NYC legal weed shop landed $7M in sales in 2024 — nearly two decades after the owner was locked up for selling marijuana

Someone’s in cannabliss.

The owner of a marijuana dispensary in the Big Apple is on a financial high after his budding business raked in about $7 million in sales last year – nearly two decades after he was locked up for selling weed.

“Everything that really made me where I’m at right now is showing up every single day and putting in that work whether I had to clean the floor or the sidewalk or wipe something down or pick something up,” Coss Marte, the founder and CEO of ConBud, told CNBC.

“I was just showing up. We don’t take days off. I work 365-days a year. I love the hustle. I love the grind. I love the work.”

Marte, who was busted on a drug conviction in 2009 that landed him a seven-year prison sentence, now projects his booming business will bring in $12 million this year, boasting an $800,000 monthly profit, the outlet reported.

ConBud, one of the first businesses fully-licensed to sell recreational cannabis in Manhattan and the first in the city’s Lower East Side, sells various ganja goodies, with prices ranging from $10 to $700.

The pot proprietor had his conviction expunged in 2021 when New York legalized adult-use weed and announced a year later that entrepreneurs with cannabis convictions on their records or their families could receive recreational marijuana licenses.

Marte opened his first location on Delancey and Orchard Streets in October 2023 and has since expanded his growing business to The Bronx.

“I was following this law, and what they required was two years of a net profitable business and a conviction on your record,” Marte said, the outlet reported. 

“Now how many people have that to qualify for a cannabis license? Not many.”

Thirteen licenses were awarded to entrepreneurs with arrest records in the city in November 2022.

Marte initially gained a huge following after launching a no-frills, prison-style boot camp upon his release from prison in 2013. 

While serving his four-year prison term at Greene Correctional Facility in upstate New York, a doctor warned Marte he would die within years if he didn’t take better care of himself. Marte lost 70 lbs. behind bars and eventually turned his work-out routine into a business.

Marte launched ConBody and opened his own studio in January 2016 at Broome and Eldridge streets — the same corner where he once sold drugs starting when he was 13-years-old — and hired fellow ex-cons as trainers, maintenance and customer-service workers.

The former dealer has adhered to that hiring practice since opening his cannabis shop.

“I still don’t believe I work here everyday,” a ConBud employee told the outlet.

“I come in and get an actual tax-paying check for selling marijuana. It’s crazy.”

The legal cannabis industry in New York is expected to soar in 2025, with state regulators projecting the number of new licensed pot stores will more than double from 275 to more than 625.

In 2024, consumers purchased more than $840 million in legal ganja. When factoring in sales from 2023, the legal market has exceeded the milestone of $1 billion in total sales.

The Office of Cannabis Management said sales this year could exceed $1.5 billion, or about double last year’s haul while law enforcement will expand efforts to padlock illegal stores.

“It’s a big, big community that’s growing with us,” Marte told the outlet. 

“I feel blessed.”