Standing on the busy Steveston pier, shielding her eyes from the bright afternoon sun two days before cannabis legalization, Dina Morgan describes her dream of opening a deli shop selling cannabis-infused eats in the historic neighbourhood.
She envisions it nestled between other family-owned businesses a couple blocks back from the water. She wants it to be the “Whole Foods of cannabis,” selling gourmet carry-out groceries and hosting cooking classes teaching people how to bring weed into the kitchen in a safe and tasty way.
“I’m from Chicago, and I know what good carry-up deli food is,” she told the Richmond News. “There is nothing comparable here in Richmond.”
She's planning sophisticated fare, not pot brownies that taste more like skunk than chocolate. Think dulce de leche with just a hint of cannabis to give it a nutty flavour. Her recipe goes nicely goes nicely homemade chai, she added.
“If you pour a wine, you’re supposed to look for all the different things. With cannabis it’s the same thing. You don’t want something hairy and pungent and yucky,” she said.
She has a hookup on a professional grade kitchen in the home of a friend who’s a chef. There, she’s perfecting recipes for cannabis infused syrups, honeys and sauces that can be used in cooking and baking. She's focusing on edibles because people her age want to avoid carcinogenic smoke, she says.
All this is for a business idea that isn’t legal yet, but will be soon.
Morgan and her husband, Kelly, are preparing to hit the ground running once edibles become legal in October 2019.
What’s being legalized on Wednesday is dried cannabis, the kind you grind up and roll into a joint. Seeds and certain types of cannabis oils are allowed too. People will be permitted to make their own edibles at home, but they aren’t allowed to be bought and sold for another year.
As the country collectively takes a puff of the newly legalized green stuff on Wednesday, the mother of two and long-time Steveston resident is reminding people that there’s an appetite for pot in Richmond.
“The market is here for it,” she said. “I’ve done enough demographic research ... [many] Richmondites who are cannabis consumers go to Vancouver and beyond to get it.”
She has federal and provincial political will on her side to get the store open next year, but the only thing stopping her is buy-in from Richmond city council.
Ted Townsend, spokesperson for the city of Richmond, said current city bylaws forbid brick-and-mortar cannabis retail stores. Richmondites can legally blaze at home with weed they ordered online and had shipped from the province’s distribution centre on No 6 Road, which Morgan finds ironic.
But people who want to buy bud person will have to venture out of Richmond to neighbouring Vancouver or Burnaby.
Morgan hopes the Oct. 20 municipal election changes that. There are several council hopefuls who support cannabis retail, and she hopes current council’s ban on pot boutiques will lift so she can open her store in the community that she loves.
“[We] want to keep local people here, bring local job opportunities and local tax benefits,” Morgan said. “Why should Vancouver get my tax money when my kids go to school here in Steveston?”
But if Richmond keeps its doors closed to cannabis, opening in Vancouver is what she’ll have to do.
