MANSFIELD — Caveh Azadeh is an entrepreneur and businessman.
When the State of Ohio made cannabis a legal business in 2016 through the sale of medical marijuana, the University of Kentucky graduate saw a business opening.
An opening that is expected to lead to the launch of a second cannabis dispensary in Mansfield in the next few weeks at 1099 W. Fourth St.
The first cannabis dispensary in Mansfield opened in April when Beyond Hello opened for business at 1515 Lexington Ave.
After state lawmakers approved the sale of medical marijuana nine years ago, Azadeh gathered a group of partners to launch King City Gardens, a company that planned to cultivate cannabis for sale to dispensaries.
A senior vice president of sales for a home mortgage company, he saw it as a plan to take part in what was expected to be a growing market — a business that grew even more when Ohio voters approved the sale of recreational cannabis two years ago.
Just how big a business?
Ohio legal cannabis sales topped $702.5 million in the first year of recreational sales, according to a story published in August in the Ohio Capital Journal. The story said there were 109,706 pounds sold, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of Cannabis Control.
It was not an immediate easy path to growth for Azadeh and his partners, an effort that included a lengthy court battle with the state.
“I’ve always been an entrepreneur myself. So me and a few of my business partners from other businesses, we applied for a (cultivation) license,” the 47-year-old Azadeh said during a phone interview on Monday afternoon.
The group was not initially awarded a license from the state. But Azadeh and his partners kept working and finally obtained a Level One cultivation license in 2021.
A Level I license permits an operating facility to have up to 25,000 square feet designated for growing space. It also grants three dispensary licenses to the cultivator.
“I started learning a lot about cannabis. One of the things I learned is the amount of work it takes to do it the right way,” he said. “But it’s like any other business, so we were able to apply a lot of our business practices from our other businesses into this work.
“It’s been a lot of fun and now we’re getting to the dispensary game,” Azadeh said.
Armed with the three dispensary licenses that accompanied the cultivation permit, King City Gardens has also purchased three more dispensary licenses.
Six months ago, the company took over operation of an existing dispensary in Dayton called Off the Charts and renamed it The Garden Dispensary.
King City Gardens opened its next location in Camp Washington, Ohio, about three miles north of downtown Cincinnati near the University of Cincinnati campus, also titled The Garden Dispensary.
It has begun construction of another site north of Cincinnati in Sycamore Township near the intersection of I-71 and I-275, which will open this year.
The Mansfield dispensary, titled The Garden Mansfield, will be the company’s most northern Ohio operation to date, utilizing a building that had been purchased and remodeled by a different cannabis company earlier this year.
That company, Backroad Wellness, never successfully obtained the needed state license for its Mansfield operation due to internal issues.
Azadeh said his company has a good relationship with owners of Backroad Wellness, which had been a client of King City Gardens’ cultivation operation.
Opening at the site was a win-win for both, he said, after he said Backroad Wellness sank about $3 million into remodeling the building.
“They did a great job in the buildout. It’s a beautiful facility in a great location. They are good operators. It has the camera system, security system, everything is done to spec and then some,” Azadeh said. “They really went all out.”
“For us, it’s almost like a turnkey operation, like taking over a restaurant that did all of the buildout for you. But for them, it was also a home run because they’re not going to be able to rent that place to anything other than a dispensary,” Azadeh said.
“There are a limited number of (dispensary) licenses out there, so we were able to transfer one of our licenses to that location,” he said.
Dispensaries in the city became possible when Mansfield lawmakers voted last year to allow up to three recreational and/or medical marijuana dispensaries within the city.
Council voted 5-3 to allow up to three dispensaries in the city, providing those businesses meet state requirements and also comply with existing city zoning codes for business districts.
Azadeh praised the decision.
“Mansfield is an up-and-coming city. It’s located right between Columbus and Cleveland and a lot of the surrounding communities and townships have put bans on dispensaries.
“A lot of people from surrounding areas already come to Mansfield, so the amount of traffic was very attractive to us. Places that are allowing this are progressive and I think those instituting bans are short-sighted.
“This is a chance for places like Mansfield to provide additional revenue for their cities. Ohio is giving cities the opportunity to collect 3.6 percent of the 10-percent (excise) sales tax on cannabis. There are cities taking advantage of that and we want to work with them,” Azadeh said.
“We felt that Mansfield checked all those boxes and it made a lot of sense for us,” he said.
Azadeh said opening a dispensary 10 minutes away from Beyond Hello makes business sense and should also help lower prices.
“It’s great for us. It creates more awareness of the overall products. It drives more traffic and I think it’s a healthy competition,” he said.
“That Beyond Hello store is doing a great job. They are already a top 30 to 35 store in the entire state and they have only been open since April. I think having that additional store is going to be healthy for the entire region,” Azadeh said.
“A lot of times, I go back to using the very beginning when the fast-food industry was blowing up. Whenever a McDonald’s opened up, there was a Burger King right across the street,” he said.
“One of the things that we’ve done in our dispensary that’s allowed us to really be able to pick up a lot of market share and drive traffic is that we are a fully vertical operation,” Azadeh said.
“We’ve got a little more opportunity to have lower prices because we’re able to put our own products in those stores so we can control that supply,” he said.
The Mansfield store will also offer a drive-thru, allowing customers to order online and then simply drive up to the window to obtain the cannabis.
“I think it adds a new another element. It’s easy use to be able to just come there and you don’t have to get out of your vehicle. About 30 percent of our sales at the Camp Washington store are through the drive-thru right now,” Azadeh said.
