All over the state, businesses are altering their practices and adapting their services to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. Many institutions are following CDC guidelines and taking necessary precautions, including things like proactively temperature screening employees, encouraging sick ones to stay home, and ensuring people are maintaining an appropriate distance apart. However, many of the changes made during this time could be positive for the businesses and eventually become permanent, which is the particular hope for many of those in the cannabis industry.
As businesses and workers have been divided into essential and non-essential categories to help slow the spread of the virus, those still in business are working overtime and getting creative with ways to maintain a steady flow of income during the crisis. Although Arkansas has not yet issued a shelter in place order, the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association (ACIA) and Abaca, a fintech solution for cannabis banking, have helped to ensure that cannabis-related businesses will not be affected if the announcement is made.
“We have been told verbally that in the event of a shutdown, the legal cannabis industry is on the essential list,” said Dan Roda, CEO of Abaca.
A recent blog published on Abaca’s website details each dispensary’s adaptations for patients to access and stay up to date on the changes.
“We realized there was no centralized resource that was compiling this information about what each [business] was doing and what these changes to their protocols and practices might mean to patients so we figured we would put it together,” Roda said.
Many of the changes within the cannabis industry are unwritten and have more to do with consumer behavior rather than altered business hours or production practices.
“This has always been a very hygienic and very controlled industry — where cannabis is produced, where it was grown, harvested and refined in Arkansas are in very secure, very hygienic facilities …” Roda said. “In terms of how they operate, they were already going to great lengths to operate in a very hygienic manner so I don’t think we’ll see a lot of change on the production side.”
Common customer offerings by essential businesses during the pandemic have been services such as curbside pick-up, delivery, and online ordering — all of which help to lessen the amount of close contact workers have with customers.
“We are seeing more customers want to use cashless payment methods and we are seeing more dispensaries elect to offer delivery services that hasn’t been done previously, and we’re seeing a lot encourage online pre-order,” Roda said. “To date we haven’t seen too many dispensaries in Arkansas elect to offer delivery because our state laws requires that there be two [people] in the delivery vehicle.”
Specific state and federal laws regarding the cannabis industry are important factors during this time of change, because they help to dictate just how much a safety net businesses have during the pandemic. Elizabeth Michael is a principal at Bud Agency, a full-service marketing agency for cannabis businesses, but she also works in the restaurant and bar industry, where she and her business partners were recently forced to lay off all of their employees because of the pandemic.
Michael said she found reassurance in knowing the restaurant might survive because the government was “coming to our aid and coming to our assistance and feeling a little bit of security” from the availability of federal and private loans available to her. However, she also knows the cannabis industry is less fortunate.
“[I know] I have all these reassurances, and then looking at the cannabis industry, they don’t. Dispensaries and cultivators cannot get any assistance from the federal government…” Michael said. “For the cannabis industry, if you are struggling, that’s scary. There really is no safety net. The federal government will not be supporting them in any way.”
However, this isn’t news to those in the industry. They’ve been evolving for years to stay successful without the extra hand up.
“The cannabis industry has had to develop its own network and ecosystem of technology, of apps, of all of that,” Michael said.
In a way, their resilience has led to a lot of creativity when figuring out to survive the pandemic. Michael said one particular dispensary is thinking about experimenting with a drive-through option, the idea of Arkansas neurosurgeon Dr. Jim Adametz with Custom Cannabis.
“If you’ve got a secure sterile box, and there is literally no human interaction, that’s way more safe than even delivery, but that’s not currently legal right now under Arkansas law,” Michael said. “[Adametz’s] background in sterile techniques and being a surgeon for 30 years is where that idea came from.”
At Bud Agency, Michael is focusing highly on helping these organizations do what they can in the immediate sense.
“My specialty is digital so that’s what we’ve been helping folks do over the past few weeks is spin up digital online ordering platforms, digital campaigns and communicate with patients in the most efficient way possible,” Michael said. “Cannabis is widely banned from most all media platforms, [and] a lot of folks don’t want to take cannabis money so we’ve got to figure out compliant ways of communicating with people.”
Though there have been a variety of changes taking place, Michael said many of them would have happened eventually with the natural evolution of the industry, but with a kickstart from the pandemic, things that might normally take years are happening within weeks.
“Even without the coronavirus, I think these things would still happen if folks are concerned about taking cannabis money,” Michael said. “The more and more people see the cannabis industry wanting to spend money and not being able to, they’re going to try to meet that need. A lot of people are trying to meet this need already.”
Michael said that working through the pandemic has been “one of the busiest and craziest times in my entire career.” In the end, she feels positively about the changes and the acceleration of the process for cannabis industry workers.
“It’s been super challenging, but it’s also been really uplifting in ways and really inspiring to see folks change and adapt and come up with business processes … even when and if this blows over and we go back to normal, their business will be in a better position because of these changes that are taking place now, primarily in the digital space,” Michael said.
READ MORE: Money and Marijuana