This morning, somewhere between the first sip of coffee and the moment my brain decided it wanted to do actual work, I ran into a piece featuring Amber Senter — and she is not somebody to breeze past. Senter is the founder and CEO of MAKR House, a cannabis distribution and infused products company, and she is also the co-founder, board chair, and executive director of Supernova Women, an organization built to help people of color become self-sufficient cannabis industry owners. Her own site says she has spent years working across fundraising, supply chain, government relations, strategy, product development, and marketing in cannabis.
That background matters, because Senter is not tossing out theory from the sidelines. She has lived the messy part of cannabis business long enough to know the fantasy version and the real version, and the real version is usually more expensive, slower, and less glamorous than the brochure. Her message in the article hit with extra force: stop chasing dispensaries like they are the only prize in the building.
That is where Connecticut comes in, and honestly, Connecticut feels like the kind of place where this lesson is already being written in giant neon letters and everyone is still pretending not to see it. The state’s Social Equity Council oversees verification of equity applicants, creates support programs for cannabis businesses and other industries, and manages community investments funded by cannabis tax revenue. Connecticut’s own cannabis law says it takes a broad approach to social equity, reserves half of cannabis business licenses for people from impacted neighborhoods, and dedicates more than half of cannabis revenue to an equity fund.
The state also built an Equity Joint Venture system, which is Connecticut’s way of saying, “Yes, there is more than one path into this market, and no, you do not have to do it alone.” Under state rules, an equity joint venture partners with a licensed medical marijuana producer or dispensary facility and must be at least 50% owned and controlled by a qualifying applicant. The Social Equity Council must approve the venture, and state guidance says those ventures are not subject to the lottery.
But then comes the part nobody puts on the glossy slide deck: money. Connecticut social equity applicants have been asking lawmakers for permission to sell their ownership stakes after three years, because current law blocks them from selling for seven years. That debate tells you everything you need to know about how tight the pressure has become. A program can be designed to promote ownership, but if the capital stack is brutal, the dream starts looking more like a stress test.
And the market itself has started showing some wear. Higher Collective’s Hartford and Willington stores closed on January 1, 2025, becoming the first legal cannabis shops in Connecticut to shut their doors. Those locations were equity joint ventures funded in part by Curaleaf but run by local partners. The state required notice before closure and a plan for handling all cannabis on site, which is about as far from the myth of instant cannabis riches as you can get.
Then there is the Botanist story, which feels less like a tidy expansion and more like a rearranging of deck chairs in a market that still has not settled down. Budr acquired three former Botanist stores in Danbury, Montville, and Vernon, then reopened them under the Budr name in 2025. Budr’s own growth story makes the point for Senter: the company wants to cultivate its own product because Connecticut’s market is competitive and customers keep drifting toward cheaper options elsewhere.
Connecticut’s market is still bringing in real money, but the numbers are not exactly throwing confetti. In May 2025, recreational retail sales were $18.7 million and medical retail sales were $6.6 million. CT Mirror also reported that there is only one exclusively medical dispensary left in the state. That is not the picture of a market where every storefront is printing money just because the sign says cannabis.
So when Amber Senter says social equity applicants should stop obsessing over dispensaries, Connecticut is the perfect place to hear it loud and clear. The retail lane is crowded, expensive, and increasingly consolidated. The real opportunity may be in everything that feeds the dispensary instead of trying to be the dispensary: distribution, manufacturing, cultivation, packaging, logistics, workforce training, compliance, and all the unsexy machinery that keeps the lights on. That is not a consolation prize. That is the business.
Maybe that is the part cannabis keeps relearning the hard way. Everybody wants the storefront with the bright lights and the clean glass and the nice little line out front. Fewer people want the warehouse, the spreadsheet, the freight bill, or the compliance binder thick enough to stop a bullet. But those are often the places where the real staying power lives. And in Connecticut, where the social equity program is trying to build ownership without pretending the market is easy, Senter’s advice sounds less like a hot take and more like a survival manual.
Keep it weird,
