Cannabis Dispensaries Are the New Lifestyle Boutiques

At first glance it’s easy to mistake the cream and persimmon aluminum awning that lines Pot+Pan’s shopfront in Portland, Maine’s Woodford Corner neighborhood, for a bakery. There’s a glowing sign outside that reads, “Freshly Baked,” and the front windows beckon in guests with a colorful assortment of cookware and kitchen tchotchkes from Instagram-darling brands like Great Jones, Ghia, and Nata Concept Store.

But as soon as you step inside, it becomes clear that the shelves full of retro-inspired bundt cakes, bonbons, chocolate bars, and gummies are a little…different. In fact, even if you just want to purchase a candle shaped like a pat of butter or a stack of cocktail napkins shaped like martini olives, you’ll need to show proof of age (21+) and can only pay via cash or debit card.

Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of lifestyle cannabis retail.

Since opening the store last summer, Pot+Pan’s executive chef, Tara Cannaday, has reinvented the role of Willy Wonka, leaning into the power of whimsy to speak to customers who might not otherwise feel welcome in a more traditional dispensary setting.

“We think that presentation matters, and that a space taken care of and filled with thoughtfully curated items and delicious treats provides a sense of comfort and nostalgia,” Cannaday says. “The aesthetic we’ve leaned into is on trend and in the companionship of other similar women-owned and operated businesses like Pop Up Grocer, and Big Night.”

Inclusivity by Design

As laws around cannabis retail evolve to make THC-infused products more accessible, dispensary retail, too, is entering a new era.

In many states, the sale of cannabis has moved (or is moving) from the streets to austere medical dispensaries with fluorescent lighting, as well as into storefronts vitrines full of brightly colored bongs and pipes, shelves of junk food snacks, and garish posters of cartoon characters lighting up a joint.

A savvy wave of founders are realizing that those stores might be just fine for the seasoned stoner who is likely satisfied by finally having a place to shop for weed legally, but these stores don’t speak to the potential shopper who is still wrapping their head around legalized, federally regulated cannabis, and (without making much fuss or seeming too uncool) trying to figure out whether there’s even a place for them in this nascent market.

Arana Hankin-Biggers, cofounder of The Travel Agency, which operates five licensed dispensaries in New York State, views her stores—all of which boast a sleek, luxury transit-inspired feel, complete with flapping Solari boards and marble interiors, and sell merch with slogans like “You’ll know when you’ve arrived….”— primarily as community spaces to educate and build a more inclusive consumer base that is interested in “purposefully and consciously” consuming cannabis.

It’s big-picture thinking that relies on a delicate balance between creating storefronts that feel cool, but not too cool, and hiring retail staff that seems knowledgeable, but isn’t helicopter-y. “We are one of the larger players in New York, and much of what we do is breaking down the stigma and being a trustworthy space for people who haven’t consumed before…we help guide customers, and in turn, they build relationships with our budtenders and trustworthy staff,” she explains.

From a look and feel perspective, Hankin-Biggers trusts Leong Leong, a New York City-based design agency that also created the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute’s 2024 Sleeping Beauties exhibition, as well as flagship stores for Everlane, Cuyana, and 3.1 Philip Lim. The Travel Agency is the agency’s (and so far only) dispensary project.

Beyond the “Retail 101” bet that more shoppers are generally inclined to walk into stores that feel more like a Bergdorf Goodman than a gas station, Hankin-Biggers (a Black founder in an overwhelmingly white, cis-male dominated industry) sees investing in The Travel Agency’s aesthetic and design as a way to elevate as many Black, latino, queer, and women-owned cannabis brands as possible. “We have an allocation set aside for BIPOC-owned brands, and we have a very rigorous vetting process,” she explains. “We also prioritize hiring people who have been harmed by the war on drugs, like formerly incarcerated individuals…90% of the team in our stores are Black and brown individuals.”

An unexpected level of attention to interior design also draws visitors from far and wide to Farnsworth Fine Cannabis, an (externally) unassuming white brick building tucked along a quieter stretch of Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

When dreaming up the store concept, founder Alexander Farnsworth and his partner, fashion designer Adam Lippes, drew inspiration from unlikely muses including traditional Italian apothecaries, which often used the Roman arch in Renaissance, as well as early-Baroque apothecaries like Santa Maria Novella.

Like Hankin-Biggers, Farnsworth sees the store as a place to educate a new kind of smoker, and offers 1:1 private consultation appointments. He’s also used the brand to drum up attention for marginalized players in the industry, and in 2022, launched The Queer Cannabis Club, a “consortium of LGBTQ+ owned cannabis businesses” that includes infused seltzer giant CANN, as well as cannabis culture journal Different Leaf.

“Ultimately, we decided to invert the Square Colosseum (Palazzo Della Civiltà Italiana) for our interior showroom,” Farnsworth says. “The arch acts as a frame for products on display and helps to focus the eye…we certainly attract a design-curious audience who, over the years, has become our community. Surprising unaware customers with an immersive design and brand concept is also quite fulfilling —the oohs, aahs, and wows are audible evidence of how design can change perception.”

Building a Fashion-to-cannabis Pipeline

As the traditional cannabis retail model shifts, so has the playbook for launching a cannabis brand. Sundae School started out as a playful, Korean-influenced streetwear brand known for selling out of colorful fleeces, jerseys, and denim; in 2020, founder Dae Lim launched an extension called Sundae Flowers to sell THC-infused gummies (inspired by two of his favorite snacks from growing up in Asia, mochi and boba) flavors like kimchi yuzu, white strawberry, and lychee dragonfruit. “When we launched Sundae Flowers online as a direct-to-consumer product 18 months ago, the majority of the consumers were Sundae School consumers,” Lim says. “But now, Sundae Flowers has grown bigger than Sundae School and she stands on her own and has her own universe!”

Similarly, in 2019, luxury handbag designer Edie Parker fused lifestyle and cannabis brand with the launch of Flower by Edie Parker. “Our core mission is to normalize social cannabis consumption,” says Niki Sawyer, director of brand marketing for Edie Parker. “Unlike traditional fashion, where exclusivity can be key, we believe in a distribution model that mirrors the alcohol industry…being available in a variety of retail environments fosters a robust customer funnel by meeting consumers where they are.”

Flower by Edie Parker has products in roughly 10% of dispensaries nationwide, a staggeringly high statistic for a single brand whose most recognizable products include “petal puffer” miniature vapes in flavors like Limoncello and Cherry Amaretto Sour as well as trompe l’oeil pipes in the shape of black and white cookies, banana splits, and Neopolitan ice cream.

Major retailers include Gotham, whose four New York locations are, according to founder Joanne Wilson, modeled not after traditional dispensaries but multi-brand retail and concept stores from around the world, like Paris’ (since-shuttered) Colette, and Printemps.

“One of the early ways we thought about Gotham was building the coolest concept retail store you’ve been in that happens to sell cannabis,” explains Rachel Berks, Gotham’s vice president of retail and merchandising. “We’ve been on this journey of finding interesting brands that aren’t represented by other retailers.” The store was the first American retailer to stock Oberflacht, a culty German candle line; Berks regularly attends Milan Design Week as well as Paris Fashion Week on Gotham’s behalf.

One of the biggest signs that the multi-concept approach to cannabis is paying off is the brand’s launch of Gotham Goods, a line of “elevated essentials” like candles, lotions, incense, and oil diffusers in six bespoke fragrances that include “On the Bowery” which hits topnotes of Tunisian rosemary, geraniol, and wild grass, and “Because of the Night”, featuring notes of olibanum, sun-tanned leather, and smoke.

Farnsworth calls it an “eat with your eyes first” approach to selling cannabis; Berks calls it good business. In reality, the answer is somewhere in between.

“The [cannabis] landscape is shifting, and we’ve made an impact with consumers and retailers,” Berks says. “It’s been interesting to see proof of that shift from going on buying trips oversees—there’s now a lot of recognition of who we are, especially in the last two years.”