Del Mundo Cannabis Is South Broadway's Newest Dispensary

Del Mundo Cannabis is a new dispensary on the block at 2394 South Broadway, having replaced a former Lucy Sky Cannabis Boutique in February. However, Colorado cannabis users have been smoking Del Mundo buds for over two years now, as owners Richard "Boomer" Potter, Raimundo Michael Ubieta and Sarah White have operated a Del Mundo growing facility in Commerce City since 2019.

The dispensary's name translates to "of the world" in Spanish, tying into Ubieta's Cuban roots and the trio's sustainable growing practices, which they believe are strong enough to help carry this flagship store. We caught up with co-owner Potter to learn how Del Mundo maintains a quality supply as a newcomer to the retail market, and how he sees the brand expanding into South Broadway's competitive dispensary scene.

Westword: Tell us about your journey from wholesale to commercial growing. What prompted this change?

Richard Potter: We played the wholesale game for a while and wanted to perfect our growing techniques and get our genetics set. Everything that we grow, we hunt from seed, and we do a pheno-hunt of popping about fifteen to twenty seeds of each strain and selecting the best ones from there. We did that for the last couple years, and then with the recent decline in the wholesale side of the business and just not having the control over the end narrative for our flower, we decided to take the leap and purchase a dispensary.

How has business been, with marijuana sales dropping in Colorado this year?

For us, it's been fantastic. We’ve been getting great responses to our flower. A lot of the local neighborhood customers and a lot of the former Lucy Sky customers that were regulars have continued coming back. A lot of them have now made the switch over to our Del Mundo flower and have great reviews about it. Ultimately what we wanted was to get more direct access to the consumer for our flower as opposed to wholesale. In that regard, it's been exactly what we wanted.

I think that this particular location on South Broadway has a very rich history in the cannabis industry, with it being CAM [Colorado Alternative Medicine] before it was Lucy Sky. I think the location is going to be great for us, and I think as the weather warms up and we start to get closer to the summer months, and with 4/20 just around the corner, I’m not worried about what's to come. I think, slowly but surely, we're going to see this market come back to what it has been.

What are some of your favorite strains? Which would you like to see become more popular in the future?

Some of my favorite strains are GMO Cookies, Strawnana and Tropicana Kush. And then, for trends of strains that I’d like to see become more popular…I think there's a big need for CBD flower in the marketplace. We have one strain in particular that, naturally and by luck, we found a phenotype that comes out as [an even CBD-to-THC ratio] out of testing. We’ve had a really good response with that. I hear it all the time from customers in the dispensary as well — that they wish there were a few more options out there that had CBD in the flower for those who like to enjoy the smoke. I wish that was one thing that was more popular.

What are some recent trends you’ve noticed among customers?

They used to sell ‘shake eighths,’ which just about every dispensary has some kind of offering of. Customers here were used to paying $17.50 for a shake eighth, and what we've done is taken them away and introduced our popcorn [buds]. We sell our popcorn at $18 an eighth. So customers who were used to paying $17.50 for shake are now paying 50 cents more for small-nug popcorn. In their eyes, they've won the lottery.
Focusing on the cultivation side of business, what does it take to succeed? How do you guarantee the best grow?

What it takes to succeed is keeping things simple. You can spend a lot of money on the automation of things and trying to make things as easy as you can, but at the end of the day, the best way to ensure consistency is to have hands on every plant, every day. We still hand-water with a hose and a wand, and would rather pay for additional grow techs and hands to be in the facility knowing that every plant is having eyes on it every day. It helps us stay in front of any problems, as opposed to being reactive after the problems have already surfaced.

We don't try to reinvent the wheel. We work with a fantastic nutrient company, and they’ve spent millions and millions of dollars on the research and development of their product. So we follow their directions and their mixing instruction to a T and don't deviate from that. We've found that letting the experts do what they do — and we just feed it to the plant and make sure that the plant is as happy and as healthy as can be — produces the best end result.

Looking ahead, what are your biggest hopes for Del Mundo within Denver’s cannabis scene?

I would say our biggest hope for Del Mundo is to continue delivering high-quality, pesticide-free cannabis that is not only consistent, but affordable at the end of the day. We hope to continue growing in both our cultivation side and our dispensary side. We believe in advertising the ingredients that we put into our flower. We believe in running a clean, pesticide-free facility, and I hope that, in the future, that's something that we continue and expand upon.