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Outside of the Great New York State Fair, a white school bus painted with green letters and sponsored by Syracuse’s only recreational dispensary, the “FlynnStoned Canna Bus,” stationed itself outside to transport fairgoers to the Cannabis Growers Showcase just half a mile away.

For cultivator Joann Kudrewicz, CEO of the Catskills-based cannabis company Ravens View Genetics and one of the event’s organizers, the new showcase represents an invaluable opportunity for growers to form a relationship with the public.

“There’s only 23 dispensaries, legal dispensaries that are open, and as cultivators with flower products, we can only sell to legal dispensaries,” Kudrewicz said. “There’s almost 300 of us. So we have a lot of product and not enough places to sell it.”

To give the state’s cultivators a chance to show off their work, The New York State Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) introduced an initiative this August called the Cannabis Growers Showcase, a series of 19 pop-up events this year which invite local cultivators to sell their work at a limited-time pop-up location.

Over a dozen local growers, processors and retailers are attending the showcase, which runs from Aug. 23 to Sept. 4, the same duration as the state fair. Some booths provide consumers with educational content and history about marijuana, while others offer sweatshirts and other merchandise. A Limp Lizard BBQ food truck is available to anyone with the munchies.

Products at the showcase range from typical disposable pens and edibles to newer, more unusual items like the cannabis-infused ciders of Ayrloom, a marijuana company owned by Beak & Skiff.

Not all of the showcase’s products have high THC levels. Justin Schultz, the owner of Buffalo-based cultivation company Bison Botanics, sees the showcase as an opportunity for fairgoers and other upstate residents to see the diverse applications of marijuana products and says that his favorite product to show customers is a topical salve.

“Very few people are coming up saying ‘Which is gonna get me the most high?’,” Schultz said. “People are saying ‘I have trouble sleeping,’ or ‘I get anxiety’ or they have these different things that they’re looking to use cannabis to help shift.”

Even among products designed to get the user high, local growers sometimes object to the ever-present pressure to raise THC percentages to attract customers. Kudrewicz said her priorities were the products’ purity and precision, not growing a high-THC product at the expense of quality.

Cassandra Roshu | Photo Editor

There are almost 300 cultivators and 23 dispensaries in New York, so it is a competitive market. The event was a rare opportunity for growers to give visitors a taste of their product and establish a brand.
Cassandra Roshu | Photo Editor

“We are old school, so we’ve been collecting the pure heirloom and land-raised genetics, the stuff that we smoked when we were in high school and college,” Kudrewicz said. “So many people in the industry now are overly-hybridizing it, so there’s like 20 strains in a brand, and you don’t even know what the source is.”

When planning the Showcase, Kudrewicz originally intended for it to take place directly on the fairgrounds. In her role as the chair of the cultivation committee for the Cannabis Association of New York, she worked with the OCM and state government to create an event to serve the State Fair’s attendees, which ended up becoming one of the first iterations of the government’s showcase series.

While the event didn’t make it onto the Fairgrounds, Kudrewicz said the state government did support a shuttle bus — the “Canna Bus” — to ferry guests between the Fair and the Showcase, and permitted signage to be posted at the Fair.

“To stop the stigma, we wanted to be on the state fairgrounds. We wanted to have equal representation with alcohol. Unfortunately, because of the lateness of our pitch this year, we weren’t able to be on state fairgrounds,” Kudrewicz said. “So this year, we’re here. Next year, we’ll be on the state fairgrounds.”

The showcase is being held on a farm property called FlynnStoned Ranch, operated by FlynnStoned Cannabis Company. FlynnStoned owns the only legal recreational dispensary in Syracuse, and the company anticipates their new campus on State Fair Boulevard could eventually become one of New York’s most prominent marijuana hubs.

“I feel like there’s a lot of upcoming stuff that is really just going to change the game for upstate itself,” said FlynnStoned employee Zachary Jordan. “There’s not too many dispensaries out right now, so just being open and being the largest kind of benefits us.”

While FlynnStoned enjoys a physical storefront in Armory Square where they can carry a variety of products, many of the growers featured at the showcase normally have difficulty marketing and selling their full range of products in New York’s dispensaries.

Schultz said growers are restricted in the amount of promotional material they can carry inside dispensaries and are not allowed to send sales representatives to advocate for or educate buyers on their products. They are also unable to give customers free samples. Events like this one, according to Schultz, help buyers form a relationship with the local growers who keep their dispensaries stocked.

“Inside a dispensary, we’re very limited in the branding that we can have,” Schultz said. “At this type of event, we’re allowed to have a brand presence, and it’s really meant to showcase the farmers and the cultivators and allows them that space.”

Published on September 3, 2023 at 10:50 pm