Research /Research
The Bronx Has 19 Dispensaries for 1.4 Million People
We pulled all 283 New York City dispensaries apart by borough — every sale, every category, every brand, 258 days. The five boroughs aren't one cannabis market with neighborhoods. They're five different markets that happen to share a mayor.
New York City's licensed dispensaries sold $486,121,158 of cannabis between January 1 and September 15 of this year — about 40% of New York State's entire legal market, from 283 stores.
Split that five ways and almost nothing survives the averaging.
| Population | Stores | Stores per 100k | Sales | Per resident | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | 1,664,862 | 95 | 5.71 | $221,289,490 | $132.92 |
| Brooklyn | 2,653,963 | 83 | 3.13 | $114,344,677 | $43.08 |
| Queens | 2,358,182 | 72 | 3.05 | $92,543,084 | $39.24 |
| Bronx | 1,406,332 | 19 | 1.35 | $31,580,375 | $22.46 |
| Staten Island | 501,290 | 14 | 2.79 | $26,363,532 | $52.59 |
A Manhattan resident accounts for 5.9 times the legal cannabis spending of a Bronx resident. Staten Island — the smallest borough, the one everyone forgets — outspends Brooklyn and Queens per head by more than 20%.
And the Bronx has nineteen stores. For 1.4 million people.
The Bronx is the most underserved market in New York City
Start here, because it's the largest structural fact in the data.
The Bronx has 1.35 licensed dispensaries per 100,000 residents. Manhattan has 5.71. That is not a modest gap — it's a different regulatory reality inside the same city.
The consequence shows up immediately in concentration. One store, My Sesh, is 26.2% of the entire borough — $8,304,341 of the Bronx's $31.6 million. The top five stores are 60.5% of it. For comparison, Manhattan's biggest store is 6.9% of Manhattan and its top five are 18.3%.
| Share held by… | Manhattan | Brooklyn | Queens | Bronx | Staten Island |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biggest store | 6.9% | 14.1% | 6.7% | 26.2% | 20.4% |
| Top five stores | 18.3% | 29.3% | 28.0% | 60.5% | 68.8% |
Manhattan is a competitive market. The Bronx and Staten Island are effectively oligopolies — not because a few operators outcompeted everyone, but because there is almost nobody else licensed.
Here's the part that should interest anyone holding a license application: Bronx stores are not weak stores. The average Bronx dispensary does $1,662,125 — more than Brooklyn's ($1,377,647) and more than Queens's ($1,285,321). Only 7 of its 19 stores are under a million dollars, a far better ratio than Brooklyn's 44 of 83.
Decompose the Manhattan-versus-Bronx gap and it's almost entirely about store count, not store quality:
5.92× spending per resident = 4.22× store density × 1.40× revenue per store
The Bronx doesn't have a demand problem. It has a supply problem.
Manhattan isn't a residential market at all
$132.92 per resident is an absurd number. It's triple Queens. No borough's residents smoke three times more than another borough's.
They don't. Manhattan's denominator is wrong, and the data proves it from the inside.
| Mon–Thu | Saturday | Sunday | Weekend total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | 56.2% | 14.3% | 11.7% | 25.9% |
| Brooklyn | 52.7% | 15.9% | 13.6% | 29.5% |
| Queens | 53.4% | 15.8% | 13.2% | 28.9% |
| Bronx | 54.0% | 15.4% | 12.5% | 27.9% |
| Staten Island | 52.7% | 16.3% | 12.6% | 28.9% |
Manhattan has the weakest weekend and the strongest Monday-to-Thursday of any borough in the city. Everywhere else, Saturday is the biggest shopping day after Friday. In Manhattan, Saturday barely beats Wednesday.
That is a commuter signature. Manhattan's daytime population is far larger than its residential one, and a meaningful share of its cannabis sales are people who sleep somewhere else — in Brooklyn, in Queens, in New Jersey, in Westchester — buying on the way home from work. When those people stay home on Saturday, the borough's sales sag and their own borough's rise.
It also means Manhattan's $132.92 is partly borrowed from the boroughs beneath it in the table. The real residential gap is smaller than it looks — and the commuter trade is a large, identifiable, weekday-shaped business.
What each borough actually buys
This is where the five markets stop resembling each other entirely.
Share of dollars:
| Flower | Vapes | Pre-rolls | Edibles | Concentrates | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | 24.3% | 30.2% | 24.9% | 15.2% | 2.0% |
| Brooklyn | 35.8% | 23.6% | 23.0% | 12.4% | 2.2% |
| Queens | 34.8% | 26.5% | 22.2% | 10.5% | 2.7% |
| Bronx | 47.1% | 19.1% | 19.3% | 9.0% | 2.3% |
| Staten Island | 31.7% | 30.3% | 23.2% | 8.8% | 3.4% |
The Bronx is a flower borough. Nearly half of every dollar spent there goes to flower — almost double Manhattan's share. By units it's 29.8%, again the highest in the city.
Manhattan and Staten Island are vape boroughs, both above 30% of dollars, for completely different reasons: Manhattan buys volume at mid prices, Staten Island buys fewer units at the highest prices in the city.
Manhattan is the edibles borough at 15.2% of dollars and 19.9% of units — one in five things sold in Manhattan is an edible. In Staten Island it's 8.8% of dollars.
Staten Island is the concentrates borough at 3.4% — modest in absolute terms, but 70% above the Bronx and Manhattan.
The price ladder
| 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 the most and least expensive borough.
The intuitive guess is that Manhattan is the expensive one. It isn't. Staten Island is, by a wide margin, and it isn't close. The borough with the fewest stores, the least competition, the most cars and the highest concentrate share also charges the most per item.
The Bronx is the cheapest borough in New York City, buying the most flower at the lowest prices from the fewest stores.
Five different brand maps
Roll every brand up by borough and the leaderboards don't match.
| #1 | #2 | #3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | ayrloom 4.4% | Ruby Farms 4.0% | Fernway 3.7% |
| Brooklyn | Ruby Farms 4.5% | ayrloom 3.2% | Rythm 3.1% |
| Queens | ayrloom 3.9% | Dank. by definition. 3.5% | MFNY 3.2% |
| Bronx | ayrloom 4.0% | Leal 3.8% | Dank. by definition. 3.7% |
| Staten Island | Stiiizy 3.5% | Dank. by definition. 3.5% | Ruby Farms 3.3% |
ayrloom is the only genuinely citywide brand — top two in four of five boroughs. Everything else is regional.
Ruby Farms wins Brooklyn but is second in Manhattan and third on Staten Island. Stiiizy wins Staten Island and appears nowhere else in the top three. Leal is the Bronx's number two — a value brand, in the value borough, invisible elsewhere. Fernway is Manhattan's number three at a premium price and doesn't crack the top three anywhere else.
If you're a brand running one citywide plan, you are running the wrong plan in at least four boroughs.
Who's actually growing
| January, per day | August, per day | Growth | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queens | $302,602 | $408,820 | +35.1% |
| Staten Island | $85,621 | $109,180 | +27.5% |
| Brooklyn | $396,440 | $491,455 | +24.0% |
| Bronx | $106,868 | $131,166 | +22.7% |
| Manhattan | $771,543 | $855,999 | +10.9% |
Manhattan is growing at less than a third of Queens's rate.
The biggest, richest, most competitive borough is also the slowest. That is what market maturity looks like — Manhattan got its stores first, filled its demand first, and is now growing into a saturated field of 95 competitors. Queens, at 3.05 stores per 100,000, still has room.
Extend those two lines and the city's center of gravity moves outward.
Five personalities, confirmed
Two other findings in this issue's reporting line up with the borough profiles exactly.
Rain costs Manhattan 6.0 points of a day and Staten Island 0.9 — less than it costs Buffalo. Manhattan walks to the dispensary; Staten Island drives. Snow reverses it completely: on February 23, Staten Island's fourteen stores sold $3,019 against an expected $77,269 — four cents on the dollar, after 29 inches at Grasmere. The borough that shrugs off rain is the one snow closes.
On Knicks playoff nights, all five boroughs sold less than on ordinary nights, and nowhere outside the city did. Manhattan, which contains Madison Square Garden, was the deepest at −3.49 points and the only geography in the tri-state to go negative on home games.
And 4/20 is the one day they all agree on: Manhattan +97.7%, Brooklyn +96.3%, Queens +111.5%, the Bronx +88.9%, Staten Island +104.3%. Five markets, one holiday.
What to take from it
If you're siting a store: the Bronx is the clearest opportunity in New York City. 1.35 stores per 100,000 residents against Manhattan's 5.71, an average store already out-earning Brooklyn's and Queens's, and one operator holding a quarter of the borough. The demand is demonstrably there and the shelf space isn't.
If you're operating in Manhattan: you are in the slowest-growing, most competitive, most weather-exposed and most commuter-dependent borough in the city. Your Saturday is structurally weak and that isn't your fault — plan Monday through Thursday, and treat rain as a real operational variable.
If you're a brand: stop treating "New York City" as a market. Three different brands hold the number-one spot across the five boroughs, flower is 47% of the Bronx and 24% of Manhattan, and the average item costs 23% more on Staten Island than in the Bronx. Five plans, or at minimum three.
If you're watching where this goes: Queens is growing three times faster than Manhattan off a base that's already the third-largest in the city. The most interesting borough in New York cannabis over the next two years is not the one with the most stores.
Sales figures are estimated retail sell-through from third-party analytics, January 1 – September 15, 2026 — 258 complete trading days; the final day of each export is a partial pull and is excluded. Borough series: Manhattan 95 dispensaries / $221,289,490; Brooklyn 83 / $114,344,677; Queens 72 / $92,543,084; the Bronx 19 / $31,580,375; Staten Island 14 / $26,363,532. The five sum exactly to the 283-store, $486,121,158 citywide series, which is the reconciliation check used to validate the split. Day-of-week and growth comparisons use each borough's own series. Population figures are US Census Bureau Vintage 2025 estimates as of July 1, 2025, as published by NYC Department of City Planning. Dollar totals are estimates and differ modestly from New York State's own 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 and trends, July 2026 release · NYC Planning current population estimates
New York 420 Week · Issue 07 · September 2026
Words by Greg Silverstein · @NewYork420week · @sourcatjack
