Cannabis Business Plan Development

A cannabis business plan has two audiences that most plans fail: a state licensing board scoring you against competing applicants, and a lender or investor deciding whether your numbers are real. Both will read the financial section first, and both have seen enough optimistic projections to recognize one immediately.

We have written plans for operators entering competitive limited-license markets and for established businesses raising capital. The difference between a plan that scores and one that does not is almost always the same thing: whether the financials reflect an actual understanding of how cannabis economics work under 280E.

What's Included

Why This Differs In Cannabis

A conventional business plan projects revenue, subtracts expenses, and shows profit. A cannabis plan that does this is wrong before it is finished — because under 280E, most of those expenses do not reduce taxable income. A plan projecting healthy net margins while ignoring that its tax line should be calculated on gross profit rather than net income is a plan a knowledgeable reviewer will discount entirely.

Licensing boards in competitive markets increasingly include financial sophistication in their scoring. Getting this right is worth points.

Both audiences read the financial section first.

Why MCA

We have served licensed cannabis operators since 2015 — one of the first firms in the country to build a practice around it — and we have worked with more than 100 operators across 30+ states. Cannabis is all we do, and all we have ever done.

Frequently Asked