Good Day Farm was one of many Missouri medical cannabis operators that welcomed consumers 21 and older for the state’s first adult-use sales on Feb. 3—just seven days after the company launched its first medical cannabis sales in Mississippi.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Ryan Herget, Good Day’s head of retail, says of the back-to-back market launches, “but the team just did an amazing job, so definitely kudos to the team we’ve built here at Good Day.”
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Good Day operates in four states, with a branded retail presence and cultivation operations in Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi, as well as a cultivation facility in Louisiana.
Missouri voters approved the state’s adult-use cannabis legalization measure in the November election, and the constitutional amendment took effect Dec. 8. Medical cannabis operators could apply Dec. 8 for a “comprehensive” license to serve the expanded adult-use market, and the Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services (DHSS), Division of Cannabis Regulation, had 60 days to review and approve the applications.
“We knew based upon the timing that, at the latest, adult-use was going to happen in Missouri on Feb. 6,” Herget says. “It was just a question of, it could always happen earlier.”
Herget says the state moved quickly to issue rules and provide guidance to licensees, and medical cannabis facilities approved for adult-use sales started receiving their comprehensive licenses between 6:30 and 7 a.m. on Feb. 3, three days earlier than initially anticipated. Good Day opened all 19 of its Missouri dispensaries to adult-use customers at 9 a.m. that day.
Herget says the company’s existing retail footprint covers every metro area, as well as smaller markets, through well-placed stores throughout the state. He says that Good Day has no immediate plans to expand its operations in Missouri and will instead focus on its existing strengths.
“On our end, Good Day’s biggest focus going into adult-use sales was, while we are beyond excited to have the ability to serve the hundreds of thousands of new customers, we wanted to make sure that we continued to serve, at a very high level, the medical patients and not overlook those,” Herget says.
To ensure that the dispensaries had the bandwidth to serve both the medical and adult-use markets from day one of recreational sales, Good Day introduced new check-in procedures and in-store ordering technology in the form of kiosks and iPads, extended its operating hours, and hired an additional 200 employees.
At the company’s 106,000-square-foot cultivation facility in Columbia, Herget says the team plans to continue what it does best: produce high-quality cannabis with “the overall tender loving care that goes into making great products.”
“The sell-through rate with cultivation was already very high,” he says. “Patients really enjoy Good Day products, so on that end, with cultivation, there was some investment, but [the plan] was [to] keep doing what we’re doing because it’s working very well and it’s been a big success.”
In the first days of adult-use sales, Herget says adult-use customers’ purchasing behavior mimics patients’ purchasing behavior, with flower comprising the majority of sales.
Good Day plans to launch a limited-edition King Cake gummy that will hit store shelves in the coming weeks to celebrate not only Mardi Gras, but also February as the first month of adult-use sales.
“It’s a great gummy, actually,” Herget says. “It tastes like cinnamon dough, sweet cream, it’s multicolored. … While we love and we’ve got great passion for the plant, we also like to have fun and do cool things. We have the world’s largest gummy that we did last year, so we’re always trying to innovate and do cool things for patients and consumers.”
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While there were initial concerns about supply keeping up with consumer demand, Herget says cultivators in the state—including Good Day—have done a good job of ramping up operations to stave off any shortages.
“Overall, we are hyper focused on giving the best consumer experience possible to the adult-use customers that are walking in our doors,” Herget says. “There’s plenty of supply, there are great prices, so it’s a good time and a good day all the way around.”
Looking ahead, Herget is most excited about introducing the Good Day brand to a new set of customers, some of whom are first-time cannabis consumers.
“We believe that we have a premier product that is grown with love and our passion for it, and we pride ourselves on really being the ambassadors of cannabis in the South,” he says. “We just have some ridiculously good weed that we want to share. Giving patients and now consumers the opportunity to experience Good Day is what we’re most excited about.”
A close attention to detail and high-quality products will continue to differentiate the company in Missouri’s expanded market, Herget says.
“I think it’s our relentless focus on the consumer and the end product that differentiates Good Day from others,” he says. “We’ll obviously continue to grow in Missouri with the adult-use market without losing sight of the medical patients.”
