Joanne Wilson has backed more than 140 companies as an angel investor, and now she is telling anyone thinking about opening a cannabis store in 2026 exactly what she thinks. “Don’t do it.”
That is not a quote from a skeptic. It is from the founder of Gotham, a four store New York cannabis retailer she launched in 2022 after a career whose portfolio included Food52 and Eater. She is still in the business. She just does not recommend it to anyone else right now.
What is broken about New York cannabis retail?
Wilson’s diagnosis is a stack of problems that compound each other. Price compression keeps squeezing what stores can charge. Operating costs run hot. Unlicensed sellers still compete for the same customers. And the state regulators, in her view, have not provided enough guidance to make the legal market workable.
Here is the part that should make everyone pause. New York is not a small market. The state posted $1.7 billion in legal cannabis sales in 2025 and is on track for another record year. A market that size should have room for good operators. That Wilson looks at those numbers and still says stay out tells you how bad the unit economics are.
How has Gotham responded?
By getting smaller and leaner. Gotham has restructured twice, cutting staffing in stores and on the executive team, and added self ordering kiosks. The Bowery store runs about 2,800 square feet. Williamsburg runs about 4,000. Wilson’s next move is smaller stores with less overhead.
There is a lesson in that for every retailer in a price compressed market. When you cannot fix the top line, you rebuild the cost structure from the floor up. It is the same pressure squeezing margins in Connecticut, and the licensing war deciding who survives the price floor everywhere else.
Why is labor at the center of this fight?
Wilson entered through New York’s Conditional Adult Use Retail Dispensary program, the social equity path that required a labor peace agreement with Local 338 of the retail workers union. When the Brooklyn store’s workers moved to unionize in 2025, Gotham challenged the whole thing in federal court, including the constitutionality of the LPA requirement itself. The union fired back with NLRB complaints. Both cases are still pending.
Meanwhile Albany is considering replacing LPAs with a Cannabis Industry Wage Board that would set a minimum wage, a bill now awaiting Governor Hochul. Wilson is against it. A recent survey of 40 New York licensees found 57 percent reported losses and only 36 percent were profitable. Add a mandated wage floor to that math and the “don’t do it” starts to sound less like pessimism and more like arithmetic.
It rhymes with the operator data we have seen all year. The policy debate in Albany is happening in a different room than the balance sheets in Brooklyn.
What would actually fix the model?
Wilson wants freedom to sell outside the four walls. New York lets licensed retailers sell at certain OCM approved showcase events, but she wants more: weddings, farmers markets, the same kind of off site selling alcohol merchants take for granted. OCM rules currently prohibit alcohol from being served at cannabis showcase events, which kills the wedding idea before it starts.
“If you don’t make sure that the farmers are right, the brands are right, the dispensaries are right, I mean, it all is connected,” she said. “When you pull one thing out, everything collapses.” That is the most important sentence in the interview. Retail does not work when the supply chain underneath it does not work.
She is not wrong about the economics. The question is whether anyone in Albany is listening.
FAQs
- Who is Joanne Wilson?
A New York angel investor who backed more than 140 companies, married to venture capitalist Fred Wilson. She founded the cannabis retailer Gotham in 2022. - What is Gotham?
A four store New York cannabis retailer founded in 2022. Its first store opened in the Bowery in 2023, with additional stores in Chelsea, Williamsburg, and Hudson. - Why does she say ‘don’t do it’?
Price compression, high operating costs, competition from unlicensed sellers, and what she considers insufficient guidance from New York state regulators. - What is the labor fight about?
A unionization push by Local 338 at Gotham’s Brooklyn store, Gotham’s federal court challenge to the LPA requirement, pending NLRB complaints, and a Cannabis Industry Wage Board bill awaiting Governor Hochul. - What would fix the model, in her view?
Freedom to sell off site: weddings, farmers markets, and special events. Current OCM rules prohibit alcohol at cannabis showcase events, which blocks the wedding idea.
Source: MJBizDaily: New York cannabis founder on entering the industry in 2026: ‘Don’t do it’.