Research /Research
Staten Island Pays the Most, Ignores the Rain, and Shuts Down in Snow
14 dispensaries, $26.4 million, and the highest prices in New York City — 23% above the Bronx. It's also the only borough where a rainstorm costs you nothing and a blizzard costs you everything.
Staten Island's 14 licensed dispensaries sold $26,363,532 between January 1 and September 15 — the smallest borough market in New York City, serving 501,290 people.
It is also the most expensive, the second-richest per head, one of the two most concentrated, and behaviourally unlike anywhere else in the city.
The borough everyone leaves out of the analysis turns out to be the one that explains the analysis.
The most expensive borough in New York City
| Average price per item | |
|---|---|
| Staten Island | $39.15 |
| Manhattan | $33.97 |
| Brooklyn | $33.72 |
| Queens | $33.21 |
| Bronx | $31.76 |
A $7.39 spread — 23% — between Staten Island and the Bronx.
The intuitive guess is that Manhattan is the expensive borough. It isn't, and it isn't close. Staten Island charges more per item than anywhere else in New York City, and the premium runs through every category:
| Category | Staten Island | Citywide low | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flower | $59.34 | $50.16 (Bronx) | +18% |
| Pre-rolls | $27.09 | $18.58 (Bronx) | +46% |
| Vaporizers | $52.28 | $47.91 (Bronx) | +9% |
| Beverages | $8.11 | $5.69 (Bronx) | +43% |
Staten Island flower at $59.34 an item is the most expensive category-borough combination anywhere in the five boroughs. Its pre-rolls cost 46% more than the Bronx's.
Per resident it spends $52.59 — second only to Manhattan's $132.92, and well ahead of Brooklyn ($43.08) and Queens ($39.24). With 2.79 stores per 100,000 residents it sits in the middle of the pack on access, so this isn't scarcity pricing alone. Staten Island simply buys more expensive things.
Two stores, one operator, a third of the borough
| # | Dispensary | Sales | Share | Avg price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Flowery – Staten Island (Veterans Rd) | $5,407,810 | 20.4% | $39.74 |
| 2 | Clouditude Dispensary | $4,317,342 | 16.3% | $40.56 |
| 3 | The Flowery – Staten Island (Richmond Ave) | $3,403,593 | 12.9% | $38.64 |
| 4 | ZenZest – Staten Island | $2,621,745 | 9.9% | $42.04 |
| 5 | NugHub | $2,456,032 | 9.3% | $41.57 |
| 6 | High Stone | $1,626,347 | 6.1% | $40.71 |
| 7 | Oz Dispensary | $1,278,255 | 4.8% | $35.90 |
| 8 | Be. – Staten Island | $1,075,483 | 4.1% | $50.38 |
| 9 | The Vault Cannabis – Staten Island | $988,647 | 3.7% | $33.06 |
| 10 | Gaslight Dispensary – Forest Ave | $957,944 | 3.6% | $29.88 |
The Flowery runs numbers one and three, and together they are 33.3% of the borough. One banner, two storefronts, a third of Staten Island's legal cannabis.
The top five hold 68.8% and the top ten 91.2% — the highest of any borough in New York City. The remaining four stores split 8.8% between them.
Staten Island's HHI of 1,160 is the highest in the city, narrowly above the Bronx's 1,150 and six times Manhattan's 192.
Note also the price column: eight of the top ten stores charge over $33, and seven charge over $35. There is no discount anchor on this island. In Brooklyn's top ten, four stores are under $32.
Vapes and concentrates, not edibles
| Category | % of dollars | % of units | Citywide rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flower | 31.7% | 20.9% | 4th |
| Vaporizers | 30.3% | 22.6% | 1st |
| Pre-rolls | 23.2% | 33.5% | 3rd |
| Edibles | 8.8% | 14.2% | 5th (lowest) |
| Concentrates | 3.4% | 2.5% | 1st |
| Beverages | 0.5% | 2.6% | 5th (lowest) |
Staten Island has the highest vape share and the highest concentrate share in New York City, and the lowest edible and lowest beverage share.
Vapes plus concentrates is 33.7% of its dollars. In the Bronx that pair is 21.4%.
This is a potency-forward, hardware-forward market — the profile of an experienced consumer buying on THC content rather than on novelty or discretion. Manhattan's edible-and-beverage habit is a discretion strategy for people in small apartments and on subways. Staten Island has garages.
The only borough Stiiizy wins
| Brand | Sales | Share | Avg price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stiiizy | $903,909 | 3.55% | $36.70 |
| Dank. by definition. | $894,377 | 3.51% | $43.44 |
| Ruby Farms | $850,214 | 3.34% | $45.49 |
| Rythm (GTI) | $777,941 | 3.05% | $60.94 |
| ayrloom | $696,896 | 2.73% | $31.63 |
| Find (Curaleaf) | $674,704 | 2.65% | $82.55 |
| Select (Curaleaf) | $592,859 | 2.33% | $54.68 |
Staten Island is the only borough in New York City where Stiiizy is the number one brand. It ranks ninth in Queens and doesn't crack the top ten anywhere else.
It's also the only borough where ayrloom isn't first or second — it's fifth, at $31.63 an item, its most expensive price in the city. The same brand sells for $19.44 in the Bronx. That is a 63% premium for an identical product, twelve miles apart.
Only 459 brands recorded a sale here, the thinnest shelf in New York City. The top ten hold 27.9% of dollars.
Rain does nothing. Snow does everything.
This is the finding that makes Staten Island analytically valuable, and it's the cleanest natural experiment in the whole dataset.
| Cost of a rain day | Cost of a snow day | |
|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | −6.0 pts | −39.1 pts |
| Queens | −5.3 pts | −37.4 pts |
| Brooklyn | −3.8 pts | −32.6 pts |
| Bronx | −3.4 pts | −37.4 pts |
| Staten Island | −0.9 pts | −51.4 pts |
| Rest of New York State | −2.0 pts | −36.4 pts |
Staten Island is the least rain-sensitive place in the entire dataset — less sensitive than Buffalo, less than New Jersey. A storm day costs it nine-tenths of a point, which is nothing. On July 21, when an EF-0 tornado touched down in Westchester and heavy rain crossed the region, Staten Island was +15.9%.
And it is the most snow-fragile place in the region.
On Monday, February 23, Staten Island's fourteen dispensaries sold $3,019.
Against an expected $77,269. Four cents on the dollar. The borough effectively closed. Grasmere took 29 inches — the deepest snowfall recorded in the five boroughs that storm. January 25 was nearly as bad: $13,398, down 81.4%.
The mechanism is the same fact in both directions. Staten Island drives. It has the city's highest rate of car ownership, no subway to Manhattan, and dispensaries on commercial strips with parking. Its customers meet a rainstorm through a windshield — which is why rain costs them nothing.
And you cannot drive in 29 inches of snow.
The thing that makes Staten Island rainproof is precisely the thing that shuts it down when the snow comes. Across five boroughs and 258 days, that's the clearest demonstration in this data of what weather actually does to retail: it isn't about weather, it's about whether the customer is walking or driving.
The rest of its personality
Staten Island has the most concentrated Friday in New York City — 18.4% of the week's dollars, against Manhattan's 17.8% — and the biggest Saturday at 16.3%. Its weekend runs 28.9% against Manhattan's 25.9%. This is a residential borough with a weekend rhythm, the opposite of Manhattan's commuter profile.
Growth is healthy at +27.5% January to August, second only to Queens, from $85,621 a day to $109,180. July was its best month at $115,679 a day.
4/20 did $178,146, up 104.3% — the second-biggest proportional spike in the city after Queens.
And the Knicks barely touched it: −0.75 points on game nights, the second-mildest response of the five boroughs, which is about what you'd expect twelve miles and a ferry ride from the Garden.
What to take from it
If you operate here: you are in the highest-price, most concentrated, least rain-affected market in New York City. Don't discount — nothing in this borough's data suggests price is what wins it. Do build a snow plan, because you will lose an entire day two or three times a winter and no other borough loses as much.
If you're siting a store: 2.79 dispensaries per 100,000 residents and the second-highest per-resident spend in the city is a genuinely attractive combination. But the top five already hold 68.8%, one operator holds a third, and there are only 501,290 people. This is a market with room for a few more stores, not many.
If you're a brand: Staten Island pays. ayrloom gets 63% more per item here than in the Bronx, Find (Curaleaf) sells at $82.55, and vapes plus concentrates are a third of the money. Bring potency and hardware, not gummies — edibles and beverages are the lowest in the city.
If you're modelling the city: use Staten Island as your control. It is a New York City borough that behaves like an upstate county, and the gap between it and Manhattan is the single best measure of how much of "the New York cannabis market" is really a story about transit.
Sales figures are estimated retail sell-through from third-party analytics covering all 14 licensed Staten Island dispensaries, $26,363,532, January 1 – September 15, 2026 — 258 complete trading days; the final day of the export is a partial pull and is excluded. Staten Island's series plus those of the other four boroughs sum exactly to the 283-store, $486,121,158 citywide total, which is the reconciliation check used to validate the split. Daily comparisons use a day-of-week-adjusted expectation built from a centered rolling trend; "cost of a rain day" and "cost of a snow day" are each geography's mean deviation on those days measured against its own all-days baseline. Weather events, dates and snowfall totals are from the National Weather Service New York (OKX) archive. HHI is the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index computed on store-level revenue shares. Population is the US Census Bureau Vintage 2025 estimate for July 1, 2025 (501,290), as published by NYC Department of City Planning. Dollar totals are estimates and differ modestly from New York State's reported figures; shares, ratios and within-borough comparisons are immune to that scaling and are the firmest numbers here.
Sources: NYC Department of City Planning population estimates, July 2026 release · NWS New York significant weather events archive · February 22–23, 2026 blizzard
New York 420 Week · Issue 12 · September 2026
Words by Greg Silverstein · @NewYork420week · @sourcatjack
