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The Medicine Room, Winslow’s medical marijuana facility, is looking toward expansion. During the Jan. 8 Winslow City Council meeting, the council approved an ordinance and a resolution allowing the operation to be rezoned from commercial to industrial. According to the Winslow Municipal Code, the industrial designation expressly allows medical marijuana cultivation, infusion, extraction and dispensary uses.
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The Medicine Room recently purchased the defunct Furniture Bowl building, located at 2000 Old Highway 66, directly adjacent to the existing property. The space, according to Medicine Room General Manager Dan Cassetti, is a little over 11,000 square feet.
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Because of the purchase, more jobs will be created. Currently, the facility employees 33 people. “Some of those are sales people and delivery people, and of course our production and retail employees. And those are all full-time jobs,” said Cassetti.
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Owner Dixon Oates added, “We will probably have at least 10 jobs opening up for the indoor growing operation and 15 or more depending on how many trimmers we need. A lot of what we will need will be post production people.”
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Cassetti stated, “We are talking mostly entry level positions, but we will have some higher-level positions that will be created in the process. We will also need jobs in packaging as we extend our wholesale side as well.”
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“Especially because we are a 24-hour operation, we are going to need more man power for sure,” added Oates.
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The expansion planned is multifaceted. Oates explained, “We don’t really have room for our post production work anymore, we have outgrown our space. Post production is everything from trimming the plants, curing the product, to packaging consumables and wholesale products.”
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There will also be growing space in the new building. “When I came in about two or three years ago, we were all aware that we hadn’t built enough support space that we needed for the grow we have. We need to upsize,” said Cassetti.
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“We have bottlenecks,” said Oates, “And if you bottleneck marijuana processing, the price of the product has a downward pressure and it loses its value because the quality degrades. So, you’re at risk the longer you hold your product. We are trying to get it to the point where there is nothing stopping us from selling our product and moving it quickly. We need the space to be able to keep our operation running, in all aspects, year-round. And, we need the manpower to finish it.”
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“We are trying to increase our production so we can save money there, and we are increasing our batch size. We do extraction, cultivation, packaging and so much more here. Our main revenue stream is our wholesale operation, but our retail side is also very important,” said Cassetti.
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The timeline on expansion of the facility is unknown. “Everything is capital intensive, especially that building,” said Oates. “We intend to do it, because we bought the building, but it will happen when money is available. We have other things we are doing right now.”
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He explained that the first step will be having an architect begin the design. “Ideally, I would like to have construction documents ready in two months. But that’s not going to happen that fast, there’s just no way. We are looking for money right now, we aren’t a regular business where we can just go and get a loan from a bank, because of the federal constraints on our industry. It’s hard to find lenders that will lend with a reasonable interest rate because there are risks. We are a business with a solid cash flow but because of the federal issues, its just more difficult.”
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Many grow and dispensary facilities have opened in Northern Arizona in recent years. Oates explained, “Snowflake (Copperstate Farms) has 40 acres of space to grow plants. In order to remain viable and competitive we have to make sure that we are producing the highest quality products for the best prices. Right now we have flower, concentrates and other consumables; really a lot of options for anyone looking to cannabis as a treatment option. Our product is high quality and we hang our hats on the fact that we are consistent. We just won second and third place prizes for our concentrates at the ERRL Cup (a statewide cannabis competition). It is a blind test, so when you take the marketing schemes away from the bigger operations and we go head to head with them, we come out on top.”
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Also important to the success of The Medicine Room is its retail staff. “Our staff is really friendly and knowledgeable, and we have people coming from all over the state to see our budtenders because of their quality of service,” said Cassetti.
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The stigma surrounding cannabis has become less of a problem for medical marijuana businesses. In the five years since The Medicine Room has been in operation Oates said, “We have had an influx in patients. We have some that come in once a year, and some that come in every week. Each patient is different.”
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Cassetti added, “Everybody has their own perception on how they themselves are perceived as a cannabis patient. Think about Winslow now as compared to five years ago, there are a lot of people now that are coming around because they know of someone using CBD (cannabidoil), or other treatments to get off of prescription drugs, for example. It is way more accepted now than it was then, but it’s still not there.”
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The Medicine Room is located at 2015 W. Third St., in Winslow. For information on obtaining a medical marijuana prescription card or other services they offer, call (928) 852-4169.
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