WAREHAM – It may be the dead of winter, but the only pot shop in the area is already thinking about the summer.
With a continued strong customer turnout over a month into operations, Verilife in Wareham is expanding its staff and on Monday, will be extending its operating hours.
Executive Director Shelley Stormo says that the store will be expanding its current 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. operation by two hours starting February 4.
“We’re expanding our adult use hours as of next week. Starting Monday we’ll be open 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. for recreational and we will be open 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. for medical patients,” said Stormo.
The store began recreational marijuana sales on December 21. With its original operating hours of 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Verilife was taking in around 500 to 600 customers a day. As the only recreational marijuana shop serving the southeastern part of the state as well as Cape Cod, the massive customer turnout paired with staffing shortages forced the store to reduce its hours on December 27.
With the opening of recreational sales in Fall River in January, Verilife has only seen a slight decrease in customer turnout, dropping to what Stormo estimates as 300 to 500 per day.
Stormo says the pot shop has hired additional staff over the past month, easing the burden on staff members to quickly serve people a large amount of customers.
“We’re still in the process of hiring, although we have added a few great team members already. We’d like people to be a good fit for the team. We have a great team here and we really value everyone who works here. We have a really happy and fun work environment and we want to continue that,” Stormo said.
“We’re looking for people with retail experience and a desire, whether they have previous knowledge about cannabis or a desire and passion to learn about it, those are the most important pieces to us.”
Stormo adds that Verilife is continuing to seek out applicants in preparation for the summer tourist season, which is expected to provide the store with thousands of more customers from across the country.
“This year we are expecting to capture a lot of the tourist traffic coming into the Cape. We’re very conveniently located a short drive off the highway and we expect folks will choose to come visit us while they’re waiting to get over that bridge,” Stormo predicted.
“I do expect this year we’ll see our fair share of tourist traffic, so we’re trying to prepare so we can get those folks through easily and with as short of a wait as possible.”
Verilife continues to utilize a shuttle bus service to transport customers to and from a parking lot off site. The customer parking lot has since changed locations, moving from Water Wizz on Cranberry Highway to the old Tremont Nail building off of Main Street.
By TIM DUNN, CapeCod.com News Center
About CapeCod.com NewsCenter
