Alexander Pelliccia opened Sherlocks Glass & Dispensary in Raleigh in 2015 with a childhood friend as a sort of cannabis art gallery, showcasing intricate glass pipes. But he jumped into the dispensary game as soon as the opportunity presented itself, becoming a registered hemp processor after North Carolina launched a pilot program for hemp cultivation.
Initially, “it was CBD hemp flower,” he said. “It wasn’t popular. It didn’t have any effect.”
Sherlocks nearly closed during the pandemic, Pelliccia said. High-end glass sales collapsed while rent soared. But THCA—a cannabinoid that converts to delta-9 when heated—came to the rescue. Producers flooded the market with THCA-rich hemp flower and vapes, buoyed by court rulings and legal interpretations that said the Farm Bill was only concerned with delta-9.
Today, Sherlocks employs 10 people across its three Triangle locations. “Since THCA, we have been putting so much sales tax into the economy,” Pelliccia said. “We’re paying like $15,000 a month.”
The Assembly talked to Pelliccia about the business.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The Assembly: When you’re sourcing products, how do you know who to trust? How do you know that the certificates of analysis (COAs) you get are accurate?
Pelliccia: That’s always in the back of my mind. We’re part of First Citizens Cannabis Banking. So we pay a fee to First Citizens every month, and they have a group of lawyers reviewing the products that we sell and making sure everything is in the standard that they require it to be, you know, based on federal law.
Does the bank set a standard for the COAs?
Yeah. [The COA] can’t be more than a year old.
Does the bank dictate which testing facilities you can use?
They do not. So, until some kind of proper legislation gets put in place where [the government says] which testing facilities are approved, then all testing facilities are approved. We are pushing for all the suppliers we work with to do batch-specific tests. That’s something that’s not required, but it should be.
Right here in Raleigh, we have Delta 9 Analytical. All our local stuff that we get from different farms and a few other local companies, they use Delta 9 Analytical because they’re right here. But for other products that we order from California, Colorado, and Oregon, they use testing facilities out there. There’s also a really big one in Wisconsin that everyone uses.
How do you find suppliers?
We also have to present our suppliers to First Citizens, and they have to approve them. So if they can’t find anything on them, they’re not going to get approved. The only suppliers we work with have legitimate websites and legitimate offices with phone numbers and faces behind the name and, like I said, proper, up-to-date batch testing.
If the federal ban goes through in November, it’s going to make it much more difficult for your business to operate.
I think that would all change. I mean, how could they not? Something I’m worried about, too, is even if we did want to continue doing business here in the state, we wouldn’t have a bank that allows us to. The first time we send the wire transfer, they close our accounts.
You could try to source everything locally, so you don’t engage in interstate commerce.
It’s not as simple as you think it might be.
