A former restaurant converted into an operating dispensary on a buildout budget under $100,000.
Operations and compliance advisory for an operating Class 5 dispensary, beginning at the conversion-buildout stage and continuing through CRC investigator response, borough tax remediation, opening-inventory analytics, and competitive positioning against the in-market incumbent.
Location opened on a fraction of typical buildout budget. Compliance posture stabilized; CRC corrective action accepted; borough tax misallocation reversed and refunded.
A typical cannabis buildout in the same market would have run mid-six figures and 4–6 months. The practice ran the conversion under $100,000 by applying the same cosmetic-improvement framework used at Pleasantville — distinguishing what required permits from what did not, and refusing to accept default contractor scopes that build to a margin rather than to a need. When the borough later misapplied a Q4 tax payment to the landlord’s property lien, the practice resolved it diplomatically rather than litigiously, avoiding the operational disruption a contested enforcement posture would have caused.
“Most consultants I’d talked to before Raaj came in with a number first and a plan second. Raaj came in with a buildout estimate that was honestly hard to believe — under $100K — and then delivered against it. He wrote our SOPs, sized our opening inventory off real comp data instead of guesswork, and when the borough came after us on a tax misallocation, he handled it diplomatically and got it reversed. He’s the rare advisor who’s actually trying to save you money, not bill more of it.”