Cannabis Dispensaries On The Move: Fire & Flower Advances Circle K Co-Location Pilot Program

Fire & Flower Holdings Corp. FAF FFLWF announced Tuesday that it has advanced its strategic initiative with its operational partner, Alimentation Couche-Tard, the parent company of Circle K stores, to open new Fire & Flower cannabis dispensaries adjacent to existing Circle K stores in new markets across Canada.

Under the expansion of the program, new co-located retail stores will be opened over the next several months in the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The enhanced agreement also allows for the opportunity to further expand the program into additional high-value markets including Ontario and the United States. 

The initial Circle K co-located store pilot program was launched in July 2020 with Alimentation Couche-Tard. The first two dispensaries, located in Calgary and Grand Prairie, Alberta utilized ACT's existing lease footprint to build a co-located, small-scale Fire & Flower retail operation that delivers strong economies of scale for both companies due to the opportunity to incorporate Fire & Flower's Hifyre technology and analytics platform.

"Alimentation Couche-Tard has been an invaluable partner to Fire & Flower as we built out Canada's largest retail network of legal cannabis products and services over the past two years,” Trevor Fencott, CEO of Fire & Flower stated.  Our success in Canada, and now as we enter into the U.S., is directly attributable to the powerful consumer data and analytics technology that we have successfully employed in each of our stores through our Hifyre™ technology platform.”

"As we continue to advance our relationship with Couche-Tard, we are driving a new level of service to our extensive operational footprint in Canada and beyond,” Fencott continued. “We are able to leverage the power of Hifyre to allow these small co-located stores to run efficiently. The advanced analytics we provide allows stores to operate and manage inventory at maximum efficiency."

Price Action

Fire & Flower’s shares were trading 1.60% higher at 64 cents per share at the time of writing late Tuesday morning.

Photo: Courtesy of Avery Meeker on Unsplash