In April, they opened Silver Therapeutics’ first store, on Williamstown’s Main Street. They were only the second stand-alone recreational marijuana store, not tied to an existing medical marijuana dispensary, to open in the state. Out of a storefront in a strip mall, they sell flower, pre-roll joints, concentrates, edibles, topicals and tinctures, bought from around 15 different Massachusetts-licensed companies. They employ around 20 people.
They plan to open a second store in a South Main Street shopping plaza in Orange this winter. They hope to eventually build a grow facility at an Orange warehouse.
They are also working on opening a business in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston called “City Farm,” which they envision as an educational campus that will include cultivation, retail and a kitchen for manufacturing. They are still working on getting permits from Boston, after which they will start the state licensing process.
“We hope to be a real destination, where people can come see actual cannabis growing,” Ferranto said. “And we want to pull people from the community to learn cannabis jobs.”
The managers of City Farm will be Leah and Sieh Samura, a Roslindale couple that developed a cannabis-based personal lubricant, through an incubator program at marijuana company Sira Naturals, and are now partnering with Silver Therapeutics.
“We’re looking to share our experience with others to encourage a more equitable market, to encourage other people to get into the benefits of legal cannabis,” Sieh Samura said.
Leah Samura was raised in Dorchester and worked with Roxbury nonprofits in technology training. Sieh Samura is an Iraq war veteran who attended Roxbury Community College and Fitchburg State University, then worked as a park ranger and mental health counselor. They used to run a private cannabis club. Both are black.
The Samuras said their goal is to train Boston area residents to get jobs in the burgeoning cannabis industry, whether as entrepreneurs, product manufacturers or as an employee in retail or cultivation.
“You’re talking about having a local equitable industry, how do you get the people in our neighborhoods into the business?” Leah Samura said. “You have to bring the business to them, and … that’s what we’re doing.”