Tip for Buying Legal Weed in Colorado: It’s Retail, Long Lines Will Happen During Peak Hours

It has now been one month of legal marijuana sales on the books in Colorado. As a customer service representative at a very busy Denver dispensary that has almost tripled in staff over the last month, I’ve seen just how big the demand for all forms of now-legal cannabis is. Much of the problem in the first week or so of legal sales was just a lack of staff, because we more than quadrupled the amount of customers through the door without having the staff to keep up with it.

The new hires have quickly caught on, but even so, there have been up to 20-30 minute waits during some peak hours. The long lines now only tend to happen during rush times, just like any other busy retail store… we get a “lunch rush” that starts around 11ish and goes until about 2 or 3pm, where it usually dies. The exception has been on Friday and Saturdays, which are now the busiest days, and the line doesn’t tend to ever get small.

If you don’t care about football in Denver, try to come when the Broncos are on TV; while you may have to wait another year to take advantage of that, I can tell you that it was totally dead during the Super Bowl, which surprised absolutely nobody. We were, however, very busy the day after the Super Bowl, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who watched what will go down as one of the biggest blowouts in history. Basically, you can anticipate how long the wait will be in most cases the way you would anything else- it’s busier when the most people are getting off work, etc.

On average, the wait is definitely much better than during those first few weeks when so many people were coming to check it out. It has now definitely died down overall, but there can still be plenty of times where the line is almost out the door.

This is not unlike the wait you might experience at any other retail store during a busy time of the day. As I said in my first “tips for buying legal weed post“, don’t expect that legal marijuana dispensaries have somehow figured out how to re-invent the retail wheel. So it’s not helpful to freak out because you have somewhere to be after legally buying your pot. So instead of griping about it, just enjoy the experience!