Learn more about full integration while expanding your product line with Michael Bostarr, Director of Strategy and Implementation of SPARC. Michael is a passionate organizer who produced Blunt Talks San Francisco, and helped bring to life Meadow’s first-ever camping retreat – Meadowlands. He is former Chief of Staff at Kin Slips and Michael is now the Director of Strategy and Implementation at SPARC. He is a vocal advocate for cannabis and can often be seen at local city council meetings. SPARC, whose roots began back as early as 1998 when CA Prop 215 was passed, opened its first retail facility in 2010 on Mission Street in San Francisco.

SPARC also happens to be NCIA’s first official founding member, and their executive director Erich Pearson spent many years serving on NCIA’s board of directors. SPARC is one of the oldest dispensaries in the Bay Area and has been serving medical and now adults since 2008. Starting with just that single location until expanding to 5 locations over the last few years, now they’re looking to expand even more, which is the dream and ideal for most dispensary owners who start with a single location. We talk about what that process is looking like in California which already has plenty of regulatory headaches, plus other hurdles they are coming up against. Being vertically or fully integrated, meaning they produce or grow some of what they also sell to the customers, there are other models that allow a dispensary to sell products from another separate licensee to grow or process. But full integration while expanding your product line sounds like a lot to handle so we dive into advice Michael has for vertically integrated cannabis companies like SPARC.