Dutch Love, a Canadian cannabis retail company formerly known as Hobo Cannabis, continued its retail expansion in Toronto, with the addition of two new locations in Canada’s largest metropole.
The new cannabis retail shops, a 2,700-square-foot location in the city’s Danforth Village and another 1,100-square-foot site in the city’s Theatre District, mark the brand’s fourth and fifth locations in the city, and ninth and tenth in Ontario.
“This week’s two new store openings give Ontario customers better access to Dutch Love and the cannabis retail experience we’ve curated since entering the market in 2019,” said Harrison Stoker, Vice President at Donnelly Group in a press release. (Dutch Love is owned and operated by Donnelly Group, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based company that also operates bars and nightclubs in Vancouver.)
In an email to Cannabis Dispensary, Stoker added that “Dutch Love plans to be a household name in cannabis retail across Canada and eventually, in new international markets. We had our sights on opening 20 stores, achieving $100M in annual revenues, and being profitable by or before 2021 and are absolutely on track to do so. These new store openings support that core objective and mark a major milestone in Ontario of having ten locations in the province.”
Ontario is the largest cannabis market in Canada, at least by population—14.7 million people call Ontario home, according to data from the provincial government. According to the Ontario Cannabis Store’s (OCS) annual report, total sales were approximately $CA 385,100,000 during the period of April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020, with private retailers collecting the lion’s share of the revenue, reporting just over 81% of total sales in the province.
Flower products accounted for 79% of product sales in Ontario during that same period. Beverage, concentrate, edibles and vape sales totaled $CA 15,070,000, or just under 4% of total sales. The company believes its new locations will help it with expanding its Cannabis 2.0 product sales; in the release, Dutch Love said it expects to expand sales shares of those products to about 10% of total sales.
Stoker detailed to CD that Cannabis 2.0 product rollouts suffered from “severe supply constraints [that] really put a damper on most categories.” Despite the slow rollout, he mentioned edibles as a product category that is set to boom. “It’s a category that was familiar to Canadian cannabis users prior to legalization (unlike beverages, for example) and, as such, has been met with a level of familiarity and trust,” he stated. “Edibles today have more approachable potency levels compared to their illicit predecessors, which makes them a superb product for customers with a newly defined, or redefined relationship with cannabis.”
Vapes will be another growth sector, he predicted, but that is contingent on whether high taxes on vaporization products in provinces like Alberta and British Columbia are overturned.
New Toronto Locations Partner With Cannabis Amnesty
Dutch Love is participating in its parent company’s Good Neighbour Program, in which each new Dutch Love store will partner with a community social program to raise awareness and funds, donating 10% of proceeds earned in its opening month. The new Toronto locations are partnering with Cannabis Amnesty, a non-profit organization working toward addressing and correcting harms caused by the inequitable enforcement of cannabis prohibition.
“Our Good Neighbour program was designed as a hyper-local initiative that creates awareness for social programs in the neighbourhoods we've joined,” Stoker told CD. “Given the timing around Canada’s [second] legalization anniversary and the tremendous amount of work that still needs to happen there, we felt compelled to select Cannabis Amnesty.”
This focus on local groups and causes is a core value at Donnelly Group, he said, adding, “It’s a sentiment I’d implore every business to remember and action in any small way they can.”
