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concord california's cannabis application window is an opportunity for operators to get into the bay area
August 3, 2020

A Market You Should Know: Concord, California

Welcome to “A Market You Should Know,” MMLG’s ongoing series all about emerging cannabis markets that licensed operators and would-be licensees may want know more about. This week? We’re looking at Concord, California.

Concord Cannabis Licensing Application Snapshot

  • The least you should know:
    • Located about 5 miles east of the Bay Area, Concord is a suburb of nearly 130,000.
    • With a BART stop and ready access to Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco, the town has become a hot spot for employees of the tech sector to reside in.
    • The median household income in Concord is a hair below $82,000/year.
  • Is cannabis legalized? It sure is. Concord recently passed an ordinance calling for several adult-use cannabis license categories.
    • Manufacturing (up to 5 licenses, 2 of which have been issued to date)
    • Distribution Type 11 (up to 2 licenses)
    • Testing laboratories (no license limit)
    • Microbusinesses without storefront retail (up to 4 licenses [including those with storefront retail–maximum of 2, and non-storefront retail–maximum of 2])
    • Storefront retail (up to 3 businesses)
    • Non-storefront retail (up to 3 businesses)
    • Microbusinesses with storefront retail (up to 2 businesses)
  • Crucially for the categories, Concord is doing two different things. For manufacturing, distribution, testing, and microbusinesses without storefront retail categories these will all be on a first-come first-serve basis. Storefront retail, non-storefront retail and microbusinesses with storefront retail, will have a competitive application.
  • The city’s RFP and merit-based competitive application criteria are on hold until this fall due to the pandemic. Concord has tentatively set an RFP release date for 10/5/2020, but this is subject to change with the pandemic.

While we anticipate more cities and towns in California opening due to revenue shortfalls due to Covid; Concord, in the MMLG blogger’s estimation, represents a nice opportunity and (slightly) lower cost to entry for an operator looking to enter into the greater Bay Area. Curious about applying? Reach out to MMLG today.