There have been product shortages, leasing and construction headaches and licensing hoops so numerous that only 20 of the 25 retail cannabis stores that were scheduled to open April 1 in Ontario have done so.

So, how’s business two months in?

“It’s hard to say how lucrative it’s been,” says Matt Maurer, vice-chair of the Cannabis Law Group at the Toronto firm Torkin Manes LLP. “But I don’t think any of them, if you could take a time machine and go back, would say I wish I’d never gotten into this.”

Hunny Gawri certainly wouldn’t.

Gawri, proprietor of the Hunny Pot Cannabis Co. shop on Queen St. W., estimates that 50,000 to 60,000 customers have jammed into his four-floor boutique since April 1. “We’re taking it day by day and trying to get better,” says Gawri, whose store was the only one of five initial provincially allotted shops to open in the city on that mandatory date.

“Like any business, there’s a learning curve.”

But all in all, the 34-year-old pot merchant pronounces himself very satisfied with how things have gone.

And while the grand-opening lineups have disappeared, customer volumes have remained strong over the ensuing weeks, Gawri says.

“We actually have been maintaining the same flow of people, we’re just becoming more efficient now with the lineups,” says Gawri, who says between 800 and 1,000 customers visit the store each day.

About a third of those, Gawri says, are now served through an express desk, where people who know exactly what they want can order at reception and pick it up directly.

The rest are still served by the store’s signature stable of “budtenders,” who greet each customer individually at reception — where all are asked for picture identification — and guide them one on one through the store.

Indeed, Gawri says the shop’s continued customer volumes have allowed him to increase staff levels to some 65 from about 54 on opening day.

“Every day we try to make it better … catering to what people are looking for,” he says.

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And what customers have been looking for in the largest numbers, Gawri says, are products with high levels of THC — the buzz-inducing, psychoactive component of cannabis.

But Gawri says there has also been a steady demand for products that have equal amounts of THC and the more medicinal CBD cannabis component — a mixture that provincial and federal regulators and many pot experts have urged on neophyte users as a more freak-out-safe alternative.

“There’s also been a lot of requests for CBD products — CBD pills, CBD sprays, CBD capsules,” he says. “People who have come in and never tried (pot), that’s their comfort level. They don’t want that psychedelic high.”

Supply problems have been endemic in Ontario stores, with a pair of shops in Ottawa and Hamilton being forced recently to cut back their hours for want of product.

These shortages, ironically, may themselves be due in part to the small number of stores this province has allowed to open.

Largely because of supply shortage fears, the province set that initial number at 25, with five slated for the city, six for the surrounding GTA regions, five more in the eastern part of the province, seven in the west and two in the north.

But the small number of shops here are almost certainly causing licensed producers to favour provinces with more brick-and-mortar facilities up and running, says industry expert Nick Pateras.

Pateras, vice-president of strategy at the cannabis resource and information company Lift & Co., says many licensed producers have said they would ship their wares preferentially to provinces that have more stores.

“They just recognize that stores will be the long-term preferred channel for customers,” rather than buying online.

Such store-based preferences have seemingly eradicated supply problems in Alberta, which had 100 outlets as of last month, Pateras says. On May 30, that province lifted a moratorium on retail licences, announcing it would issue five a week for the foreseeable future, he says.

Alanna Sokic, a cannabis industry expert with the Toronto consulting firm Global Public Affairs, says Ontario’s limited store numbers are also largely responsible for a muted enthusiasm in this province for the cannabis shopping experience.

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“But by all accounts once consumers make their way into stores that do have their doors open they speak of a very positive experience,” Sokic says. “What it comes down to is the number of stores.”

Store owners were picked from nearly 17,000 applicants in a January lottery run by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, which regulates the operations.

Only one of the winners failed to go forward, being disqualified in February from the licence application process the lottery offered its winners. A lottery runner-up took the spot and is far behind in the licensing process.

It’s that process — which requires operators to earn both a retail store operator’s licence and a store authorization for their chosen location — that has been largely responsible for many of the delayed openings, Maurer says.

“People thought it might be construction that would really hold things up,” says Maurer, who has represented seven of the 25 of the Ontario operations. “But I haven’t heard of construction holding up any of the stores,” he says, adding that the licensing process dragged out much longer in most cases.

In particular, one of the province’s key licensing stipulations was that lottery winners could not give up operational control of their enterprises. Yet because most were new to the business, many connected with experienced people and firms to come in as non-controlling partners.

The AGCO had to look at those partnership agreements, which took a long time in some cases, Maurer says. “Also doing the due-diligence process on the lottery winners and whoever the companies they might be working with to make sure … they were of a good character and were going to run the store with integrity, and no one’s the Mafia.”

Of the other four Ontario stores yet to open one Oshawa operator has not received the initial retail operator’s licence, Sokic says. Two more in Burlington are awaiting their store authorizations, and one Niagara Falls operation is expecting a final inspection of its premises soon, she says.

Hunny Gawri, who had already launched several successful businesses, did not seek partnerships with any established players.

Stores not opening April 1 faced a series of escalating fines that would total $50,000 if they failed to open by May 1.

Gawri says he has been able to juggle limited supplies to meet customer demands so far.

He says, for example, that customers searching for a specific product with a high THC content can be guided by staff to a different strain with a similar profile if the desired one is out of stock.

“We’re actually OK with supply right now, we’re just taking it day by day,” Gawri says.

“What we’re hoping for is that as it continues, that they (the province) are going to make the changes that they need to to make sure the customers are getting what they want.”

Gawri, however, says he can already see a trend on the parts of both the provincial Ontario Cannabis Store supplier and licensed producers towards improved volumes and varieties.

“They, like us, are learning as they go,” he says. “Everyone is positive and there’s no signs of ‘hey, we’re not going to have enough.’ ”

Gawri says his customers include large numbers of tourists, especially on weekends.

Gawri — whose shop is open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Wedesday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday — says he’s faced few problems with intoxicated customers and none with minors, and those incidents “have been very tame.”

Gawri says his ability to open his shop first in Toronto — the second, Ameri in Yorkville, did not open for another seven days — has helped the Hunny Pot attract customers in the early going.

“It definitely made us top of mind, which has helped a lot.”