Today, we held our final state inspection with three inspectors from the Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management. Everything was about what we expected, I think... it closely followed the checklist that was provided but was more show-and-tell-y. We walked all around the property and visually/verbally confirmed the things we had documented. And, since the things we documented we just things we had already completed, it was very simple.
In conclusion of the inspection, we were left with a couple quick items to check off and re-submit via image. We quickly completed those items and away we go. According to our inspector, this will kick off a series of steps which will conclude with our electronic access to METRC which is effectively our license to get going. I'll get an email in a couple days that the work has been completed and our METRC account is available to use - super anti-climactic to wrap up two plus years of agony :)
So, what do we do now? As soon as the paperwork processes, we take lots of clones. I don't know if they will be for sale right away to consumers - I have some questions out to the state about that. But our first grow will be kicked off by the end of next week. Here's likely to be a few from our first strain list: Frozen Blueberries, GG-4, Gorilla Breath, Maraschino, Dante's Inferno, Blockberry, Lemon Slam, and 24K. I'll have about 24 of each of those within a day of our METRC availability.
So, why did you get rid of credit payments? Well, we're a licensed dispensary now, which means, very soon, most of our sales will be a Schedule 1 controlled substance. Banks don't take too kindly to those sorts of transactions and credit card processors even less-so. Trust us when we say we'd love to keep taking American Express but American Express doesn't take or provide weed payments (explicitly...you'll have to keep using emojis on Venmo) over-the-counter, so we have to treat transactions differently. And, part of that was switching to debit and cash only. The other big perk of this setup is that it's directly paired with our POS system so there's no more manual number entry at the checkout counter. This is a clean, compliant system.
It's important, maybe I should have lead with this, to understand that there's just no product available. Hardly anybody is growing yet; we'll be one of the first 15 licensed grows in the whole state. There aren't any vapes or prerolls or flower or tinctures or anything. We're hearing rumbling that you can expect continuously better availability starting late-November. Our first flower won't be ready until late-Feb or early-Mar.
That's all I've got for today. It's time.