Green Point Wellness Uses Research to Give Maryland Patients What They Need

The dispensary owners had a plan when they jumped into the competitive state market.

May 16, 2018

This article originally appeared in the April 2018 issue of Cannabis Dispensary. To subscribe, click here.

The odds were most certainly against them. By the time Tony and Laura Toskov applied for a dispensary license in late 2017, some 800-plus applications had been submitted in Maryland—yet only 102 pre-approved licenses had been issued, according to the husband-and-wife duo. They had spent about $70,000 on the application process, and Tony admits, the lack of state licenses being issued “really made us question ourselves. We thought, ‘Did we do the right thing? And would we even have the opportunity to be awarded a license?’” But on Feb. 12, Green Point Wellness opened its Linthicum Heights’ doors, the 26th dispensary in the state to launch since Maryland rolled out its medical marijuana program Dec. 1, 2017.

“Like the opening of any business, there is always a mix of many emotions that come into play—excitement, nervousness, so on,” Tony says. “When we finally opened Green Point Wellness, on top of it all was the overwhelming feeling of being proud—proud of what we had built, what we’re about to accomplish and how many people we’re going to help.”

The team found an ideal location for Green Point Wellness at 823A Elkridge Landing Rd., despite strict zoning laws in Anne Arundel County that stipulate where a dispensary can set down roots. “It took us almost eight months to find our location, and at first, we weren’t even sure it was a good location,” Tony recalls, citing congestion concerns. But the duo’s reticence was quickly disproved. The dispensary’s location is a stone’s throw from the Baltimore–Washington International Airport, Tony says, and the buzzing area has helped them with promotions and marketing, Laura adds. Plus, with 4,000 square feet of dispensing area (2,000 of which is currently in use), Green Point Wellness has plenty of space to display its products—a mix of more than 40 SKUs of flowers, concentrates, topicals, transdermal patches and tinctures.

From Design to Reality

To draft the design plans for Green Point Wellness, the Toskovs visited hundreds of dispensaries throughout Colorado and Nevada, taking copious notes on what seemed to work and what didn’t. The pair was impressed with Las Vegas-based The Grove’s modern design, and they admired Denver-based LivWell’s privacy protocols. Armed with that research, Tony says, “We knew that we wanted our dispensary to have a modern look with a sophisticated-yet-comfortable atmosphere.”

To read the full article in Cannabis Dispensary's April 2018 issue, click here.