Almost six years after Virginia's first medical cannabis dispensary opened in Bristol, the northwestern region of the state finally has its own brick-and-mortar. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi stopped by for their soft opening and filed this report.
In an industrial area off Route 37, AYR Cannabis Dispensary Winchester quietly opened its doors on Wednesday morning. This is the first medical marijuana dispensary in Health Service Area I, as the state regulatory agency calls it – a large region covering the western border from Winchester to Bath County, over to Charlottesville and Fredericksburg.
Patients with a written certificate from a medical professional authorizing them to use marijuana can check in with an ID at the front desk before being let onto the sales floor.
Fiona Duncan is the pharmacist-in-charge – the head honcho that every medical marijuana provider, referred to as a pharmaceutical processor, in the state has to have.
FIONA DUNCAN: [opens door] This is going to be the dry room, where they hang the plants …
AYR is still setting up their on-site, 5,000 square foot grow operation. In the meantime, patients can buy products from several national brands – from flower or bud, a.k.a. good ol' weed, to concentrates – and with different strains to choose from.
[pop music playing in the background]
HAGI [on site]: So when customers come into the building, they can go up to several cashiers at a long desk and order what they want, ask questions, ask to speak to a pharmacist. You can also place an online order and have that ready for pickup before you arrive. The sales floor is pretty small and tidy. There are just a couple shelves and a glass display that have some package examples of the different products they have. So there's Flower by Edie Parker. They've got indica, sativa, a hybrid. Let's see – there's Old Pal "ready to roll" classic ground cannabis, with rolling papers included, some pre-rolls, the Old Pal "classic blunt." Dreamt cannabis-infused gummies. Cannabis tincture by the same company. Amber cartridges and live rosin …
AYR was officially granted the pharmaceutical processor license for this area on August 7. This was the last of five Health Service Areas in the state to get a dispensary. Each area only has one license available. The company originally selected for HSA I lost their license, and then tied that decision up in the courts for three years before the selection process could restart. For years, the closest dispensary to this area has been in Northern Virginia, Richmond, or Lynchburg.
JULIE WINTER: As we were looking at the map of HSA I, we started looking at wanting to make sure that we had our dispensary set up so patients of this HSA had fair access across the whole HSA. … So what we did is we started from the northwest and worked our way down.
Julie Winter is the chief revenue officer of AYR Wellness, which operates dispensaries in Virginia and seven other states.
Through the corporate moves of their parent company, Arboretum, AYR now holds the pharmaceutical processor licenses for both HSA I and IV – which includes all the dispensaries in the greater Richmond Area under the names Cannabist and gLeaf.
After AYR was selected as HSA I's new pharmaceutical processor in 2024, six other companies that applied for the permit sued AYR and the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority over how the awardee was chosen, by random lottery. A Richmond City Circuit Court judge dismissed the case last August, and two of the companies – one with 20 subsidiary LLCs tacked on – appealed the decision. That case remains open in the Court of Appeals of Virginia, but it hasn't prevented AYR from moving forward with the new dispensary.
AYR's in-house cannabis brand is called KYND, which they'll be growing in Winchester soon.
WINTER: The first harvest for KYND that we will be putting out into the market will be January. … Going through our initial first harvest, we'll continue to make tweaks and figure out which genetics are performing well in the environment. … We'll have flower and then we'll also have different distillate vapes, and we will also have live rosin concentrates.
Each pharmaceutical processor has to have a central headquarters where they grow, process, and sell medical marijuana. They can then establish up to five satellite dispensaries.
WINTER: So our second location we are hoping to open mid-September, and that's going to be in Staunton, so that's going to be our furthest southwest … and then we have a third location that will open — once it passes inspection, but well on its way there – mid-October, and that's in Fredericksburg.
They don't have exact locations sited for the rest, but they're looking at Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, and Front Royal. The Winchester dispensary is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. They close from 1 to 1:30 p.m. every day for lunch.
