Local plant shop owner Shayla Cabrera is hoping to be one of the first people to acquire a license to grow cannabis in Jersey City.
Cabrera, 33, said it feels like a natural for her to enter into the cannabis industry as she already has experience in agriculture. She hasn’t found a suitable site as a cultivation facility yet, but she already has generated interest from retailers.
“This is an opportunity for us to innovate whenever there is something new,” said Cabrera, owner of TiaPlanta in McGinley Square. “There is an opportunity for growth and new ideas and we have the opportunity to do this right and make this really equitable.
“I have already gotten a ton of dispensaries from all over the state who want to form business relationships with me without ever even trying my product, so that is the cannabis industry in a nutshell.”
Cabrera and her team — a cannabis consulting firm, an attorney, cultivation consultants and some investors — have already submitted the microbusiness application to be one of the city’s new cannabis companies.
Cabrera has even closed her shop for two weeks to strictly focus on getting the application process completed.
“As you know a small business in their first year or two of business, profit is not very high,” Cabrera said. “We are just getting our operations up and running. I took a big risk to be able to get my application in and I am just hoping that we receive our license.”
Cabrera was featured in a Jersey Journal story in May for successfully opening during the coronavirus pandemic. TiaPlanta is located in a kiosk at McGinley Square.
Cabrera’s plans were first reported by the NJ Spotlight television newscast.
New Jersey residents voted yes in 2020 to legalize marijuana. Since then the state and municipalities have been working to establish ground rules for the new industry.
The state’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission in August released rules that will only allow 37 new marijuana growers to be licensed before February 2023. But limits were not placed on the other types of licenses, which include manufacturing, delivery, wholesale, distribution and retail.
Microbusinesses can pay about half of the license fees larger companies will face, but 100% of their business must reside in New Jersey, according to the commission’s rules.
The commission is giving license priority to social equity businesses, those in “impact zones,” or municipalities unevenly affected by marijuana prohibition, and to those operated by women, racial minorities and disabled veterans. Cabrera checks off at least three of those criteria as she is a Black woman who lives in an economically disadvantaged area.
Cabrera is looking to open her cultivation shop in the neighborhood she has called home for more than a decade, Bergen-Lafayette. But the cost of rent and starting the business has given her a case of sticker shock.
Cabrera said it could cost her as much as $200,000 to get all the licenses necessary to open the micro cannabis business. She said the licensing she applied for will allow her to hire up to 10 employees and have a growing space of up to 2,500 square feet.
” We will most certainly stay in Jersey City, where we love our community here,” Cabrera said. “There’s not much space for large-scale operations (like) warehouses … and the largest cost of this is holding down the real estate. We can not afford to lease a facility that costs $30,000 a month for a year while we wait for the operation to bring in revenue.”
Despite the extra workload, Cabrera said she’ll keep TiaPlanta open.
“That is my first love and it is my first tie to the community,” Cabrera said. “I will always have my plant shop.”
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