William Cassotis, President and CEO of Lazy River Products – Interview Series

As one of the first East Coast states to legalize recreational cannabis, Massachusetts has a head start of several years over neighboring markets like Maine and New York. Dispensaries across the Bay State have been fully operational for years; however, despite this extra experience, the market is by no means without its share of widespread challenges and disadvantages.

To get a deeper look into the current state of the Massachusetts cannabis industry—as well as how to successfully build and scale a pet-friendly CBD brand—mycannabis.com had the pleasure of speaking with William Cassotis, President and CEO of Lazy River Products.

Where did you attend university and what were the most useful courses in terms of your career throughout many fields of entrepreneurship?

I went to a tiny university in Manchester, NH for about a semester, and that was my college experience. Following that, I packed my bags in my hometown of Londonderry, NH and moved to Boulder, CO to find out what I wanted to do with myself. Out there I struggled for a few years before falling into my first sales training and sales opportunity. This is where I tell everyone I received my real education. 

For years I sold everything from water filters to cars. Around this time technology was on the rise and Microsoft (MSFT ) and Cisco software and management became big business. I became very successful selling backbone technological infrastructure to large financial companies in Boston and throughout Massachusetts and had some success with that. After a few years it became apparent that you were only ever as good as your last month and I aspired for more. Around that time, I was offered an opportunity. I was gifted a Franchise License with a new Health a Wellness Franchise, that was just starting out.  I was lucky enough to ride that company’s wave of growth, and opened 20+ brick and mortar stores with 300+ employees. That business was later purchased by private equity back in 2018. 

What were the most valuable lessons in business ownership and management that being a Planet Fitness franchisee and your other entrepreneurial endeavors teach you?

That it isn’t about any one person. It’s about the team. I am not successful because I am the smartest guy in the room. I’m not successful because I can do everyone’s job. What I am good at is finding people that believe. They are sold on the mission, and they are willing to follow me into battle every day. Everyday we have new battles to fight and new objectives to achieve. 

Make no mistake about it, whether it be cannabis or any other business, it is a battle to make it in business today. Unless you’re a golfer or a tennis player, if you want to be successful today, become great at finding people that are experienced, self-managing and professional and make them a part of your team. Make sure they are all in on the company’s mission and strategy for winning. With the right people, you can overcome anything and achieve everything. 

When did you first decide to enter the cannabis industry, and what caught your professional attention about the Massachusetts industry in particular? I read that you and two of your closest friends came together to found the dispensary that would become Lazy River Products?

I first decided to enter the cannabis industry in 2018, as I was selling my previous business. At that time I was 44 years old and not ready to retire. I was looking for a new opportunity. At that time medical cannabis legislation in  Massachusetts had already been approved and Adult Use was on the ballot. Right around that time I went to a local driving range to hit a bucket of balls and bumped into one of the two other founding members of Lazy River Products, Kevin Platt. Kevin was also there to hit a bucket of balls prior to the start of the new golf season. I already knew he had spent some years in cannabis in Cali. He briefed me on his move to Maine with his family and what he was doing up there. It had been several years since we had seen each other prior. It justified the drive to Maine to see for myself what Kevin was doing with what he had available. 

That visit opened my eyes. I am a proponent of the plant and the medicine it provides too so many people. I believe everyone should have access. I believe it should be regulated and taxed responsibly, and I believe there should be protections for medicinal users and adult, recreational users alike. It is after all a medicine as recently recognized by this administration and its recent rescheduling. 

For us, we saw the market and its limited opportunity but before committing any dollars, I pulled Mark Leal, the other founding member of the business out of a job he hated but was very good at and asked him to join us here. Once he agreed we got on a plane and flew to Colorado. 

We immediately connected with who we felt was an expert. Someone, a company, that had experience designing and successfully executing “fully integrated” builds in other markets including Colorado. We wanted to tour these facilities. We wanted to learn what worked and what didn’t. What could be optimized and how could we build something even better.

For us, we knew in advance there would be a peak and likely a “consolidation event” after seeing, even at that time, what was starting to happen in California and even Colorado. We knew we had a window of opportunity. We also knew we needed to build for the long term, when cogs, KPI’s, budgets, technology implementation, training. All of it would really matter. 

Thankfully, we always knew we needed to do everything long term to build a lasting brand. We needed to be fully integrated if we were to do this at all, so what can we learn to build the next generation of fully integrated facilities.

From there, we just kept taking steps forward. First, we needed to find a piece of property in an appropriately zoned area, within one of only a few municipalities, at that time that had approved their by-laws to accommodate this new Industry. We chose our target municipality and immediately went to work with the towns and their representatives to secure an agreement to move forward.

How would you describe the process of obtaining the retail license for a Massachusetts cannabis business? What information and requirements were needed and what were the most arduous parts of the process?

The process of obtaining the 3 licenses we needed to run a fully integrated model in Massachusetts was arduous.  We were doing this in conjunction with building a brand new, state-of-the-art building. Most of that was done at risk, knowing we had yet to obtain our licensing. 

The process started with the local municipality. We first needed to obtain our HCA, Host Community Agreement. As you can imagine, we weren’t the only ones seeking the Town approval for a partnership agreement, which these in essence were. At the time that people and businesses were engaging there were some very grey areas that were being exploited on both sides. The municipalities were taking advantage of something called a “Community Impact Fee” in the legislation. Initially designed to protect the municipalities in the event there were detrimental impacts on the community, such as increased traffic or the need for additional parking or security details. In these cases where the Town had justification, they could ask the cannabis operator to contribute “Up To 3% of their gross revenue” towards such fixes should they be found to be true.

Well, of course the municipalities saw this as a way to ask for this fee “Up Front” and as a part of the HCA between the proprietors and the municipality. It was legal extortion at its finest. The municipality that we initially partnered with not only asked us for 3% on gross revenue, but they also asked us for $250,000 pre-payment on that 3%. After questioning the legality of their request, they quickly recanted their request for the deposit but still demanded 3% on gross sales for this Community Impact Fee. We had already committed to a 3% local excise tax on all sales that went directly back to the Town 20% tax in total between the Fed, the State and the Town, 23% with the 3% Community Impact Fee.

Years later, Gov Baker, before leaving office, lent clarity to the law and deemed this fee to be illegally collected. Most municipalities immediately stopped collecting the fee, although a few stubborn Towns, ours included, felt they had legal grounds to still ask for this fee. Only recently, as of 2026 have we almost reached the end of this issue. The Town is required by law to provide us with a legal HCA that is renewed every year. Because they won’t change the language in their HCA to reflect the new changes and the removal of this fee, without a release from us to not attempt to “claw back” the funds that were illegally collected from us for years.

After securing the town’s permission is really when the work began. The process with the state and the CCC was very long and very involved. If we didn’t have the team and the resources available to us that we did at the time, it would have taken us considerably longer than the 2 years it did for the first of our approvals.

We started with retail licensing (MR), we then went through cultivation (MC) licensing and lastly, we finished with kitchen and lab (MP).

In terms of things that were required of us as a part of the CCC’s licensing review, there were many. Very deep dives into our backgrounds. Full CORI Background checks. Extensive questionnaires regarding previous exposure to cannabis. They also wanted to know that we had the planning and the capital at the ready. 

Remember, at this time, there was NO banking availability, no lending, unless it was private. No banks would touch these deals at the time because of the federal legality of it. As a matter of fact, Bank of America (BAC ), which I had banked with for 20 years prior to getting involved in cannabis and ran millions and millions of dollars through in my previous business, completely de-banked me the minute they found out I was involved in this new cannabis venture. They didn’t even bother to call, just sent me a letter in the mail with a deadline to remove all my funds. Imagine that.

All the same applied to anyone else who was on the company paperwork. The CCC wanted to know everything about everyone involved and at what levels. 

As we were designing our facility the CCC wanted to review our plans architecturally speaking prior to building. Security planning, camera layouts, data security and integrity requirements needed to be reviewed and approved prior to implementation. Once built there were a series of re-inspections that needed to take place before we could hire and start training employees. 

Even then they wanted to see and understand our hiring strategy to meet DEI requirements. They require us annually to educate consumers, give to local charities and organizations. They also require us to allocate time and resources to bolstering our “Area of Disproportional Impact”, areas that have been negatively affected by the War on Drugs. Our “area” happens to be Lowell Massachusetts, our local “City” that we border. All of these things are outlined in a proposed Positive Impact Plan and Diversity Plan that are required as a part of each application/license. 

There was a tremendous amount of man hours dedicated to each of the three licenses we needed to apply for at Lazy River Products.

With the founding of Lazy River Products, what strengths did you and friends Mark and Kevin all bring to the table? How did all of those strengths and specialties synchronize with one another in starting the business?

Each of the founding members has a unique role in the business. 

Kevin spent 25 years in cannabis cultivation, cutting his teeth in Cali during Prop 215 in the mid 90’s and growing medicine for patients. His unique skills with horticultural genetics and cannabis and hemp cultivation have made him an irreplaceable asset. The flower that Kevin and his team create in cultivation is the basis for everything else we do here in terms of manufacturing and product creation. Everything starts with clean, award-winning flower and there is no shortage of it here at Lazy River. 

We’re just coming off a huge win in the Sativa Flower Category at NECANN (Boston) just a few weeks ago. Our “Purple Haze” that was hunted and grown here locally at LRP (never from clones), took home 1st place for Sativa Flower and was also the OVERALL Sativa Flower Category Winner.

NECANN is one of the only compliant cups/competitions here in New England, in terms of it being allowed and how products to be judged are submitted for the Cup. This includes legal grows (AU & Med) and home grows from all over New England, not just Massachusetts (ME, VT, MA, NH, CT). Huge pool of people.

At NECANN we also took home another 1st Place Win in the Edible Category for our “Extra Innings Chocolates” we recently developed for Baseball Seasons Opening Day. Very exciting stuff and a huge Team win at Lazy River!

Since the store’s opening, what have been the most ambitious expansions that you’ve overseen as CEO of Lazy River Products? Why were those expansions so ambitious to begin with and how did it pay off?

Lazy River’s own personal development and expansion is always something we are thinking about. Recently the CCC and the Governor of Massachusetts have agreed to expand the retail license count from 3 licenses to 6. If I was a cannabis retailer before, I could only aspire to ever open 3 stores, now I could choose to go bigger, if the opportunity justified it.

Last year we opened our second retail location in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. 3 licenses in total were issued, and we were one of the 3 recipients, and the first to open. This was an ambitious move at the time. If you go back 24-30 months when we really started running after the HCA in Tewksbury the market in Massachusetts was starting to collapse. Remember, back in 2018 pricing peaked at $14.50 a gram. That held solid for a while, but we started seeing some significant drops in the price per gram right around the time we engaged on this new opportunity. Today the PPG is about $4.50. Most people were not expanding during this period. 

Most people were not thinking about growth and expanding into new markets. I think for us this was a major flex. At a time when most people were shedding layers and conserving, we were growing and expanding. It put our competitors on notice. This bold move has exposed Lazy River Products to an entirely new set of customers and has allowed us to partner with a new community. For us, that partnership is another opportunity to change peoples perception about these businesses, the people that run them, and the positive impact they can have on their community. 

What is both special and advantageous about the Dracut location of Lazy River Products? How is that region of Massachusetts a great location for cannabis cultivation and sales?

There are so many special things about our Dracut location that make it unique and successful. Dracut is a small, farming community at its heart. It’s conveniently nestled in a little pocket of the Merrimack Valley Region, right up against the Merrimack River. It’s accessible from two major sets of State Highways, Route 93 and Route 495. Dracut also abuts Lowell, which is usually the 5th largest city in Massachusetts depending on the census and the year. Either way, it’s a substantial market with an educated consumer base. Black Market brands and the illicit market have been operating in this part of the state for a very long time. 

Dracut also happens to border Southern NH, which has chosen not to adopt a legal retail market or adult use cannabis legislation. For that reason, a lot of shoppers we sell happen to be residents of NH. This will be the case until the current administration is voted out in NH. The current Governor does not have a positive opinion of cannabis and has vowed to veto any cannabis legislation that comes across her desk. That has benefited us greatly and will continue to do so into the future and as long as NH chooses to remain out of the adult use, legal retail market.

After the several years that the Massachusetts industry has been in operation and based on your own experience in the industry, what are the most notable ways it’s changed? What are some notable sales trends that have changed since the industry’s founding?

In 2018, cost per gram was $14.50. Today it’s $4.50. Over licensing and the over saturation of product in the market has driven those costs to where they sit today. Price compression and heavy competition have driven some retailers out of business. Today, we know of 60 stores in receivership in Massachusetts, with more joining those ranks every new month. Operators must run their businesses effectively and efficiently to survive, never mind thrive in today’s cannabis market in Massachusetts. I think a lot of operators expected that CPG to stay high. That was their business plan. They had no long-term strategy in some cases and when it came time to get lean and compete when revenues and margins are shrinking, most people just couldn’t make the pivot and adapt. 

Pure Oasis is a perfect example of this. It was the very first dispensary to open in Boston/Dorcester area. Social equity applicants that were moved to the front of the line to be licensed, had a business plan that was reviewed and approved by the CCC and the State prior to opening. They met the capital requirements to be licensed. They were a booming success at one point early on and even opened a second retail storefront in Boston, not long ago. At the end of the day, regardless of your license type, a license promises you nothing other than the opportunity to compete. After that, there are no promises. If you aren’t prepared. If you aren’t ready to make cuts and find ways to effectively run your business while leaning up on resources. 

If you aren’t effectively finding ways to engage with your customers and always acquiring new ones through new and creative means of marketing. If you aren’t finding ways to increase the ever-shrinking cart values, you lose! Period. We are in that period in the Massachusetts cannabis industry where the reckoning has arrived. There is a massive thinning of the field underway today clearing the way for the strongest brands, the survivors, who use the best processes and produce the best products on the market consistently, to win. The cream is rising to the top. With the new legislation, we’re optimistic that this and this all will have a positive effect on market price and the Massachusetts cannabis Industry overall. 

In terms of sales trends that we’ve witnessed since the industry’s inception would be the consumers’ obsession with THC percentages on products. Adult Use customers have historically always been driven by potency and price. “What’s your highest testing pre-roll?” Very rarely is it ever, “this is the effect I’m looking for” or “here’s my issue, what product would best help me resolve said issue?”. We always try to educate on terpenes and cannabinoids, and our people are trained to ask probing questions, if they feel the customer is looking for that kind of support. Our hopes are to see more of this as this market matures and as shoppers become more educated. 

We are starting to see people start to challenge the poor existing marketing restrictions here in Massachusetts. Previously it was basically impossible to advertise your brand or your store without repercussions from the CCC. A lot of those restrictions have loosened, making things a little easier for cannabis business owners. As an example, Adult Use facilities can now run and manage a loyalty program for their customers, where they weren’t able to do that even just a few weeks ago.

We’ve also seen manufacturers start to fool around with larger format edibles, for instance. In Massachusetts we have always been limited to 5mg of medicine per single serving for edible products. People now, Lazy River Products included, are now creating larger, 20mg gummies that have 4 separate portion markings at 5 mg a piece. 

We ourselves manufacture a deli style cheese called THCheese. It looks similar to a deli style, hand sliced cheese slices that you can slap on a burger or make a grilled cheese with, and each slice has 10mg of medicine in it but is done compliantly. 

Our FreezePops are 20mg each of flavored, infused water-based Freeze Pops, like we used to get as kids. Because the package is graded and reflects 4 different sections/serving sizes, we can compliantly provide more medicine in that single unit, with multiple servings. This product requires some real food science as it’s a little more difficult for the medicine to bond with water and not fatty liquids or products. 

We’re also seeing a lot in the way of sub brands now in Massachusetts. Years ago there were several strong brands that were known for quality and were priced accordingly. When CPG was high, these brands were commanding top dollar for their products. Back then it wasn’t unusual to pay $60 for a perceived, high-quality, 3.5 gram dram of flower from a major brand. 

Note: Today you can find $10, 3,5g dram options on people’s menus. 

As market pricing in Massachusetts started to crash, the smart manufacturers were finding ways to match the quickly falling CPG, without depleting the quality of that core brand along with it. We started seeing less and less of the old names and more competitively priced brands that no one had ever heard of. In most cases these were new “brands” to the market, but they weren’t new companies. 

The larger companies were trying to still retain a higher CPG for their stronger brands and instead of greatly discounting or reducing their pricing to meet the falling market, they changed the name on the bag, maybe they changed the format as well but in essence this provided a strategic offramp for them to reposition themselves without completely destroying the core brand, its products and their perceived value in the market. They could still ask for a slightly inflated CPG for their primary brands while using the new names to be the face of their “low budget line” of products.

Lazy River Products did this as well with brands such as Dealers Choice and our Elevate lines. This strategy continues to help us today and these lines both are large drivers of revenue for the company. 

What all went into the founding of Petiva? How do you consistently guarantee that the products, ingredients, and CBD sourcing are safe for pets?

PETiva started as just a single product, a tincture, that was created under Lazy River Products. The product was created in ServSafe, human food kitchen with 100% all natural ingredients and infused with CBD. The gentleman that runs our edible kitchen and other members of the lab came together to develop this product for one of his Chiwawa rescues that was having some mobility issues. He was having great success with the product so we made a few more and thought we’d drop these on our retail menu to see if the customers could help us validate whether there was a market for this. Sure enough, the product was selling. 

We wanted to create more products but wanted to be sure we had a clear differentiator from the other products that were starting to show up in this space. There were a few big ones that we knew were a must:

Transparency– None of the products we saw on the market in this space gave us ANY confidence in that what we were administering to our loving pets, was actually what they advertised. How did I know I was actually getting 300mg of medicine in this product? How do I know the ingredients are all natural and contain what I’m being sold? For us, the answer was thrid party independent testing. We have to do it for the products that humans are consuming (in most cases), so why wouldn’t we do that here for our pets? What if we took it a step further and made those batch results and coa’s available for our customers to view online. Today, at PETiva you can see and verify all of what’s in these great products you’re administering to your pet.

Safety– CBD is 100% safe, non-toxic and non-psychoactive to your animal, cat or dog, doesn’t matter. Your animal cannot overdose on these products. Why then are PETiva’s products safer than most of the other products that are on the market in this space? We use 100% all-natural and very high-quality ingredients and all of the CBD we infuse is done in isolate form. In other words, the CBD we’re administering to our animals through these products is 100% PURE CBD and NOTHING else. 

The problem with the other products on the market is that most of them derive their CBD from full spectrum distillate, because it’s cheaper. They will sell this to you as a benefit when it isn’t. CBD derived from full spec distillate contains trace elements of a variety of different cannabinoids and terpenes from the plant. Some of these, such as THC are known to be toxic to our animals. Knowing that, would you want to give that product to your animal, even if it was in a small amount? No, of course not. PETiva’s CBD is the only approved form of CBD for pets because it’s pure and free of any other part of the plant.

From there we created Dog Treats, our second product. Sure enough, our test group loved the products. We moved them into retail and again, the products were sold. We started introducing these products to our cannabis Wholesale Distribution Team and before we knew it Lazy River was distributing these products to a growing number of cannabis retail dispensaries around Massachusetts. For our customers, this was a cool unique new set of products. It helped them to provide something different, something their competitors didn’t. Something that could sit on the point of sale and be in the face of the customer at checkout. It became a very easy add-on for most, since most of the customers were already educated on the benefits of CBD.

With the continued success we had we decided it was time to separate this concept and product line from Lazy River and have PETiva stand on its own as a company. We developed a full line of Calm & Comfort products, now seven products strong. We spent months dialing in recipes and generating feedback, swapping out ingredients, hiring, perfecting the manufacturing processes etc. Getting the right equipment to scale. Inventory management, ERP, CRM, all things we needed to work through and implement in preparation for a National Launch. Currently we are shipping products as far west as Sacramento California and as far south as Key West, FL.

We worked with a developer and started building the ecomm platform for B2C sales www.petivabrands.com and working through all of those challenges. 

Recently we launched our PETiva Shelter Program. We’ve partnered with several shelter groups throughout Massachusetts, to include one of our original partnerships, the Lowell Humane Society in Lowell Massachusetts. Currently LHS uses all 7 products in the “Onboarding Process” with new shelter arrivals. Cats and dogs alike are treated when they arrive with whichever consumable product works best with that animal, all of which are incredibly easy to administer and are perceived in most cases to be a treat. They are bathed with our all-natural shampoo’s, free of any parabens or sulfides. Skin issues are treated and managed with the skin relief creams and the nose to toe balms. Their bedding areas are prepped with our calming sprays. All PETiva products are used in combination with the others for ongoing maintenance with the shelter animals.

Qualified shelters wanting to participate receive sample products from us directly to use for themselves. Onsite or remote training, depending on the state and location, is provided complimentary for all participating groups. Support and training paraphernalia are also provided. After samples have been used, all qualified shelters receive all of the products PETiva creates at Wholesale Cost or 50% of MSRP. This provides these very high quality, effective and useful products at a deeply discounted price for consumption at the shelter BUT these products can also be sold and are very competitively priced at MSRP. They can easily be displayed on desktops and in retail areas.

What are some exciting future plans for LRP and Petiva? Also, how do you think the MA cannabis industry will change due to the federal rescheduling of cannabis?

Lazy River: We got into this business for the long haul. This was never a get rich scheme for us. We knew the “Consolidation” was coming. We spoke with some other business owners who were starting to be affected by this in their respective markets at that time and gave us some insight into the future. We knew this dramatic market shift was coming at the time we were building, so we modeled a lot of this into our planning, it just happened to hit about 2 years prior to when we were thinking it would.

What does this mean for today? We continue to be responsible business owners. We have over 100 people working at Lazy River products today. We continue to find ways to lean the company up and adjust where it makes sense so we can keep this business successful, profitable and keep our valued employees working and happy contributors.

Over this past year we’ve made some huge adjustments in terms of the number of SKU’s our company produces. We are now focused on SKU’s that produce us the most revenue and margin and have terminated most other programs. We have worked diligently with our suppliers to bring down COGS, supply and ingredient costs without sacrificing quality and now have a very successful and surgically strategic 3rd party vendor strategy that really compliments what we do as a high-quality cultivator and product manufacturer. As the market scrapes along the bottom here in Massachusetts, we are getting stronger as an organization and preparing ourselves for our next phase of growth. 

One new opportunity is that we now can scale to six retail storefronts, should we choose to do so. You will see Lazy River Products continue to grow in Massachusetts whether that be through M&A or new store development. Today’s market has presented some unique opportunities for people that are prepared. We continue to evaluate the best options moving forward for the business and will make a move on additional retail responsibly and when it makes the most sense for the business. 

We are also in the middle of adding medicinal licensing to our licensing portfolio. Since our inception we have been licensed for Adult Use cannabis sales and manufacturing, in order to be able to sell into that marketplace. Medical licensing is separate and has a different set of licensing requirements. Up until now, there hasn’t been a real need for us to go down this road and become a licensed medical cannabis sales and manufacturing facility. Now that cannabis has been rescheduled, there are certain federal protections that ONLY apply to medically licensed facilities. One of the largest and most beneficial will be the absolving of the 280E Tax Code that has crippled the company’s and business owners since this industry’s inception. 

Of course, some of the other doors this opens are for things such as DEA involvement. This includes things like OSHA standards and requirements for manufacturing facilities. The FDA could soon be knocking on people’s doors. I see these types of changes coming before legalization happens. I honestly don’t see that happening anytime soon. The federal government still has a lot to learn about cannabis. In the meantime, leave it up to the states. 

Let the states decide whether they want a legal retail cannabis Industry within their borders. If the people vote yes, then leave it to the people and the states to find the best way to license and tax industry. In the meantime, the federal government can still tax these businesses and assume zero liability leaving it the way it is now that it has been rescheduled. 

PETiva: Huge plans for PETiva this year. You will see us exploiting a few new channels of distribution. We’re in the process of developing new packaging to prepare our entry into avenues such as Chewy and Amazon (AMZN ). The goal is to continue to grow our exposure in this space by continuing to market this concept nationally. 

The PETiva Shelter Program is something that we have huge aspirations for and plan to grow this year tremendously. We’ll all be hearing a lot more on PETiva as we scale later in the year into some new products targeted around senior animals. Stay tuned.

Thank you for joining us, William! For more information on Lazy River Products, please visit its website. Petiva’s line of products can be found here.