It’s not just smoke and mirrors — Barrie is flush with cannabis stores.
The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), which regulates cannabis retail stores in this province, confirms there are 25 stores in Barrie which are authorized to open and another five applications in progress.
“The market is completely saturated,” said Ryan Grenville of One Plant Retail, which has Barrie cannabis stores on Essa and Cundles roads. “As of January 2023, I think there were about 31 stores in Barrie and as of now … I think at least seven or eight of them have shut down, just because the market is so saturated.
“I think what we’re at now is the most we could possibly support without people going out of business," he added.
When comparing similarly sized cities with populations of 135,000 to 174,000 people, Barrie is not an outlier, the AGCO says.
Guelph, for example, has 31 cannabis stores. Other comparable Ontario cities to Barrie include Sudbury, with 17 cannabis stores, Oshawa with 31, Milton with nine and St. Catharines with 23.
While the Essa Road One Plant was Barrie’s first retail cannabis store, Budssmoke is the most recent.
“It’s pretty competitive. There’s a lot of stores,” said Budssmoke manager Ray Le. “The great thing about our area (Barrie) is that there’s a north and south end.
“Location-wise, I feel like we’re one of the better locations, right on Bayfield. It’s been ramping up, slowly," he said.
“Barrie is a good market because it’s a travel hub,” said Grenville. “In the summertime, people flow through it to cottage country, so that increases it significantly.
“This market is great for customers, because it means stores are going to do whatever they can to win customers — so (the stores compete by) having lower prices, having bigger selection, having better service.”
The AGCO says Guelph is the closest comparison with Barrie, based on population. Statistics Canada says, in its 2021 Census, the population of Guelph was 144,356. City officials say Barrie’s population in 2022 was 155,137.
But the AGCO also says direct comparisons are difficult to make, due to a number of factors including neighbouring cities opting out of allowing cannabis stores. In the case of Whitby opting out, for example, it may have an influence on Ajax, which has nine stores.
Grenville managed One Plant’s Essa Road store until a few months ago and now works at the company’s corporate level, overseeing the stores in northeastern Ontario.
“Cannabis, as far as I know, has now surpassed the grocery industry as the most competitive industry in the country — as in the most openings and closures, competition to get product on shelves,” he said.
“Ultimately it’s bad for the industry, people working in cannabis, because everybody’s kind of racing to the bottom as far as prices go,” Grenville said, “but it’s good for the consumer because you get the best possible deal.”
“I just want to offer the best service and prices that we can. We do price-match,” Le said. “We hope that will attract customers. I hope because of our location we get a lot of people coming in, a lot of tourists...and hopefully they come back.”
One Plant opened its first Barrie cannabis store in early 2020 and Grenville said much has changed since then.
“In the early days, 2020 and pre-COVID it was the wild west,” he said. “A thousand-plus people through the door in a day. That’s cut down significantly.”
Cannabis stores or shops are allowed in Barrie any place a retail store is permitted.
City officials are not aware of any incidents in the last two years in terms of cannabis shops in the wrong zones or enforcement, by the city, of other related regulations.
Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS) is the province's online retailer for recreational cannabis. Its data retailer program tracks municipal data related to average store sales, dried flower variant size sales mix (percentage), subcategory sales mix (percentage), authorized retailers’ top 10 brands sales mix, with municipal comparison, and unit sales.
“We no longer make regional sales data available publicly, given the potential for commercial impacts to retailers located in those regions,” said Mike Hajmasy, who works in OCS communications.
Recreational cannabis use has been legal in Canada since the Cannabis Act of 2018.
Included in what cannabis products stores sell are oils, cookies, vapes, dried flowers, extracts, beverages, topicals, pre-rolled, capsules and other edibles.
