New Brunswick’s third cannabis farmgate store opened on April 20, offering four different cannabis flowers grown in-house. 

Sana’a Craft Cannabis, a cannabis cultivator and processor located in Miramichi, held a soft launch for its new retail store after getting final approval from the province. 

Veronica Flores, the company’s CEO, says that while they currently only carry a few strains—due to provincial rules that only allow farmgate stores to sell New Brunswick-grown products—she sees it as an advantage for overwhelmed consumers. 

 “When someone goes into a Cannabis NB store there are hundreds of brands to choose from, and there’s no way the budtenders can know all of them,” says Flores.

“When they come into our store, we have folks on hand that have knowledge of how the product was grown and can speak specifically to the strains. Our guys are familiar with everything we sell. They know how it was grown, what the terpene profiles are, what the smells are, and what the known effects are.”

Flores says they have plans to expand their product offerings in the coming months, including infused pre-rolls and hash, but she and her team are taking the time to get it right. 

In the meantime, consumers can still visit the facility, select any of their four current cannabis cultivars, and talk to those who helped grow them. Customers can also shop for a variety of non-cannabis products, see and smell the cannabis in sensory jars, and experience special deals exclusive to the farmgate store. 

Shashiraj Singh, Sana’a’s quality assurance manager, says the soft launch in April allowed them to test out a lot of their own internal systems, and train staff. 

“The first day was very much us just trying everything out,” he explains. “We have new systems, we’ve finished up training. And Cannabis NB has been very helpful through all of it.”

Their next step, he continues, is a new brand launch in June. 

New Brunswick is the second province in Canada to have created a formal cannabis farmgate program. Ontario has also issued three cannabis farmgate licenses under their own program, and British Columbia has said they intend to release their own set of regulations for cannabis farmgate later this year. The two other cannabis farmgate locations in New Brunswick are ECO Canadian Organic in Rexton and Crystal Cure in Shediac Cape.