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It also has six coffee shops in Toronto and Calgary — but there’s a catch.

The cafés are designed to introduce the brand to consumers in markets where the company doesn’t yet have retail licences. The shops sell coffee, and Tokyo Smoke-branded clothes and cannabis accessories, but no cannabis. The plan is to convert them into dispensing stores if licences become available.

Felicia Snyder, Senior Vice President of Tokyo Smoke brands, said she does believe the concept of pairing coffee and cannabis makes some sense, in part because there’s something similar about people who are serious about coffee and people who are serious about pot.

She said she’d consider getting a consumption licence for a coffee shop — if such a thing exists in the future — but only if a retail licence isn’t available.

“I don’t necessarily think that this idea of consumption lounges is the end-all be-all,” she said.

What’s clear is that tastes are already shifting away from smoke and vapour, toward “derivative” products like cannabis-infused food and drink.

“I actually think the long-term goal is to have cannabis products available for purchase in regular restaurants, bars, cafes, concert venues,” Snyder said.

Even the Second Cup, which last year entered into a “strategic alliance” with National Access Cannabis (NAC), to turn some Second Cup locations into “dispensaries and lounges,” does not appear sold on the cannabis café concept.

While the agreement allows for the two companies to “explore” the prospect of adding Second Cup-branded cafe element to cannabis stores, when regulations allow for it, for now the plan is retail only, said Matt Ryan, NAC’s vice president of marketing