California-based MedMen has temporarily closed the majority of its Florida dispensary locations for undisclosed reasons, according to a Florida Politics report.

The company shuttered five of the its eight retail locations in the state as of May 3, the news outlet reported, including the dispensaries in Jacksonville Beach, Key West, Orlando, Sarasota and Tallahassee.

MedMen’s dispensaries in Pensacola, St. Petersburg and West Palm Beach are still open, Florida Politics reported.

“MedMen Sarasota is temporarily closed effective Sunday May 3rd. Thank you for your patience and support, please check back for updates on MedMen.com,” a closure notice on the company’s website says.

MedMen plans to open six additional dispensary locations throughout the state in Deerfield Beach, Fort Lauderdale, downtown and Southside Jacksonville, Miami Beach, and Orlando, according to its website.

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 4:45 p.m. ET on Tuesday, May 5 to reflect comments from 4Front Ventures Founder and President Kris Krane.

Ethos Cannabis, a Pennsylvania-based multistate cannabis operator with operations and investment interests in Massachusetts, Florida and Arizona, announced May 5 that it has signed definitive agreements to acquire the rights to 4Front Ventures’ dispensary locations in Pennsylvania and Maryland, which currently operate under the Mission brand.

Under the agreements, Ethos is acquiring the rights to one operational dispensary in Allentown, Pa., and management agreements for four operational dispensaries in Rockville, Glenmont, Catonsville and Hampden, Md. The dispensary license in Pennsylvania also allows the company to open two additional dispensary locations in the state, and all storefronts will be rebranded from Mission to Ethos.

RELATED: Mission Creates Consistency Across Multiple Dispensary Locations

The acquisition furthers Ethos’ goal of developing a strong presence in the Mid-Atlantic, East Coast and Midwest cannabis markets, according to President and CFO David Clapper.

“One of our main focuses is here in the Mid-Atlantic region, here in the Northeast,” Clapper told Cannabis Business Times. “We’re already located in Philadelphia [and] we already have a vertically integrated permit here in Pennsylvania. … The ability to open additional dispensaries right here in Pennsylvania is really strategic for us. … That’s what really attracted us to the acquisition.”

RELATED: Ethos Cannabis Embraces Pennsylvania’s Expanded Caregiver Program to Maintain Retail Connection with Patients During COVID-19 Pandemic

For 4Front Ventures Founder and President Kris Krane, the deal represents the company's focus on its core markets and achieving profitability.

"Maryland and Pennsylvania, unfortunately, didn’t fit into those core markets at a time when capital is challenging to raise in general," Krane told Cannabis Business Times. "We’ve got some projects with some fairly large capital requirements, and when we were looking at the best use of proceeds and where our core markets are, we decided this was a really big deal, particularly being an all-cash deal, and those resources could be best spent for us right now in other parts of the country."

4Front is turning its attention to its operations in Massachusetts, Illinois, California, Washington and Michigan, markets where the company is or can be vertically integrated and where there is a clear path to serve an adult-use customer base.

"Unfortunately, Maryland and Pennsylvania, neither of those met that criteria, so they were ones we were willing to part with in order to streamline our operations," Krane said.

For Ethos, Pennsylvania and Maryland are attractive markets due to their limited license structure, as well as their robust medical cannabis programs, which Clapper said boast a growing number of patients and strong product offerings.

The acquisition marks Ethos' entry into Maryland’s market and gives the company the maximum number of retail locations that it can operate under current state regulations. The company will initially operate the Maryland dispensaries through management arrangements and will acquire full ownership after certain regulatory hold periods expire.

Ethos has focused its expansion plans on developing a strong presence in the markets in which it currently operates, rather than setting up shop in additional states, he added.

“We’re less concerned with going out and trying to reach into a lot of states and say we have a presence in a lot of states,” Clapper said. “We’re more interested in going deep in the states … we’re in.”

With a strong presence in Pennsylvania and Maryland already underway, Ethos now plans to integrate its team with the 4Front team and convert the Mission dispensaries to the Ethos brand.

The company has also received its cultivation and processing license as a clinical registrant in Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis research program in partnership with Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University.

“We’ve started growing just as of last week, so … we’ve started operations in every area—growing, processing and dispensing—and now it’s just increasing the size of our operations here in the state.”

Ethos is also working to open four retail locations in Massachusetts, as well as a cultivation and processing facility, which will open as soon as they receive final regulatory approvals.

“For us, it’s really focusing on operational execution now—getting our dispensaries open, increasing our revenue, increasing our EBITDA, and then … looking at additional strategic acquisitions if available, or even additional licensing,” Clapper said. “One of the real goals and focuses of our company at the moment is to really begin full operations."

Cannabis businesses across the country have experienced different economic realities since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Some dispensaries and brands have seen record sales numbers, while customer traffic has significantly decreased for others. 

For Apeks Supercritical and Delta Separations, cannabis processing equipment manufacturers that were acquired by Gibraltar Industries in February, business has slowed down. But they’ve expanded their manufacturing beyond extraction and distillation machinery to serve their communities and improve team morale during a difficult time.

“Things have certainly taken a pause in our industry,” says Roger Cockroft, CEO of Delta Separations, with headquarters in Santa Rosa, Calif. 

Andy Joseph, founder of Apeks Supercritical, said workloads have also lightened at their facility just outside of Columbus, Ohio. 

“We’re experiencing the similar slowdowns as the cannabis industry is affected by COVID-19 but also affected by the inability to have access to capital,” he says. “We [Delta and Apeks] both make fairly expensive capital equipment, and capital is in general difficult to come by.”

The parent company could have furloughed employees, but instead they are busy manufacturing hundreds of gallons of hand sanitizer at their facilities weekly, Cockroft says.

"Both Apeks and Delta have been bought by Gibraltar Industries, which has put us into a unique position that we were not financially stressed, and we are able to take a long-term perspective and build up business," he says. "One of the things that came with this was social responsibility, which Apeks and Delta had anyway, but it allowed us a little bit more flexibility to look at how can we help." 

Though making sanitizer is relatively simple, acquiring the materials to do so and ensuring the labels, bottles and more are compliant have been the biggest hurdles, Cockroft says.

“The challenge is the supply chain—finding bottles, finding the aloe vera gel – actually it is impossible to find aloe right now,” he says. However, with what they had on hand, Delta was able to produce 210 gallons in one week with enough supplies, at the end of April, to mix 600 more gallons. 

“For the guys here, I think they really are pleased to be working on this,” he says. “It really has brought the teams together because they feel like they are doing something to pay back to society.”

Delta has donated bottles to organizations in the area that are still providing essential services but may not be top of mind during the pandemic, such as homeless shelters and medical offices with specialists, like cardiologists and podiatrists. 

“It’s not just the ER units that are still seeing their patients … and they need some level of support,” Cockroft says. “It gave us an opportunity to do something, [to] be proactive rather than sit there and observe."

Joseph says Apeks began making hand sanitizer for the community surrounding Johnstown, Ohio, after a Facebook post about making sanitizer for his employees took off.

Kristen Joseph, director of quality assurance at Apeks Supercritical, donates hand sanitizer the company made to the local police department near their headquarters in Johnstown, Ohio. Photo courtesy of Apeks

“We actually didn’t start out with the intention of making this in the mass quantity like this. We just wanted to make some hand sanitizer for the guys in the shop, but it snowballed for us,” he says. “And the next thing you know, the village and several fire and police departments were reaching out and saying, ‘Hey, can we get some of that?’”

Joseph says their supply chain manager serendipitously had some experience with sourcing some of the materials needed to produce the hand sanitizer from previous experience with L Brand’s Bath & Body Works

“The guys were excited to do it. I even had some salary guys volunteer to come in and help [the team who is paid hourly] put this stuff together,” Joseph says. “As Roger mentioned, the camaraderie, the team building and the feeling of having a purpose and being able to give back to the community, because we’re in such a fortunate situation…”

Joseph said he has also sent a letter to the FDA requesting emergency authorization to use CO2 extraction equipment to potentially sterilize PPE, with the capacity to process 10,000 per day. However, the challenge is proving that the sterilization technique actually works. If approved, this could have a potential ripple effect, with processing companies that have this equipment being able to provide this essential service.

“If we can get emergency use authorization for the equipment and the technology, then the opportunity for our customers to potentially pivot and repurpose their equipment in a sterilization environment rather than a extraction environment would be the ultimate goal,” Joseph says. 

The Apeks facility has also been used as a food processing center, Joseph says. The Bob Evans corporation asked if they could use the Apeks' space to break down large quantities of food they could not sell quickly enough into smaller portions to be donated to food pantries. Bob Evans was able to donate 40,000 pounds as a result of the partnership, according to the local NBC affiliate.