Dispensary Profile: OrganiCann

Inside OrganiCann’s warehouse-sized dispensary, there’s a water buffalo carrying a house, a man in wolf skin glowering from behind an ornate wooden pinhole and a woman with tentacles bursting from her mouth. These psychedelic visions float on the dispensary’s walls — each featured in an art piece that OrganiCann selected from its annual High Art contest — and contribute to a dispensary atmosphere unlike any other.

The exterior of OrganiCann is nothing special. The dispensary sits in an industrial neighborhood just a few blocks from the arterial Highway 101, which runs from the Bay Area to the Emerald Triangle, and is encased in corrugated steel.  But the inside of the dispensary is impressive, with high ceilings and a wide-open floor plan that allows OrganiCann to call itself one of the largest dispensaries in a state flooded with competition.

Thanks to the High Art contest, which OrganiCann has been hosting for four years with its parent organization Natural Cannabis Company and Juxtapoz Magazine, the dispensary can fill the space in the middle of its floor with art from around the world.

Beyond its building’s decoration, OrganiCann also takes a creative, considerate eye to the product on its shelves. So, next to the water buffalo print from artist Nick Linton and the tentacle painting from Daryll Peirce sits a wall of clones that are certified pesticide-free, a case of vaporizers with non-carcinogenic cutting agents and jars of flower from local, biodynamic farms.

“People are becoming more aware about what they put in their bodies, not just with food but also with cannabis,” says Noa Caminador, a marketing manager for OrganiCann. “Here we want to make sure that we set that bar high and make sure people are comfortable buying safe product from us and know where they’re getting from.”

For the first part of 2018, OrganiCann has only been open for medical retail sales, because its home county of Sonoma has been slow to implement its adult-use regulations.

Randy Barnes, a marketing manager for Natural Cannabis Company, which also owns a sister dispensary called MendoCann in Hopland, California, says that OrganiCann has been working with its farm producers to make sure they are transitioning into California’s new legal system.

“Our farmers are in the process of getting licensed, and we think that most of them will get permitted,” says Barnes. “But a lot of the mom and pop growers might not make it, and it’s disappointing because they often produce the best weed.”

But thanks to legalization, Barnes says the dispensary’s 2018 High Art contest has received more submissions than ever before. “We received so much incredible art that it was very hard to judge,” he says.

The winners of this year’s contest, announced on April 20, were displayed on OrganiCann’s walls, adding only more whimsy to one of the most art-filled dispensaries in the Golden State.

OrganiCann
301 East Todd Road
Santa Rosa, CA
(707) 588-8811
naturalcannabis.com

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Originally published in Issue 31 of Cannabis Now. LEARN MORE