SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Several months after the initial batch of CAURD licenses were awarded to local business owners, one hopes to open his doors in the coming weeks. The owner of Upstate CBD in Schenectady hopes to begin selling cannabis at some point next month.
“It’s a good feeling. It’s something that we’ve been working hard towards for a long time,” said Donald Andrews, the owner of the store.
Andrews has owned the Schenectady business since 2019, and will continue selling CBD products along with those containing THC.
Back in November, Andrews was one of the four locals to get a CAURD license from the Office of Cannabis Management. CAURD, or Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensaries license, is awarded to qualified business owners with a prior cannabis-related offense.
Andrews says the process to get the provisional license was a lengthy one, “We finally have all our documents sent over to them [OCM], we’re just waiting on them to finish reviewing it, so we can move forward as far as getting our retail and delivery location open.”
And when that opening comes, the Schenectady storefront will be one of, if not the first recreational dispensary to open in the Capital Region.
“I think a lot of people are going to love the convenience that they don’t have to travel so far to get a good quality, tested product,” Andrews said, when asked what he thought the market would look like locally.
There’s already an idea of what the dispensary will look like once it officially opens. Andrews explains that ID’s will be taken outside the store before a set number of customers are brought into the lobby.
From there, a budtender will bring the customer into another room to place their order, “It’s gonna be real intimate. We’ll have four or five budtenders, we’ll have people checking people in,” he said.
While Andrews is set to open up in the coming weeks, additional dispensaries are coming in the future. On Wednesday, OCM approved 30 additional CAURD licenses, including five locally. The latest batch brings the state’s total to 66.