Quality won't save you. Big Businesses can produce quality too, who do you think makes Dom Perignon? How many people are earning a living by brewing in their kitchen? None. If you want to earn a living brewing beer you have to have a licensed brewery where you can make a lot of beer because you can't charge black market prices.
Beer is a perfect example. Like beer but unlike wine, Cannabis doesn't have the cultural cachet that turns it into a Veblen good and gives a very wide price range that supports "garagistes" who don't own vineyards or wineries. There are no oligarchs buying cases of Pliny pre-harvest for thousands per bottle just to impress people. No German beer auctions.
Yes and no... My situation is somewhat unique as it is legal yet still around 250 an ounce. Once more shops open up, prices should fall, but there's still going to be a market for homegrown and delivered bud. If a person can keep their costs low enough, competition with dispensaries won't be an issue, and people will always pay, and usually extra, for convenience. You wanna take the risk, bud delivery will pay.
Also, weed isn't quite like beer or wine. There are communities that prefer to pretend to be hippies and don't want to buy "Monsanto" bud. Also, if you look at something as simple as tobacco, people were willing to take the risk of smuggling in Cuban cigars even though many of the premier cigar families moved to the Dominican Republic when the embargo was imminent. Weed isn't beer, it's weed. I don't think that the home grower is out of this race quite yet.
Oh, and a thought I'll share with a lot of others, the real money is going to be in manufacturing nutes/additives or lighting.
