The Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC) opened its 100th cannabis store this week, located in a suburb just outside Montreal.
The newest store is in Richelieu, the first cannabis store in the small city of about 5-6,000 people.
“The Richelieu branch is part of our new desire to improve the customer experience,” says Alexander Bove, Director of Real Estate at the SQDC. “With a surface area of 2,600 square feet, the store has adopted a display by product category. The design promotes user-friendliness and several display islands have been added to the sales area to highlight the product offering. We have 100 reasons to be proud and thank you 100 times to our teams who are fully dedicated to developing the SQDC,”
“Displaying by product category is a new way to present cannabis products to our customers, including pre-rolls, oils, edibles and large formats and differs from displaying by species, such as sativa, indica and hybrid.”
Alexander Bove, SQDC
Although the province quickly revealed numerous SQDC stores in the first few years of legalization, they began shifting away from approving many more new stores in 2023, with a new focus on approving new products to attract consumers. The province also announced the closure of a store in Montreal earlier this year.
The SQDC says it plans to open about twenty branches over the next two years, including nine in total during the current fiscal year. The new Richelieu location is the third store of those nine that the SDQC has opened so far this year.
The new store will also take a new approach to displaying products.
“Displaying by product category is a new way to present cannabis products to our customers, including pre-rolls, oils, edibles and large formats and differs from displaying by species, such as sativa, indica and hybrid. In the sales area, certain categories such as concentrates and accessories are found in separate displays,” says SQDC Director of Operations Alban Troja.
The SQDC has stores in all regions of Quebec and says that more than 60% of cannabis purchases in the province come from their stores.
The SQDC contributed $258.8 million to Quebec in 2023. This is an increase from $232.7 in total revenue for Quebec in 2022-2023 with $94.9 million in net income, $77.8 million in the province’s share of excise taxes, and $50 million in QST.
The province says revenue from sales and tax are entirely paid to the Ministry of Finance of Quebec, and intended in particular for prevention and research in cannabis and the fight against misdeeds linked to the use of psychoactive substances. This claim, however, has recently come under scrutiny.
For the fiscal year ending March 30, 2024, the SQDC reports selling 122,478 kg of cannabis, an increase of 15% compared to the previous year (106,626 kg in 2022-2023). The majority of sales were dried flower (97,918 kg), while 24,560 kg were other cannabis products.
Image via SQDC.
