With the legalization of weed in more states, it becomes increasingly more important to make some decisions about your dispensary upfront. You might have the best quality product around, but if your location is not right, you are sure to fail.
A good dispensary doesn’t merely sell a good product, it provides the customers with an experience, one to which they will return if the experience was worthwhile. But it all starts with the physical building and the location of the said building. If you are looking to open a new dispensary, here are a couple of factors to consider.
Convenient location
Knowing your target market goes hand in hand with the location of your dispensary. Casting a broad net is not necessarily the best strategy seeing that you will sacrifice on choice. Anyone who consumes cannabis is not necessarily your target, people differ and so do their expectations and needs. It’s your job to determine who your main clientele will be and choose a location that will suit that specific target audience.
The easiest way to determine who your clients will be and what they would enjoy in a dispensary is to become a client. You need to walk a mile or two in their shoes and determine what a typical week in their lives look like.
You need to establish where they primarily work, where they go on weekends and what they do for recreation (besides light up a jay). Gathering this information will help you determine a convenient spot where they will feel comfortable and relaxed. A spot that isn’t far from their daily lives.
The building exterior
In this young cannabis economy, aesthetics plays a major role in the customer experience. If you want to market your brand, your exterior is the best place to start. There needs to exist a proverbial golden thread throughout your brand and the experience you wish to provide your target audience.
Again, they will determine how you design your building. On the other hand, when people walk past your dispensary, will the exterior reflect the interior and the experience that they expect?
Who you are and who you wish to draw to your establishment begins with personality. Are you a laid-back character or sophisticated and clinical? If you wish to draw the latter type of people, you should rather stay away from the industrial look. It might not always be possible, but you should always try and align your building with your brand.
The building interior
This is where things become a bit more intimate, yet it is an area where many have treated it as an afterthought. Your building interior is like your living room, you want it to feel as comfortable as possible and pay attention to as much detail as possible. For this reason, it is important to include the professionals in the design, from architects to engineers and interior designers.
Everything from your furniture to your color scheme and décor makes up part of the experience of your customers. An aspect of design that is often neglected is the lighting. This critical aspect sets the mood of your establishment and it depends entirely on how you choose to market your brand.
Apart from the décor, everything in the interior should exude your brand. This means that your products should be displayed in such a way that your brand and logo is visible no matter where the customer turns. Careful planning of where and how to display your stock will increase brand visibility in your shop.
Access
Again, you could have the best shop in the world and the location could be great, but you should pay careful attention to the access your customers have to your shop. Your target market will mostly determine how this will look. Different generations have different definitions of what convenience means.
Millennials are fast-paced people who don’t have any qualms about parking seeing that they walk and cycle to get where they want to be. For them, easy quick access is important. Suburbanites, on the other hand, need their parking spaces. There are few things that can work a suburbanite up as a lack of parking space.
Driving around on errand runs are like rituals and if this ritual gets disturbed by a simple thing as a lack of parking, they won’t think twice about looking for a spot that can offer them that comfort.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the cannabis industry has plenty of potential. If you are looking to start a new business venture, especially in this infant field, slow and steady wins the race. The market is quickly being flooded by a number of businesses that ultimately sell the same product, but proper planning has the potential to let your brand stand out above the rest.
The most important factors to take into account are location, target market and the exterior and interior design of your establishment. The key to giving your brand a better chance at success is the synergy between these factors and how they should all complement one another. However, it all starts by setting up shop in the right area and how this cannot be done without knowing your target market.
So, take the time and determine who you want your regulars to be and start designing your establishment with them in mind. Doing so will ensure that you have a better chance of drawing the crowds and keeping them there.
