University Of Toronto

In an interview with Convenience Store News Canada, Rick Rabba shares insights into how Rabba Fine Foods becomes a part of the neighbourhoods it serves, lessons learned from COVID and the values his father taught him about operating a successful business.

More than a year after winning the chance to open one of Ontario's first cannabis stores through a provincial lottery, Lisa Bigioni has walked away from her Niagara Falls pot shop.The store had become like a second home and it was painful to leave, but Bigioni wanted to make good on a deal she signed with a large cannabis brand that helped get her shop up and running under the tight deadlines set by the province.“(Choom Holdings Inc.) offered a whole bunch of expertise that I needed after the lottery, but then in exchange for that, they said, 'we'd like to buy your store when the time is right.' The time came and there was a great deal on the table, so here we are,” said Bigioni, who sold to the Vancouver-based company in April for $2 million in cash and $2 million in common shares.She's using the proceeds to open her own Stok'd cannabis store chain.The Alcohol and Gaming Corporation of Ontario, which oversees cannabis retailers, couldn't say how many of the first lottery store winners are still associated with the shops they opened, but The Canadian Press has counted several that have changed hands _ and experts say more are likely to follow.Such sales are being replicated by several of Bigioni's 24 fellow lottery victors from round one, who were not allowed to sell their stores until last December, and 42 from a subsequent lottery.Fire and Flower (which recently co-located two stores with Circle K) has already scooped up two stores in Kingston and Ottawa, High Tide landed two in Sudbury and Hamilton and Canopy Growth Corp.