FIKA Herbal Goods’ takes its namesake from the Swedish concept of stopping to smell the roses, but the Toronto cannabis retailer’s rapid expansion into the market was anything but.
Kane spoke to the Star about his company’s rapid expansion, getting institutional landlords on board with a cannabis retailer, and how FIKA would respond to market overcrowding: Everybody was looking for Main & Main. They wanted to go where the traffic was. We did a lot of due diligence on the site selections. With FIKA, right now, we have an incredible relationship with many of the institutional landlords out there. We deal with Cadillac Fairview, with Dream Properties, with Primaris, with SmartCentres. All of our sites are through those key institutional landlords. We found a way with our model and took a different approach.
We simply set out to design and operate the best cannabis stores in the world. Really, we wanted to remove the stigma of cannabis — and we didn’t want to have iPads and menus in our stores. At the heart of our operation is our ambassadors and the educational experience that they bring to the consumers that come into our shops every day, whether you’re a novice consumer, whether you’re an experienced consumer, whether it’s your first time in our store.
In Toronto, there are cannabis stores absolutely everywhere. Overcrowding may choke out some of them just because there aren’t enough customers to make all these stores profitable. How does FIKA intend to operate in Toronto?