Features

Q&A with Kyp Rowe of Victoria Cannabis Company

Published on November 22, 2024 by oz. staff

Photo: Contributed

We connected with Kyp Rowe, Victoria Cannabis Company’s vice-president of brand development.

The Vancouver Island-based company, also known as VCC, was the third in BC to get its farmgate licence.

What has the buzz been around your opening?

Even though this is a local Vancouver Island store, the anticipation can be felt nationally. This process has been daunting to say the least, and has taken us over two years to complete. Within the industry and the culture as a whole, people are excited to see what a high-traffic area farmgate store can do. Our location is incredible. We are two blocks from the inner harbour and sea wall, a five-minute drive from downtown Victoria, and have roughly 44,000 cars pass a week. On top of that, all we also have the Galloping Goose bike trail which sees 250,000 people a year right out front of the facility. As opposed to our site being in an industrial park on the outskirts of town, our location has a ton of foot traffic.

How many visitors are you expecting?

It’s tough to say at this point. Given our location and depending on the time of year, I’d say around an average of 60-500 people a day. Being a tourist town and a destination spot for cannabis enthusiasts, I’d say that during the summer that could skyrocket.

How are you representing the BC bud culture with your farmgate?

Aside from our entire catalogue of VCC SKUs, our overall store focus is on BC producers. We want to tell the unique stories and share the incredible flavours of the province most deeply steeped in cannabis culture. If you are from out of town or live down the block, we want to showcase the largest selection of BC grown and processed products.

What kinds of products are you carrying?

We will be carrying edibles, drinks, topicals, concentrates, pre-rolls, dried flowers, as well as all of the requisite accessories. We will also have a very cool selection of VCC branded merchandise such as socks, T-shirts, hoodies, beanies, and hats.

What kinds of experiences can your visitors expect, especially those that they can’t get elsewhere?

All of our budtenders are not just cashiers, they are educators. The staff are all experienced and educated on all things cannabis. Looking for a unique flavour profile? We can help. Want to know where the product was made? We can tell you. Our menu has been painstakingly curated. We encourage our vendor partners to sample out our staff. This is the only way they can speak with honesty and clarity on a product. The staff also can answer any number of questions on the inner workings of VCC, from growing methodology, to processing practises, to cultivar selection. Our crew knows how this industry works and more importantly are a part of its rich culture.

How does farmgate fit into BC/Canadian cannabis tourism?

The epicentre of Canadian Cannabis Culture is British Columbia. For decades this province has led the way in tonnage, new flavour profiles and innovative SKU creation, as well as creating safe places and events for the culture to flourish. We want to add to this story by being the first urban farmgate store that can share the stories of a rich history of this plant that binds us all in BC. Being one of Canada’s largest tourist destinations, we want to be a must-see stop for Cannabis enthusiasts visiting our town.

What else would you like to add?

What makes us a unique store is the innovative and new SKUs that we will be able to bring to market. The BCLDB does not accept all SKUs that are pitched to them. We aim to test out a number of distinctive SKUs that would otherwise might not see the light of day. Be that through pre-rolls, flavour profiles, or lower THC products, we want to get a good idea what the consumer wants to see. In the coming year we want to be the first farmgate to be able to sell and send out our products to anyone in BC. We are just getting started.

Where can people find more info to share about the VCC farm-gate?

We are currently updating our website but you can still check out our current site at victoriacannabiscompany.com. For now anyone can follow us on Instagram: @vcc.farmgate and on X (formerly known as Twitter): @vcc_farmgate.