AYR Wellness is the Miami-based multistate operator whose Ayr dispensaries now belong to its former lenders. After a 2025 restructuring, a noteholder-owned company called Arboretum began taking over AYR's operations state by state and kept the Ayr name on the door. The banner runs more than 60 medical dispensaries in Florida plus shops across the Northeast, Ohio and Virginia, stocked with house brands Kynd, Haze and Later Days.
From a SPAC to a seven-state MSO
AYR started as a blank-check company. Cannabis Strategies Acquisition Corp. completed its qualifying transaction on May 24, 2019, renamed itself Ayr Strategies and bought five operating businesses in Massachusetts and Nevada in one move. Those deals brought in brands including CannaPunch, Highly Edible, Dutch Girl and Nordic Goddess. Jonathan Sandelman led the company as founder, chairman and CEO.
Seven more acquisitions closed in late 2020, and by January 2021 Ayr operated in Nevada, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Ohio, with a stated focus on limited-license markets. The company changed its name to Ayr Wellness on February 12, 2021, and traded in Canada under the ticker AYR.A.
Florida and the Liberty deal
Florida became the center of gravity on February 26, 2021, when Ayr closed its acquisition of Liberty Health Sciences. The combined company had 44 open dispensaries and 554,000 square feet of cultivation right after the deal. In April 2022 Ayr launched Kynd flower across Liberty's 45 Florida stores with six strains: Blueberry Headband, Extraterrestrial Bananas, True OG, Purple Trainwreck, Polyjuice #4 and Lemon Haze.
The Florida stores now run as Ayr Cannabis Dispensary, and the map stretches from Pensacola to Florida City. In August 2023 AYR signed a three-year exclusive deal to license and sell Kiva Confections in Florida, bringing Camino gummies and chews, Lost Farm and Petra mints to its stores from late 2023. Even mid-restructuring, AYR launched flower from its first indoor cultivation facility in Florida in October 2025.
Kynd, Haze and Later Days
AYR's packaged goods go out under their own names. Kynd started in November 2014, when grower Mark Pitchford took over a Reno grow space and retrofitted it from the ground up, and it now covers flower, vapes, pre-rolls, tinctures and edibles. In March 2024 AYR added Kynd gummies in Florida and Nevada, vegan, gluten-free and melt-proof, in lines named Uplift, Relax, Balance and Energy.
- Haze: “where power meets flavor,” with live rosin and live resin disposables, live rosin-infused pre-rolls, infused gummies and concentrates.
- Later Days: the value vape line, “big flavor without the big price tag,” in flavors like Winter Mint, Juicy Mango, Georgia Peach and Frozen Watermelon.
Ayr's store map in 2026
In April 2026 AYR counted more than 90 licensed retail locations across Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Nevada and Virginia. Outside Florida, the map looks like this:
- Massachusetts: adult-use stores in Boston's Back Bay, Somerville and Watertown.
- New Jersey: Eatontown, Union and Woodbridge. Ayr bought them as Garden State Dispensary in 2021 and renamed them Ayr in December 2022.
- Pennsylvania: Bryn Mawr, Gibsonia, Indiana, Montgomeryville, New Castle and Plymouth Meeting.
- Ohio: eight stores from Akron and Parma Heights to Dayton and Goshen. The Woodmere and Goshen shops opened in November 2023.
- Virginia: six medical stores, including Winchester and five former Cannabist shops around Richmond.
- Delaware: Rehoboth Beach, Smyrna and Wilmington, also ex-Cannabist.
- Nevada: six stores under The Dispensary name, three around Las Vegas and Henderson and three in Reno.
How the lenders ended up owning Ayr
The corner office changed hands three times between September 2024 and the end of 2025. David Goubert was president and CEO in early 2024, Steven Cohen stepped in as interim CEO that September, and Scott Davido, a senior managing director at Ankura Consulting Group who had held the same title at FTI Consulting, replaced him in April 2025.
AYR signed a restructuring support agreement with its senior noteholders on July 30, 2025. An Article 9 auction in November 2025 started the sale of its core assets to those lenders, a Master Purchase Agreement followed on November 14, and the Canadian parent entered CCAA proceedings in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to liquidate and wind down. By the end of 2025 Blake Holzgrafe was interim CEO of the old corporate entity, running the wind-down.
Arboretum, Millstreet and the Cannabist stores
Arboretum, the vehicle the noteholders formed, closed on AYR's Virginia operations in April 2026 alongside a $275 million exit loan. On June 2, 2026 it took over Florida, New Jersey and Nevada after state regulators signed off, with the remaining states set to follow as approvals come through. Arboretum says it will keep operating under the Ayr Wellness trade name.
Boston's Millstreet sits behind the new Ayr. Millstreet Capital Management led AYR's senior noteholders, and a Millstreet affiliate paid $130 million in February 2026 for the Richmond-area Virginia business of Cannabist. Davido, now Arboretum's interim CEO, told MJBizDaily in May 2026 that those Cannabist assets had been closed into Arboretum, which now controls two of Virginia's five medical cannabis permits.
The same affiliate bought Cannabist's Delaware business in May 2026. Former Cannabist and Columbia Care shops in Carytown, Short Pump, Wilmington, Smyrna and Rehoboth Beach now trade as Ayr. The lender-owned successor of one collapsed MSO is absorbing the retail of another.
For adults 21 and over.