventures, which owns a growing facility in Elk Grove Village and Mission South Shore dispensary in the South Chicago neighborhood. “(There’s) just not that much available on the wholesale market.”
Mission plans to put a spending cap of $300 in place for recreational customers, and reassess after the first day of sales based on inventory. There will be no spending cap for medical patients, Krane said.
The dispensary’s menu will be available online, and at ordering kiosks on the main retail floor. If a certain product sells out, that product will no longer be visible on the menu.
“It’s so hard to anticipate exactly what demand is going to be,” he said. “We’ll plan as much as we can at least for the first couple of days, but we’re going to have to continue to adjust as we go along.”
Eventually, nearly 946,000 Illinois residents — more than 9% of people over age 21 — could become cannabis consumers, according to a study commissioned by Illinois lawmakers and conducted by consulting firm Freedman and Koski earlier this year. Out of the roughly 114 million visitors to Illinois each year, almost 11 million are expected to buy cannabis.
In comparison, less than 54,500 medical patients bought cannabis at dispensaries in November, according to the state’s data.
Two weeks ago, Mindful Dispensary in Addison started limiting medical patients to buying ¼ an ounce of marijuana flower per day. The store has flower in stock, it just can’t get enough to supply demand, said co-owner and general manager Kurt Berry.
And that is just serving medical patients. Berry said the shop won’t start selling to recreational customers for a few months, after it has time to complete renovations.
“We’re holding our own right now, but when you flip the switch on New Year’s Eve and there’s suddenly a million new buyers, I think there’s going to be a problem,” he said. “Quite frankly, I’m happy to be on the sidelines for the first couple of months.”
Medical patients have also been buying marijuana products “at an impressive rate” at Dispensary 33 in the Uptown neighborhood, said general manager Paul Lee.
Sales are up because patient count is up, Lee said. People also are getting excited about recreational sales, and could be stocking up before all the new customers come in. Edibles and joints sell out quickly, he said.
Still, Lee said he doubts his store will completely run out of marijuana product.
“Even if you run out of one product, you should be able to have a dozen more … to pick from,” he said.
Besides the popular flower, dispensaries will also sell edible chocolates, various flavors of gummies, cannabis-infused patches and rubs for sore muscles, tinctures that can be dropped under the tongue, and concentrates in various forms.
Chicago-based Cresco Labs makes about 600 different marijuana products, and has been increasing capacity at all three of its grow facilities around the state, said spokesman Jason Erkes. A new machine at one of its facilities can churn out tens of thousands of cannabis-infused gummies per day.
Expansions are still underway at two of the company’s growing facilities, Erkes said. But once growers finish their expansions, they’ll constantly be harvesting marijuana and bringing products to market.
“It’s no different than the launch of anything new when there’s a lot of anticipation, whether it’s a shoe, a phone or a new chicken sandwich,” he said. “There’s no way to initially meet the demand, but it’ll catch up quickly.”
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