In the early rush to open quickly after legalization, most cannabis dispensaries in New York City adopted sterile, minimalist setups. They wanted to keep start-up costs low and distinguish themselves from the tacky, illegal shops that once outnumbered them by the hundreds.
As the competition intensified, the dispensaries, about 300 in the city, have leaned into looks and vibes to set themselves apart and connect with consumers.
Their designs invoke New York City’s cultures, rich history, iconic landmarks and larger-than-life personalities. They sell vibes as much as weed. The goal? To build a retail brand that connects with the city’s range of consumers: not only regular users and tourists but also overlooked groups like women and white-collar workers.
But dispensaries are subject to high taxes and burdensome restrictions that make profits scarce. And selling weed remains illegal at the federal level.
Put simply, it has become harder for dispensaries that play by the rules to sell weed and crucial for them to sell a lot more of it. As they fight for survival, some common themes have emerged in dispensary designs, shaped by the force of law, the behavior of consumers and the creativity of owners and designers.
Premium
Legalization has brought with it a number of unconventional ideas about cannabis. One is the notion that cannabis can be part of a premium lifestyle, countering decades of propaganda that cast it as a scourge.
This can be seen in stores like the Travel Agency, which sell the idea of cannabis as an affordable luxury. Walking into its four stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn feels like stepping into a museum or a high-end boutique. Joints and edibles are displayed as if they are precious artifacts and works of art.
Chesen Schwethelm, the chief marketing officer for the Travel Agency, said the goal is for the stores to feel elevated but not cold, joyful but not unserious, and premium but not inaccessible.
“The work we’ve done with design, it lowers people’s guards,” she said.
Culture
Some dispensaries riff off the city, with themes that range from comic books and hip-hop music to bodega cats and Prohibition. Caribbean flags hang between the orange walls at Ánimo Caribe in Flatbush, Brooklyn, giving the small shop a tropical feel that fits the neighborhood, known as Little Caribbean. Speakeasy-style entrances like the flower shop fronting Alto Cannabis in TriBeCa invoke the outlaw history of using weed.
The designs often incorporate creative solutions to unusual problems. For instance, bud bars, which allow customers to smell samples of smokable flower, have emerged as a workaround to a requirement for dispensaries to keep their products locked in rooms secured by metal caging encased in the walls. The rule is intended to deter robberies, but it makes it difficult to sell weed to customers who want to see and smell what they’re buying.
Cause
The war on drugs left an indelible mark on New York City, where marijuana use was used to justify the arrest of hundreds of thousands of people despite state lawmakers having decriminalized low-level possession in 1977. In legalizing cannabis for recreational use in 2021, the state focused on ending marijuana arrests and helping people and communities affected by decades of heavy-handed enforcement.
Dispensaries like ConBud follow a similar mission, using the owners’ experiences with arrests and in prison to push for criminal justice reform. The cousins who founded the store hire workers who were recently released from prison in an effort to help them stay out of prison.
Personal
Sunshine Foss, one-half of the couple behind Happy Buds, is many things: avid reader, upcycler, Lucian, girly and Black. All of that is reflected in the boho bookish design of her dispensary, which she owns with her husband, Remo.
The Fosses are part of a contingent of dispensary owners who take inspiration from their own lives to create spaces that are warm and inviting. There is Black art, books by or about Black people, plants from Saint Lucia, where she grew up, and found items that add a whimsical touch.
“Every single thing in this store, I was on hands and knees, putting up myself,” she said.
Part of the aesthetic is practical. For a time, regulators strictly enforced a rule requiring dispensaries to make sure their goods could not be seen from the street. So frosted windows and speakeasy-style entrances became popular adaptations.
Before legalization, Beau Allulli ran an underground marijuana delivery service, a job that often involved smoking with customers in their homes when dropping off orders. He wanted Mighty Lucky, a dispensary he owns with his partner in TK, to channel that custom by making visitors feel as if they are in his home.
“I wanted my old clients to feel comfortable here,” he said.
Wellness
Two of the most common reasons people go to dispensaries are to seek help with pain or sleep. The shops cannot legally make medical claims because the efficacy of their products has not been vetted by food and drug authorities. But some designs nod to marijuana’s therapeutic properties with botanical elements like warm-toned wood paneling and lush greenery that invoke the look and feel of apothecaries and spas.
Jennifer Tzar didn’t have wellness in mind when she opened Dagmar in SoHo, a store that blends Gothic, art-deco and art-nouveau styles in a luxurious space that she intended to appeal to fashion types, financiers and artists. However, the cabinetry and accents like apothecary jars are reminiscent of those bygone medicine makers who once dispensed cannabis for various ailments.
She chose the name Dagmar several years ago after hearing it for the first time and seeing that everyone with the name seemed glamorous. Teal walls, black furnishings and several crystals reflect her desire to create a feminine space for sophisticated women, one that was a bit witchy but definitely not froufrou.
“Just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean it has to be pink, fluffy and dumb,” she said. “Women can be smart, intellectual and truth-seeking and at the same time magical.”
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