Podcast Episode: Clueless in Cannabis: An Oklahoma Dispensary Success Story

Podcast title with picture of Denise Mink of Med Pharm dispensary

When Oklahoma flung open the doors to its medical cannabis industry, Denise Mink thought it would be a good opportunity to “semi-retire” by opening a dispensary with her husband. But things didn’t go quite as planned. In this episode, Denise reveals to MJBiz CEO Chris Walsh some of the lessons she learned while trying to get Med Pharm off the ground.

Denise shares:

  • How her lack of experience led to costly inventory mistakes.
  • How she and her husband dealt with pushback from the community, including from the local police force.
  • Which marketing vehicles have proven to be the best investment for Med Pharm.

Who is Denise Mink?

Denise Mink was the most successful agent at the real estate company where she was employed, but she was also super stressed and ready for a change. So when Oklahoma launched its MMJ market, she jumped – even though she had no experience in the industry other than visiting a few dispensaries in Colorado. But a willingness to surround oneself with cannabis veterans plus her persistence and business savvy helped make Med Pharm, located outside Tulsa, a success.

 

Episode Transcript

Chris Walsh

Welcome to See to CEO, the podcast about making your way in the cannabis business. I’m your host Chris Walsh, the CEO of MJBiz.

In this episode, my guest is Denise Mink, who took a big leap forward in 2018 and opened a dispensary called Med Pharm outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma, with her husband. She had been in real estate for nearly two decades before entering cannabis with almost no knowledge of the industry.

Her goal was to use it as a low-stress route to semi-retirement. But that’s not exactly how it’s played out.

Today we’ll talk about how Denise has found success in a wide open, fast-growing market, resistance she faced along the way, including run-ins with law enforcement, and how she has navigated unexpected challenges to build a patient base of 10,000.

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Chris Walsh

Welcome back to Seed to CEO, the podcast about making your way in the cannabis business. Let’s get this party started.

I’m excited to welcome Denise Mink to the show. I spoke to Denise for the first time a few months ago, just to introduce myself and make the connection and hear more about the crazy Oklahoma medical marijuana market. Denise didn’t pull any punches when talking about how difficult it’s been to enter this industry when she came completely from outside of it. And I was really fascinated by her experience.

And I know there’s a lot of you out there who have been or are about to go through something similar. So we’re going to have Denise walk us through how she was able, with her husband, to not only start a dispensary in a new market, but also to make it successful.

Denise, welcome to the show.

Denise Mink

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Chris Walsh

Good to talk to you again.

Now, it’s been a tough 15,16 months for everyone throughout the pandemic. So I just wanted to start with a focus on the positive. We’ve had enough negative going on.

What are you most excited about right now? It could be business or personal or family. It could be what you’re going to eat for dinner tonight.

Denise Mink

I am excited about our growth in Oklahoma. And I’m excited about what’s to come. It feels like it’s just going to be a matter of time before this is legal everywhere. I’m sure that recreation’s coming. We’re excited and nervous about it.

But we’re just excited for the future. It sounds like in Oklahoma, we’re finally coming together, uniting as a group. And we’re working with our legislature a little bit better. And I’m really excited about our future and where we’re going to come.

It’s been, it’s been kind of like the Wild West here, and it’s starting to get controlled. And that really is a good thing.

Chris Walsh

I mentioned earlier that you’re running a successful dispensary. Let’s give the listeners an idea of how you’re defining success. Can you share anything with sales or patient numbers or anything that puts this in perspective on how you’re doing?

Denise Mink

Sure. Well, one way we gauge our success is our number of patients that we have in our point-of-sale system. Right now we’re around 10,000.

And what’s important is that we always see a growth. So we need to make sure that we’re always adding new customers. And we continue to add at a rate of around 300 to 400 a month. That depends on how much snow we got that month. February was a rough month. But we’re continuing to add those numbers.

And we are continuing to see the dispensary just grow on our bottom line as well. There’s more and more growers. We’re able to negotiate better deals. So we’re just able to lower our prices across the board and still have a great bottom line.

And the growth is what we’re excited the most about because it continues. We thought it would stop. We thought after two and a half years, almost three years that we would not continue to add as much, but Oklahoma just keeps adding more patient cards, more patients and … We’re doing very well in that. And I think a lot of dispensaries in the state are doing well on that.

Chris Walsh

Well, let’s talk about Oklahoma before we get into your experience and your lessons learned along the way. Oklahoma is a very interesting market. When it first legalized … we do projections every year for every state. And we had no idea that Oklahoma would become one of the largest medical cannabis states in the country.

Denise Mink

Yeah.

Chris Walsh

And I think there’s some very business-friendly rules and patient-friendly rules as well.

Denise Mink

Yeah.

Chris Walsh

Can you paint a picture really quick of the environment you’re operating in there?

Denise Mink

I can. So you’re right. No one expected this type of growth.

As you mentioned, we didn’t know what we were doing when we started this. Cannabis business was definitely new and different for us. We tried to seek consultation and help. We couldn’t find anyone willing to help us yet because they said, “You don’t need it. You’re going to have to add these patients. It’s going to take a while.”

Well in Oklahoma, it is very easy to get your patient card. You can have a stubbed toe and you can get a patient card. So unlike some states that have six symptoms or six diseases, or you have to have this wrong with you, Oklahoma is anything and everything – you’ll get a patient card. So if people are willing to pay the money for a two-year card, they can get one. It just basically is what it is.

I don’t know anyone that has been turned down for one for health reasons. They might turn them down if they were a former felon or something like that. Or they don’t like their picture. It’s so easy to get your card.

On the business side, it’s hard to say that it’s been easy for us on the business side with their rules and regulations. No one understood them and there was no one there to enforce them. So unfortunately, there are some, I guess, for lack of a better word, outlaws out there that are not abiding by the rules, because they don’t have to worry about it. There’s no one to enforce them.

That is changing. When I said that that’s coming about, we had our first inspection after two and a half years, us and everybody else.

Chris Walsh

Two and a half years before any inspection?

Denise Mink

it’s been very, very lackadaisical. Yeah, two and a half years before we had an inspection. Yes. Now, We aced it really well. And we had a heads up…

Chris Walsh

That’s crazy. So there’s no caps on licenses, we’ve got literally thousands of businesses in this market that everyone more or less expected to be fairly small. So I want to come back on this in a couple minutes and talk about how you compete in this environment.

But let’s back up for a minute. How did you get into this? You were in real estate and, before that, telecommunications for over two decades. You’re involved in the community there outside of Tulsa. You weren’t in the cannabis community, you’re not in the industry. When did you say hey, this sounds like an interesting idea?

Denise Mink

Well, when Colorado went rec, I decided we were going to move to Colorado and open a pot shop and call it Pot Pockets. Already had the name and had a logo and the sign and everything and my husband wouldn’t do it.

Chris Walsh

Pot Pockets!

Denise Mink

Pot pockets. Yes. Like hot pockets. But you sing it.

Chris Walsh

Did he say no to the name or…

Denise Mink

He said no to moving to Colorado and opening up a dispensary.

Chris Walsh

I love the name.

Denise Mink

I know! It’s a great name, I still need to do that. I still have to open a dispensary called Pot Pockets.

But my thought was, I was so stressed in real estate. My husband was traveling at the time, so we were apart. And pot smokers are supposed to be chill. And I thought you know, this is gonna be a laid back environment, how can it be stressful?

And then on my daughter’s birthday, they voted in Oklahoma overwhelmingly for 788, June 26, 2018. And I said that’s meant to be. We were going to open up the dispensary. And I applied for every license, and they gave me every one of them.

And I said you got to be kidding me. Time to go to Colorado and see what a dispensary looks like. I’d never been in a dispensary before.

Chris Walsh

Let’s expand on that. So what were the first steps that you took to understand the industry, to understand what you were going to get into? You thought it was going to be stress free – and I know we’re going to get into this in a bit …

Denise Mink

It’s not.

Chris Walsh

…but it’s quite the opposite. So let’s let’s help listeners who are in that same position understand what are those initial steps that you took.

Denise Mink

So for Oklahoma, applying for the license was fairly easy. They put it out ahead of time, this is what’s required, the documents that we needed. Very inexpensive. Oklahoma is only $2,500 for any license. So we went through that. And in three weeks, we had every license. So that’s when the work started.

We did take a trip, my daughter and I, to Colorado so I could check out dispensaries and see what they were like. And I was crazy. I’m walking around taking pictures thinking, “I’m going to have the same products these people have, and I’m going to know where to order them.”

I realized quickly that’s not the case. When we came back home, I realized I needed to learn everything I could. So I surrounded myself. I sought out people with knowledge of cannabis. I sought out people that can grow, I sought out anyone that had formerly lived in Colorado or California that had worked in the industry. And we just started surrounding ourselves with those people. I did, I started researching. I ordered a lot of books. I’m not big into reading, so I’d skim through those. I didn’t know what indica, hybrid, sativa was.

Chris Walsh

So even after applying for the license, this was kind of a “Hey, this sounds cool. I’m gonna apply for a license.” And then reality kind of set in. You said I should probably learn about this.

Denise Mink

Now I should figure out what I’m doing. And then it became a search for the right location. You had to have the address, of course, that you were going to have your business in before you submitted for the application. And that’s when reality did start hitting me.

Not everybody welcomed a dispensary to lease. And we were calling several places. My own real estate company said in a group meeting, “We will not be working with anyone in the cannabis industry.”

Chris Walsh

They told you all that after it passed?

Denise Mink

After it passed. Now I’m no longer with that company. But they said that. And then I started making phone calls because we realized, you know, money is going to be an issue.

You cannot borrow money to start this process.

So we were thinking we wanted to buy, but at the same time, man, if we could lease, it would save a lot of money. But we just struck out every time we tried calling anyone. We were the first one. So this was still in 2018.

And it’s clearly lightened up, because there is a dispensary on every corner now. But at that time, 2018 doesn’t seem like a long time ago, but no one wanted anything to do with this. We’d call and get the price. And then you tell them what you were going to be, and they’d say, “Oh yeah, no. We won’t lease to you.”

Chris Walsh

This is a common thing that happens in a new market that we see time and time again in the early days. And so I think it’s important to highlight this, that even with your connections and experience in real estate, in general, finding a location was very difficult.

Denise Mink

It was difficult. It was very lucky to find the one we did. And we did purchase it. The owner carried for us. I mean, everything just came together for us.

My real estate knowledge did help in that, that I could create it, I could write the contract, I figured out a way to purchase without going through to the lender. The location was the first struggle, and I think that might have hurt some earlier dispensaries because they had to settle for some pretty lousy spots, quite honestly. Because it’s all they could find. So some of those very first ones are gone.

Chris Walsh

Yeah, we’ll talk about your location. You didn’t get to choose the perfect location. So what location did you end up with?

Denise Mink

We actually did end up with a perfect location. It is a stand-alone brick building. We have a little over 2,000 square feet, half acre lot, so almost plenty of parking. We’ve had to struggle a little with parking. We’re right on a state highway, so our traffic is nonstop. It just goes all the time. It actually did end up being, really couldn’t be much better.

Chris Walsh

I think I heard your husband who is in this endeavor with you in the background. Is that correct?

Denise Mink

Yes, he’s here. He’s here, yes.

Chris Walsh

Great. Tell him we said “hi.”

So you found a location. You got the licenses. How long did this process take and how much did it cost?

Denise Mink

The expense of the license was $2,500 for each license. We got every license available, which was grower, processor and dispensary, at first not knowing what we were going to do. And then you have to join OBNDD. I say join, but that’s the wrong word. You have to file with them and get a license through them. That’s $500.

Chris Walsh

And that’s the Oklahoma medical cannabis agency?

Denise Mink

No, that’s Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, dangerous drugs. They require you pay $500 and register with them.

Chris Walsh

Yeah, every state has a different type of government agency overseeing the industry. That’s an interesting one in Oklahoma.

Denise Mink

So just starting was low. I mean, the initial cost was low.

And then of course, we had to get our building ready. So that buildout ended up being knocking on $100,000, between the safe and everything that we needed.

And then the new products. We kind of lucked out on that, because there wasn’t a lot of product at first, so I couldn’t go overboard – even though I was planning on it. We opened our store with seven strains of flower, one brand of carts and one brand of edibles. And that’s all we had. That’s all that was available.

Chris Walsh

Where were you at that time? how many other dispensaries were open?

Denise Mink

We were one of the first ones.

So we got our license … We applied in August, the end of August. And it was by the mid of September, we had all three licenses. So we had those licenses quickly. We opened our door Dec. 15, 2018.

Now we had to go through our city, and that is what every other place has to do as well. So OMMA had their rules and regulations. But each municipality has their own rules and regulations. So we had to go through the city of Coweta, sit in a city planning meeting. We had to listen while people gave their input about how awful we are going to be. And how horrible …

Chris Walsh

About how awful you were going to be?

Denise Mink

Yeah, they opened it up for discussion, the city did, in one of their meetings that the community could come out and voice their concerns. And they did. They came out and they voiced their concerns loudly.

And everyone said the same thing. It’s just going to be a drug haven. But those people changed their minds for the most part right away. Right away.

Chris Walsh

Let’s stick on this topic for a minute, this resistance that you experienced, which you also mentioned earlier. You know, you had your real estate company said “Oh, we’re not going to serve this industry.” You have people showing up a meeting saying the whole community is going to fall apart. What other types of resistance did you experience?

Denise Mink

Well, suddenly we were being followed by the police. When we left our store, every one of our employees were being followed by the police. We were being pulled over right and left. We got a lot of harassment from the police department.

That has been taken care of, but at first, it was really bad.

Personal friends and family even. We went from being respected business owners to almost-pariahs in a lot of people’s eyes. Because of the business we chose to open.

Chris Walsh

I’ve been in this industry for 10 years and haven’t encountered much resistance myself, but I’ve heard a lot about it. I have an aunt who’s a Catholic nun. And everyone was very supportive around me, including people I didn’t know. If anything, they were fascinated. I had not heard, in other states, this kind of friction with the police, though. That’s kind of a new element.

Denise Mink

It was really bad. So when we went to open, before we opened, I wanted to have a great relationship with the police department. So I invited the chief of police here to our store, I wanted him to look at everything and give me any advice for safety.

Because, you know, at that time, I didn’t know how busy we were going to be. I thought it was going to be me and my daughter and my husband, you know. We were going to work this. We weren’t going to need anybody else. So I wanted this place to be as safe as I could get it. My daughter was going to be working here.

I invited him to come down, and the whole time he did nothing but complain and say, “I can’t believe I have to protect and serve you.” I invited all the police department to come through to look, and they still have not come.

Chris Walsh

That’s some serious pushback.

Denise Mink

Yeah, we had it bad. Unfortunately, we had to deal with this in a very … we had a use litigation to deal with the problems we were having with the police department.

Because we didn’t get that from the city hall. After we opened, we didn’t get it from the community. At first, you know, we had pushback from select people. They weren’t the ones shopping with us, of course, so we never heard from them again.

Chris Walsh

And the rest of your family, friends, colleagues, how did they respond?

Denise Mink

Well, for the most part, they were good. My real estate company, I was their top-producing agent in my Broken Arrow office. And they sent my license back because they were embarrassed by me.

My brother didn’t support it. But other than that, my family is: Can you bring me gummies all the time?

Chris Walsh

Yeah, that’s the evolution we see. At first, they’re like, what are you doing? Then they’re like, hey, can you hook me up?

Denise Mink

Yeah, hey, I need to hook up all the time all the time.

Chris Walsh

What was your idea going into this for the business? What were your plans? What did you hope this will be going forward?

Denise Mink

This was supposed to be semi-retirement for us. I had hoped to do about $100,000 a month. That’s all we wanted. We thought that would be fine. We could run the full store. And it was supposed to be just really easy.

Like that did not happen. We had over 1,000 people through the very first day we opened. The very first day, 1,000 people. Actually we had 1,020, because my husband was pulling everyone up and checking their cards with the OMMA website. Once you check 1,000 cards in 12 hours, you have to get another computer. So we learned that on day one.

Chris Walsh

Learned the hard way.

You talked about the costs of getting started. How did you fund that?

Denise Mink

Well, for the most part, we charged our credit cards like crazy. We had good credit – and we still do. In 2019, it sunk for a little bit because our credit cards were so maxed out. We ended up maxing out every one of our credit cards. We took out personal loans, online, whatever we could do to get the money we needed to get this going.

Chris Walsh

That’s pretty risky if this was a semi-retirement idea.

Denise Mink

It was. It was really risky. But my brother would not lend me money, and he’s the only person I knew that had the money that could loan it to me. He would not do it because he thought it was just a stupid, stupid idea. And we would never be successful.

So we had to do this. Now happily, everything’s paid off. I mean, we were able to quickly pay down every loan. We took out the owner’s carry, everything we’ve been able to take care of. But no it was a risk. We definitely took a risk.

Chris Walsh

How long did it take to pay that off?

Denise Mink

In my mind it was going to be paid off in 2019. It did not happen. We did not pay those off till 2020.

Chris Walsh

When you entered the industry and opened your store – and you still hold true to it today – what was your approach and how are you structuring this dispensary to compete?

Denise Mink

Well, we are outside of Tulsa by a little bit. We’re not in the bustling Tulsa city limits. So I knew we needed to get people to come here. So we did marketing. That is one thing I did learn from real estate. You have to market.

So we sought out any means of marketing we could. Some of it was mistakes. We sought out some magazines, because we thought they would be good – marijuana magazines – but they were just starting too and maybe they weren’t the best. The articles weren’t, weren’t the best written. And so I knew we needed to get in the mainstream. I needed to market in the mainstream media.

And so I started reaching out to every radio station, every TV station, every advertising executive I could. We ended up getting the first billboard in town. We had the first radio commercial. We started sponsoring iPad-a-day giveaways on whatever radio station was doing it. I’d get involved in anything I could and then we finally made our way to a television commercial through our local Cox affiliate.

Chris Walsh

That’s hard to do.

Denise Mink

That was tough. And they … we got a jingle, we did the whole kit and caboodle. Now I had to learn myself – and I’ll put that out there for anyone listening. You’re going to have to give a little bit too. I wanted a commercial that said all these words, and we couldn’t do it. So we had to be flexible because it’s very strict. FDA has very strict guidelines. So we had to have flexibility in how we got our message out.

Chris Walsh

I’m surprised you’re able to do that. There’s still a lot of areas where you can’t have any commercials. So kudos to you.

What worked the best on the marketing front?

Denise Mink

Honestly the the electronic billboards have been a big, big boost. The electronic billboards, you can change your message every day if you want to. So it’s like a … it’s a billboard that everyone has seen with your local advertising that day, you know. We’re having a sale that day, we’re having a sale this day. So billboards have been really, really good.

And then the commercials. When the coronavirus hit, I stopped my radio advertising and put more of it to TV instead of splitting between radio and television. I moved it all the TV. I also do streaming, I’ll advertise on the streaming videos.

Chris Walsh

So video worked very well for you.

I want to talk about inventory again, which you mentioned before. You came to Colorado, saw what was on the shelves here and said “I’m gonna have all these products” – and then realized “Oh yeah, they’re not available here. So I can’t get them.” Then you have to research, and it’s all new, so you don’t know who’s who or what’s what.

Denise Mink

And we’re located not … We’re off the beaten path, so it’s not like anybody was rushing to us to try to sell us their product when they came out with it. So we were hunting inventory down that first year. Finding flower and finding growers, finding any product was just … We were looking on the Leaf Link app, which that wasn’t, that didn’t get started until midway into 2019. We were searching on Facebook to see if anybody put anything up about having a product.

And if it was available, I, at first, I just bought it. I thought okay … I’ll never forget this one, I don’t even remember the brand of it now. We had it. We just got rid of the last of it.

Chris Walsh

Didn’t sell well at all.

Denise Mink

Oh my gosh. Lotions and creams and stuff like that. “Oh this is great. We’re gonna love this. People are gonna love this.”

Well, people didn’t love this. And so I had to learn really quickly, especially with those niche items, that we have to be careful what we buy in bulk. I love to buy in bulk because, you know, the better deal I get, the better deal I can pass on. But when it comes to an unknown item, like peanut butter, like spices, something that you think “Oh, this is different. No one has medicated peanut butter and jelly. No one has medicated honey. No one has … This is gonna sell really well.” It didn’t sell well.

So we had to learn what would sell for where we are. And I have friends in the industry that might have a dispensary 30 minutes away from me. What sells in my dispensary may not sell in their dispensary. It’s very odd.

But I lost a little bit. And by a little bit, I mean a lot.

Expiration dates, that’s a big one too. Some companies have very short expiration dates. And it wasn’t even anything I considered when I wasn’t even looking at expiration dates. I didn’t even think about that when I first started buying. Now we make sure every order that we get, we check the expiration dates, if they Sent us anything old. We have to keep our inventory rotated.

Of course, that’s every store. But when we first opened, that just wasn’t anything I thought of, because I didn’t realize things would sit so long if people didn’t like them.

Chris Walsh

Two and a half years later that lotion was still there …

Denise Mink

Yeah, still there. Like this? You can have this.

Chris Walsh

A free giveaway.

Denise Mink

That’s how we got rid of so much of it. Just give me a penny and it’s yours.

Chris Walsh

What would you have done different in those early days? Because you were in a tough situation where you needed to stock your shelves, but there wasn’t a lot out there.

Denise Mink

I wouldn’t have bought as much. If I could go back and turn back time, I would have concentrated more on flower. It’s our number one in our store, I would have concentrated more on just the flower.

And I would have definitely, I would have been more selective about the edibles, about the pain tincture or about anything else I brought into the store.

And now everything looks very professional. But you know, we had people just like us who didn’t know anything about the business, and they were processing and bringing us product and it looked very unprofessional. But that’s all we had. So as soon as we started getting more players in the game, we were able to pinpoint what was going to work better for our dispensary. And once we built up those sales for that product, then I discuss it with that vendor. Let’s talk about you know, volume discounts.

Chris Walsh

Given you’ve had about two and a half years in the school of hard knocks, how do you approach inventory now? What are some of the steps you take? Do you try it? Does someone on the staff try it? Do you get to know the people? How do you make those decisions?

Denise Mink

I do like to get to know the people. That makes a difference. So they need to come in our store.

And I do have staff that tries everything. Now I can try the edibles. I’m an expert on edibles, I’m all I need there. But when it comes to the concentrates, when it comes to the flower, when it comes to carts, anything like that, my staff will tell me. And some of them are pretty hard to please.

So when a vendor comes in, I’ll let them know: You leave us a sample. If we like it, we’ll buy it.

Chris Walsh

Gotcha. Let’s talk about regulations. You said when you first started, you had to spend $100,000 or so getting the dispensary ready under the local regulatory scheme. What have been the most difficult regulations? What requires the most attention or are the most costly along the way?

Denise Mink

The hardest thing we deal with in our store, I’m not sure … and it is costly. It is our inventory, our actual inventory. And inventory is so important because we have to do our reports. We have to report to the state, we have to have that inventory correct. That’s just something that can’t be off. And that is our biggest struggle, hands down, keeping the inventory straight. Without a doubt.

I’m not saying Oklahoma … really, they have been pretty decent. We just started the Metrc, and then it just ended. We never really got it going. Oklahoma has been pretty decent. They really haven’t imposed expensive guidelines or rules on us.

But by far the hardest thing to deal with is inventory. You know, you’ve got 10 or 15 people working there. Not all at once, you know. You have seven or eight people working up front at once. And we’re busy so it’s easy to hit the wrong button. It’s a constant, constant. The more products the more problems you’re going to have.

Chris Walsh

The more complicated it’s going to get. Yeah.

I want to digress for a second. Your logo is a cow. It’s mainly a cow’s backside, with the cow kind of looking over, back atcha and it’s got a pot leaf on it. Tell me about that.

Denise Mink

Well, I wanted something that was different. I had no idea really what a cannabis logo was supposed to look like. But even though our stores address is Broken Arrow, Coweta, Oklahoma, is where we’re located. We’re the last address in Coweta, Oklahoma. So that’s Cow-eta, and people call it Cow-eta. And I just thought that would be a great idea.

But here’s the story on that. I went to several local graphic artists. I knew a lot of them. I was in real estate. I’ve had my cards designed and everything. I couldn’t get anyone local to do this for me. They absolutely refused. I couldn’t get anyone local to do a website for me.

Chris Walsh

You were going to pay them and they wouldn’t do it because it was tied to marijuana?

Denise Mink

It was tied to marijuana. So I went to Florida, online, and I told the guy, this is what I want. I described it, and he came six different examples and that one was exactly what I wanted. Same with my website. I had to end up getting an employee’s father to do a website.

Chris Walsh

That is crazy. Well, I love it. I think you did a great job. They ended up in a good place. And honestly, if you had looked at all the other ones and then made your decision, you probably have …

Denise Mink

I’d have a cross and a …

Chris Walsh

Yeah, a green cross and a pot leaf everywhere. And yeah, so good job doing something different.

Let’s talk about consumer demand trends that you’re seeing. What did patients want at the beginning? And how has that changed? And what are you seeing now?

Denise Mink

Oh, patients have really wised up. When they first came in, they didn’t know what they wanted. You know, they weren’t used to coming into a store and getting a selection. So it was all about the THC. Everything was: What’s the highest THC level on the flower? They were excited to see the new products, but not necessarily wanting to try them.

Now, our consumers, our patients are much more educated. They understand that. I mean, I’m not gonna lie, we have people that come in just to get high. And we know that. But then we have a lot of medical patients that are treating certain ailments, and they need a certain type of terpene profile. And we’re able to help them do that. Terpenes weren’t talked about probably for the first six months that we were open. Even though we tried explaining that, it was a process that we had to explain. It’s not just about the THC level.

Chris Walsh

Some weird word they’d never heard of.

Denise Mink

Well, they didn’t know anything. They didn’t know what sativa, indica … They were like me in their knowledge, they didn’t know much.

Now, we did get those occasional people that used to live in Colorado, that used to live in California. And I’m not gonna lie, we dreaded it when they walked in the door, because they …

Chris Walsh

Didn’t know how to deal with them?

Denise Mink

“Well, I’m from California.” We’re like, well, that’s great. You know, they’re gonna tell us everything we’re doing wrong. And that did happen some, but we have a very educated consumer now.

They want the testing. Because we didn’t have testing at first. It wasn’t required. They want to see testing, they’ll ask for testing. They know what to look for. Now, not every one of them, some of them we still have to educate. But they’re just smarter about what they’re trying to put in their body and the effects it’s going to have on them.

Chris Walsh

So what’s popular now?

Denise Mink

Flower is still number one. Edibles are still going very strong. People really want the full spectrum. They didn’t even know what full spectrum was when we opened in 2018. We didn’t know what full spectrum was, I don’t think, when we opened in 2018.

Chris Walsh

Great. So I want to wrap up by talking about what’s next for you and your husband. This was a route to semi-retirement. It’s probably eaten up god knows how much time.

Denise Mink

Yeah.

Chris Walsh

We’re living in a day and age in the cannabis industry where a lot of people are saying you have to go big to survive in the long run. You’re in a very competitive market. What are your plans? Are you looking to open up more locations? Are you just going to focus on this one?

Denise Mink

I just don’t think we can open up more locations. 2019 was a really, really rough year. It was seven days a week all year long. It was really rough.

Now, we have been blessed with some very good employees that can handle things when we’re gone now. But we just added our farmers market fresh baked edible kitchen to Med Pharm. and we’re going to start doing wholesaling out of there as well for other dispensaries. We’re going to start doing that.

Chris Walsh

So you’ve branched out into edibles?

Denise Mink

Yes, we have our own fresh baked edible kitchen where we sell cookies and cinnamon buns that they can watch us bake right in front of them.

Chris Walsh

Cool idea. When are we going to see the Med Pharm pot pocket?

Denise Mink

I gotta do that because pot pocket. That’s just, that was perfect.

Chris Walsh

You can’t go wrong with that. Now you can actually make that product. It doesn’t have to be the dispensary name.

Denise Mink

Why didn’t I even think about that? I’m going straight, I’m getting off here And I’m going straight Top Chef and tell her we got to have some pot pockets.

Chris Walsh

Let’s do it. All right.

Denise Mink

And I’ll mail you one. Oh no I won’t. We can’t do that.

Chris Walsh

We can come out and visit you and try one.

Denise Mink

There you go.

Chris Walsh

Well, thank you very much for joining us today. That was some great insight. And I think it’s really going to help our listeners who are in a position that you were in two, three years ago, figure out how they can navigate this business.

Denise Mink

I would like to tell them all it will get better. It will get better. You just have to get through that first year and it will get better.

Chris Walsh

The first year is the tough one and then it’ll get better. Great. Well, thank you so much. Great talking to you again. I’m excited to see your continued growth. Take care.

Denise Mink

You too. Bye.

[MUSIC]

 

Chris Walsh

All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode with Denise Mink of Med Pharm. Her story underscores how this industry is not for the light-hearted, but that you can be successful with hard work and perseverance, a little creativity and a lot of flexibility.

It required a lot more effort than Denise and her husband initially envisioned, and it wasn’t an easy route to semi-retirement as she expected. She actually found herself working seven days a week every week during the first year.

Denise admits she didn’t do nearly enough research or due diligence in the beginning beyond visiting some dispensaries in Colorado. So she was surprised by all that starting a dispensary entailed. She had to play catch up really quickly. She did that by reading everything she could get her hands on and surrounding herself with people knowledgeable about cannabis and the industry.

Denise faced challenges from the get go, struggling to find a landlord willing to rent to her, let alone sell to her, even though she had a background and knowledge of real estate. She luckily found a great location right off of a state highway, but it was an arduous process.

Denise had to max out credit cards and cobble together money because she couldn’t get traditional loans or financing to start the business. And it took her longer to pay down the debt than she planned.

Denise also learned that resistance can be strong in a brand-new medical cannabis market, especially one in a deep red state. She faced pushback from the community and the police. Her real estate firm actually sent her license back. Even graphic artists wouldn’t design a logo for her.

Inventory was also a challenge. At first, she stocked whatever she could get her hands on, but now she employs a much more diligent process. The staff tries everything first – although Denise handles the edible sampling personally. And she gets to know the people behind the companies. She also ensures the patients like the product before cementing bulk orders.

And a pro tip when you’re just starting out: Pay particularly close attention to expiration dates.

Flower was a big seller out of the gates and looking back, she would have concentrated more on that. And you’ve got to be continuously in deep touch with your patients. Preferences change along the way. At first patients were clamoring for the highest THC flower in this new market. Now there’s growing demand for full-spectrum offerings as patients have become much more discerning and educated.

Finally, Denise said an aggressive marketing and advertising strategy is key. She employed marketing skills learned in real estate and found that an electronic billboard and TV commercials were the best ways to get the word out.

And that’ll do it for this episode. Thank you all for listening. Please share this with others and post a review on whichever platform you use to listen to podcasts. You can also follow us on Twitter. Our handle is @MJBizDaily.

Next week I’ll be speaking with Jim Belushi of Belushi’s Farm. After 42 years in the public eye as an actor, the Saturday Night Live alum now owns and operates a cannabis farm on 93 acres in Oregon. You’ll hear about how he built his grow with almost no knowledge of cannabis, similar to Denise.

Until then, make sure to check out MJBizDaily.com for the latest news, analysis and data on the industry. And sign up for our newsletter while you’re there. See you next time.

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