Tokyo Smoke Opens New Dispensary – Queen West, Toronto

Tokyo Smoke is a pre-legalization cannabis culture brand, founded in 2015. They made the transition to the legal market when Canada federally legalized. The brand was founded by father and son duo, Alan & Lorne Gertner. Since its inception, it was a welcome standout in the Queen West community.

This morning (March 12th, 2020 for people from the future) Tokyo Smoke opened a new dispensary, their third location in Toronto.  We were fortunate enough to be invited to the sneak peek. Check it out, below.

Brand Promise

Their promise to customers is “to [bring] you the very highest quality products. We have meticulously sourced carefully grown, beautiful flower that our customers can trust. We have curated accessories and tools that seamlessly blend function and aesthetic, providing products you will feel good about using.” We took that from their site.

Recent (ish) Acquisition

Tokyo Smoke was acquired by Canopy Growth in 2018 for $250 million (all stock), as reported by Mark Rendell of the Financial Post. They plan to expand their retail footprint aggressively, adding another 10-12 stores in Ontario, and up to 40 across the Great White North (Canada for our foreign homies).

The Experience

Anyway, the store was nice with the clean, modern aesthetic people have come to expect from the brand. The displays were cool and the flow seems well organized with a decent selection of products… Obviously, many house brands and Canopy portfolio products are present. More importantly, the staff was super welcoming, knowledgeable and seemed genuinely excited to return to their roots on Queen West. Josh Lyon had this to say, “We (Tokyo Smoke and local Queen St. West residents) built the brand together. So now this is a chance to invite them back into what they helped create.”

Thank you to Tokyo Smoke for the invite. We’ll drop by the next time we’re in the neighbourhood, buy some weed and review it on Higher Reviews. Cheers!