I Feel That Dispensary's Are A Rip Off

UncleBuck said:

those expenses do not factor in electric to power the lights, the cost of fans for ventilation, the cost of electric to run those fans, the cost of containers to put the soil into, it lowballs the soil costs and nutrient costs, does not take into account the time to veg, acquisition of seeds or clones, cloning materials and set up to keep the operation going, another light for a veg space, and just about 487 other expenses that come with building and maintaining a competent grow set up.

not to mention the costs of just getting legal in the first place, which is $300 annually unless you are on food stamps, in which case it is closer to $150 or so.

and i hear to clone the unicorn you need to snip off the end of its tail and dip it into warm, sterile soil and keep it in a low light, humid area.

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mcpurple said:

i get free weed all the time. its called a great grower

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poplars said:

and no one is counting all the man hours it takes??/ this shit doesn't grow itself!!!!

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UncleBuck said:

in our state, laws prohibit us from accepting reimbursement for our labor. supplies and utilities only.

that is one i'd like to see changed, although it wouldn't add a whole hell of a lot to the expense totals.

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UncleBuck said:

your grower is most likely giving you enough free to satisfy you, and then turning over the rest of what he grows on your card to cover expenses.

so your free weed is thanks to the same sentiment that this thread seems to condemn. ponder that.

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UncleBuck said:

in our state, laws prohibit us from accepting reimbursement for our labor. supplies and utilities only.

that is one i'd like to see changed, although it wouldn't add a whole hell of a lot to the expense totals.

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guy incognito said:

I agree that disp are a rip off. Making a profit is fine, but the mark ups are unreasonable.

I dislike people using the old adage "you get what you pay for". Sometimes that is true, but not usually. If I purchase something, mark it up 500% and then resell it to you then you most certainly did not "get what you paid for", you got ripped off.

With my current set up I use about $200-$240 in electricity. Soil is relatively cheap, maybe $20-40 for a few month supply. Nutes are maybe $100 for a several month supply. I put in maybe 1-2 hours tending the garden, 1-2 times a week. I water an additional 1-2 days a week for just a short amount of time. Maybe 5 hours per week, or 20-25 hours/mo. Harvest time takes up about 25 hours per month.

Disregarding initial investments it costs me approximately $260/mo in electricity and supplies and about 50 man hours total (I get help harvesting). And from that I end up with about a pound per month.

If I say man hours are worth $10/hr (you may say your time is worth more, but this is untaxed man hours, and its nearly all busy work that could theoretically be outsourced to someone who doesn't posses the skills to earn more than $10/hr) then that's $500 labor costs total.

$260 + $500 = $760 to produce 16 ounces, or $47.50/oz. That is about $1.70/g production. Selling it at $5/g would give me $3.30 profit per gram. With 448 grams per month I could easily recover my initial investment within a short period. It would be $1478.40 profit per month after accounting for everything including labor.

Anyone who is a smoker should probably account for loss of product though. Upwards of 20% of my product simply goes up in smoke

$400/oz is absolutely disgusting though and is pure greed. Far too much middle man and greed to drive the price up that high.

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gfreeman said:

cliffhanger. dear sir you are dumb. no i take that back since i dont know you. but, that statement is dumb. saying someones opinion is dumb because you say so and nothing more is dumb.

^see how i explained how i think your statement was dumb. this keeps me from looking dumb, since i explained why i feel this way. dumb sir. im sure whatever you had to say wouldnt of taken an hour anyway. it was just probably not well articulated and sounded better in your head, where it should remain. seeing as you look upon others down your nose. such opinions should be left where they originate. in ur head.

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Ok. i used the one four-letter f-word i get onto my son for using b/c NotHiNg(THAT would be random capitalization sir) in life is "fair". NOTHING!

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guy incognito said:

I agree that disp are a rip off. Making a profit is fine, but the mark ups are unreasonable.

I dislike people using the old adage "you get what you pay for". Sometimes that is true, but not usually. If I purchase something, mark it up 500% and then resell it to you then you most certainly did not "get what you paid for", you got ripped off.

With my current set up I use about $200-$240 in electricity. Soil is relatively cheap, maybe $20-40 for a few month supply. Nutes are maybe $100 for a several month supply. I put in maybe 1-2 hours tending the garden, 1-2 times a week. I water an additional 1-2 days a week for just a short amount of time. Maybe 5 hours per week, or 20-25 hours/mo. Harvest time takes up about 25 hours per month.

Disregarding initial investments it costs me approximately $260/mo in electricity and supplies and about 50 man hours total (I get help harvesting). And from that I end up with about a pound per month.

If I say man hours are worth $10/hr (you may say your time is worth more, but this is untaxed man hours, and its nearly all busy work that could theoretically be outsourced to someone who doesn't posses the skills to earn more than $10/hr) then that's $500 labor costs total.

$260 + $500 = $760 to produce 16 ounces, or $47.50/oz. That is about $1.70/g production. Selling it at $5/g would give me $3.30 profit per gram. With 448 grams per month I could easily recover my initial investment within a short period. It would be $1478.40 profit per month after accounting for everything including labor.

Anyone who is a smoker should probably account for loss of product though. Upwards of 20% of my product simply goes up in smoke

$400/oz is absolutely disgusting though and is pure greed. Far too much middle man and greed to drive the price up that high.

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NotYouAgain said:

I stated my explanation would follow approximately an hour later, all I had time for at the time was to say it was dumb (and this isn't elementary school, there is in fact such things as dumb questions and dumb opinions).


Some things in life are fair. For instance, 3 buddies + myself all chipped in equally for a P, it was distributed equally with a QP going to each participant. That's part of life, and that's fair. Now you're arbitrarily capitalizing random words for emphasis backing an untrue principle. Not much in life is "fair," but when you capitalize "NOTHING," and get an example to the contrary, I'm fairly certain it makes you look childish.


But it is a free market. There are very few barriers to market entry, not an extraordinarily high start up cost, and many small firms in competition. My youngest brother who didn't quite make it to Cornell could have told you that after his second semester at community college in the business administration program. Now that we've established that it is a free market, and you're less intelligent than someone attending community college we can move on.

The reefer is a renewable resource with a pretty high price elasticity of demand. There isn't a Wal-Mart of dispensaries that has a monopoly on all of the dispensaries in an area, there is no conspiracy, it's just been determined through market research that 20$ a gram (or whatever they're charging that you're complaining about) is the optimal price for maximizing revenue.

Selling weed out of a dispensary isn't about having a conscious (besides I'd figure only 20% of people really need it as medication, if that), it's about running a profitable business. You wouldn't complain to a painting company that their prices are too high, even though a freshly painted house provides similar (in other aspects obviously) marginal benefit. You wouldn't complain to a grocery store that their prices are too high even though you need the food to survive (food that was incidentally grown very similarly to the way marijuana is grown).

Bottom line is substitute your bleeding heart liberalism for an understanding of small business, then stop buying from dispensaries and grow your own if you have a problem with small business staying in business. Businesses that provide a substantial amount of reefer to people at a price that they are satisfied with paying.
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poplars said:

I think your man hours are off.

outdoor plants start in may and end in october.

thats several months of atleast 4 hours a day work.

time to recalculate.

plus it also takes away from your life, you can't leave the property during harvest season so you essentially are doing 2 jobs, security, and tending to the plants. so that goes up to a lot higher than 10 dollars an hour, atleast 15.

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guy incognito said:

No, I only grow indoors. No security detail because only 4 trusted people know I grow.

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NotYouAgain said:

I stated my explanation would follow approximately an hour later, all I had time for at the time was to say it was dumb (and this isn't elementary school, there is in fact such things as dumb questions and dumb opinions).


Some things in life are fair. For instance, 3 buddies + myself all chipped in equally for a P, it was distributed equally with a QP going to each participant. That's part of life, and that's fair. Now you're arbitrarily capitalizing random words for emphasis backing an untrue principle. Not much in life is "fair," but when you capitalize "NOTHING," and get an example to the contrary, I'm fairly certain it makes you look childish.


But it is a free market. There are very few barriers to market entry, not an extraordinarily high start up cost, and many small firms in competition. My youngest brother who didn't quite make it to Cornell could have told you that after his second semester at community college in the business administration program. Now that we've established that it is a free market, and you're less intelligent than someone attending community college we can move on.

The reefer is a renewable resource with a pretty high price elasticity of demand. There isn't a Wal-Mart of dispensaries that has a monopoly on all of the dispensaries in an area, there is no conspiracy, it's just been determined through market research that 20$ a gram (or whatever they're charging that you're complaining about) is the optimal price for maximizing revenue.

Selling weed out of a dispensary isn't about having a conscious (besides I'd figure only 20% of people really need it as medication, if that), it's about running a profitable business. You wouldn't complain to a painting company that their prices are too high, even though a freshly painted house provides similar (in other aspects obviously) marginal benefit. You wouldn't complain to a grocery store that their prices are too high even though you need the food to survive (food that was incidentally grown very similarly to the way marijuana is grown).

Bottom line is substitute your bleeding heart liberalism for an understanding of small business, then stop buying from dispensaries and grow your own if you have a problem with small business staying in business. Businesses that provide a substantial amount of reefer to people at a price that they are satisfied with paying.
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poplars said:

I think your man hours are off.

outdoor plants start in may and end in october.

thats several months of atleast 4 hours a day work.

time to recalculate.

plus it also takes away from your life, you can't leave the property during harvest season so you essentially are doing 2 jobs, security, and tending to the plants. so that goes up to a lot higher than 10 dollars an hour, atleast 15.

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UncleBuck said:

although i respect guyincognito's calculation to some degree, you make an excellent point that needs to be taken into account.

guyincognito, although i love your avatar and laugh a little on the inside every time i see it, i have to take issue with some of your calculations, namely that you can't pull a pound a month using only $20-$40 in soil every "few months" as well as other things. but first i need to go take a dump.

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guy incognito said:

8 x 3gal pots = 24 gallons of soil = 96 quarts of soil in a single 4x4 tent under 1,000 watt hps.

One tent comes down each month, meaning I use 96 quarts of soil every month.

64 quart bags of miracle grow moisture control soil is about $13. 96/64 x $13 = $19.50

I did forget to add the perlite into the equation. I'm still running strong on my second $20 bag, though I have been scaling up production as I learn. I would say less than $10/mo for the perlite, and certainly less than $40/mo for final soil mixture.

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