A city-funded program would help fledgling cannabis entrepreneurs gain their footing in an increasingly competitive market.
Later this month, City Council is expected to vote on legislation establishing a cannabis wayfinding program. If approved, the city would contract with BLOOM ROC to run a 90-day incubator program to help people navigate state regulations and other hurdles in opening a dispensary.
Short for “blossoming leaders of our market," BLOOM is made up of a group of cannabis entrepreneurs who had participated in the cannabis market long before it was legalized in 2021. Their mission has been to make the equity goals included in New York's cannabis legalization bill a reality.
"I really wanted to make sure that women and individuals who look like me, they had a fighting chance if we were going to put equity at the forefront, if we were going to talk about communities that were devastated by prohibition,” president Precious Brown said, in an interview with WXXI News earlier this year.
Under the proposed contract, the city would pay BLOOM $50,000 for the first year of operations.
Patrick Beath, the city's top lawyer, said the organization's track record made them an ideal fit for the city's pilot. BLOOM was selected for the project without a request for proposals process.
"What we were really looking for is the kind of services for the city to help folks who may be interested in getting involved in the cannabis industry, but don't know how to get their foot in the door," Beath said. "But then, also, those people who may be starting up and need some assistance with the regulatory framework, both at the state level and the local level."
Among the services BLOOM will provide are quarterly meetings with cannabis entrepreneurs and officials at City Hall, as well as access to a cannabis education library. Beath expects much of that work to begin immediately upon the contract's approval.
The contract will last for one year, at which point it would be eligible for renewal.
"I think the thinking was do it for a year, see what's working, see what we might need to tweak a little bit, and then go to Council in another year and keep going with it if it's working out for everybody," Beath said.
According to the state Comptroller's Office, Rochester has 17 licensed cannabis dispensaries as of the second quarter of 2026. That's the most in the Finger Lakes region, accounting for about a third of the nine-county region's dispensaries, and the second highest for any municipality in Upstate New York, behind Buffalo at 18.
In total, the Finger Lakes region's nine counties pulled in cannabis tax revenues of $2.1 million in the first half of 2026.
