HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST WEED DISPENSARY

In the ever-evolving cannabis industry, more and more states are legalizing both medical and adult-use cannabis all over the country by the year.

In fact, this year, in 2022, there are five more states looking at full-recreational use: Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. With that, you’ll have a lot more weed dispensaries and a lot more shoppers.

If you’re searching for cannabis products at dispensaries, the quality of the experience can be a Russian roulette of weed shopping.

Sometimes you get a budtender that knows their products, then other times you get one that just knows how to complete a sale. The former is always better than the latter, and that’s why you need to know how to find the best weed dispensaries and brands for your needs.

The world of cannabis brands and weed dispensaries

First things first, every cannabis company is a cannabis brand by literal definition. Whether a cultivator, manufacturer, or dispensary, if you are a legally licensed cannabis company, you have a brand.

That said, when people say “cannabis brands”, they are usually talking about brands that grow, produce, and/or manufacture cannabis products to be sold in dispensaries, i.e cannabis stores. Those products include the best strains of weed, hash, weed pens, vape oil, cannabis edibles, and the whole gamut of consumables.

When people talk about dispensaries, obviously, they mean weed stores that you can walk into to buy products from weed brands. Dispensaries have buyers that coordinate the menus and select which brands will appear on shelves.

Products can be sold in-store, but also online, through online marketplaces like Weedmaps, Leafly, Eaze, etc.

Some cannabis brands, STIIIZY for example, also have dispensaries. These are vertically integrated companies that control the whole process from seed to sale.

Brands that also own retail dispensaries may have many stores, depending on the number of retail licenses they are able to secure.

The majority of cannabis brands sell their products through dispensaries they do not own. You need a lot of capital and support to be able to tackle all angles of the cannabis industry at once.

Dispensaries carry a wide array of brands, and the selection is always changing, based on consumer preference and the state of the market. Some brands exist in many different states, after doing deals with growers in those respective states.

How to choose the best cannabis brands

Choosing the best cannabis brands ties into choosing the best cannabis dispensaries too. The most important aspect of it all is trust. You want to trust brands for consistency and morality.

The best way to go about this is to only purchase cannabis products from licensed cannabis brands. Don’t buy products on the street. There are many counterfeit products that reach the illicit cannabis market and provide consumers with harmful experiences.

With brands, you want to be able to trust consistent quality. Quality means products that are safe for human consumption and always achieve a high level of effectiveness. Additionally, brands that can provide a wide range of variety in products are often considered the best.

Every type of cannabis product you buy and consume, whether they're cannabis flower or cannabis concentrates, goes through a quality control process. That means your flower, live rosin dabs, and live rosin gummies were all passed through a set of eyes, mouths, and lungs to reach the jars and bags in front of you.

The level of effectiveness revolves around how efficiently a product gets you high. There is nothing worse than loving a product once, buying it again, and the second time doesn’t hit with the same flavor and potency you were looking for. This all comes down to a brand’s standards of cultivation and if they’re really performing quality control.

Variety in products is important when choosing a favorite cannabis brand. Even if they just do a single category really well, like flower, you want the brand to provide you with many different options in strains. If they do weed gummies really well, you want options for many different flavors.

What to know when choosing the best weed dispensary

With dispensaries, you have to be able to trust them to continuously have the products you want. You also want to trust them to have the standards of quality you want.

Specific to dispensaries, you also want to be able to trust the budtenders. Budtenders are often the first, sometimes the only, place consumers get information. Budtenders need to be knowledgeable, consume the plant, and also be able to see and understand trends before they even take place. Many consider budtenders the truest form of a cannabis influencer.

Just like you want brands to have a variety of products, you want dispensaries to be able to cover your many cannabis needs too.

Whether you like cannabis flower to smoke with your bongs and pipes, cannabis concentrates to dab with your rig or vape pens, or a simple tincture to infuse your own products, the best dispensaries should have you covered.

The future of cannabis dispensaries

The future of cannabis dispensaries is still to be determined by the forever-changing legal landscape of cannabis. Some states, like California and Nevada, have passed legalization allowing cannabis consumption lounges attached to dispensaries. One thing is for sure, more states will legalize cannabis, more dispensaries will open there, and more brands will sell weed.

At STIIIZY, we only use premium flower for all of our cannabis products including our proprietary pods and battery system.