The Rise of the Themed Dispensary

Cannabis

new ways to stand out from the pack and one option some have decided to go with is opening a themed dispensary with a focus on creating an “immersive” and dare-we-say “Instagrammable” experience.

The dispensary model has evolved a lot over the last decade. During the 2000s, when a handful of states only had medical marijuana laws, the user experience for cannabis consumers remained medical-centric in operators’ attempts to keep their doors from getting kicked in by the feds. Then, when Barack Obama became president and the 2013 Cole Memo helped dispensary operators relax, people started to open up a bit — maybe too soon — and the cat was out of the bag. The more regulated the marketplace, the faster this progress toward unique dispensary experiences happened.

Harborside, a dispensary in Oakland and San Jose, California founded in 2006, gave the world its first deep look into how well this new experience-centric kind of dispensary could be done. Then, in the 2010s as adult-use legalization kicked off, a wave of dispensaries modeled themselves after Apple Stores. Today, as the market matures, we’re starting to see more and more dispensaries embrace a whole new level of planned eccentricity.  

Even Jay-Z is getting into the themed dispensary hype. As part of his collaboration with California cannabis company Caliva, the company has opened a new New York-themed deli dispensary in Bellflower, California, to the south of Los Angeles. While we’re not totally sure if it will carve the same kind of place in people’s hearts as Katz’s in Manhattan, it’s certainly a new twist on buying pot.

“We wanted to create something that was reminiscent of those early delis you saw from the 1950s,” the store’s manager Joshua Estrada told The Hollywood Reporter when it opened. “I kind of equate it to like if we took that deli from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — it’s that neighborhood vibe. They’ve got the rabbi, right? It’s one of those moments, the neighborhood celebrating those spaces. We wanted to also play on that.”

In the foothills of Northern California’s cannabis country, another new dispensary is making waves. The 3,700-square-foot psychedelic wonderland is called Doobie Nights and opened last month in Santa Rosa, replete with a “Portal of Wonder” sculpture wall that customers walk through and LED lighting designed by internationally renowned artists.

Read More at source: Cannabis Now

Image Source: Cannabis Now