The journal
Why There's a Coffee Bar in a Hemp Shop
I get this one at the counter almost as much as anything hemp-related: "Wait, you guys do coffee too?"
I get this one at the counter almost as much as anything hemp-related: "Wait, you guys do coffee too?" Sometimes it's the other way around — somebody wanders in for a latte and has no idea there's a wellness shop attached until they see the case. Either way, it's the most common question I get about this place, so let me actually answer it.
It wasn't a marketing decision. When I was figuring out what this shop was going to be, I kept coming back to the same problem: walking into a hemp shop for the first time is intimidating for a lot of people. You don't know the vocabulary, you don't know if you're going to get judged, you don't know if the person behind the counter is going to actually help you or just point at whatever's on sale. Coffee doesn't have any of that baggage. Everybody knows how to order a coffee. Nobody's nervous about it.
So the coffee bar isn't here to dress up the hemp side or make it feel more legitimate. It's here because it's the same idea I had for the whole shop: make this a place people are comfortable walking into, for whatever reason they came in for. Some people are here strictly for the nitro cold brew and the espresso and never buy a tincture in their life, and that's completely fine by me. Good coffee isn't an afterthought here, either — I've been passionate about making good specialty coffee for going on 15 years now. It got drilled into me early on in my foodservice career, long before this shop was ever an idea, and that standard doesn't change just because there's a wellness case a few feet away. Some people come in curious about hemp, grab a cold brew while they look around, and end up asking Ed or me a question they've been sitting on for months. The coffee lowers the bar to walk through the door. What happens after that is up to you.
We don't half-ass the coffee side to make room for the wellness side, either. Nitro cold brew, pour-over, a real espresso bar, mushroom coffee if you're into that — we treat the drink menu with the same standard we treat the product case: if it's not something I'd actually recommend, it's not on the menu. That's the same rule from day one, it just applies to both rooms.
The honest answer to "why coffee and hemp" is that I don't really see them as two different businesses sharing a building. I see it as one shop built around the same idea — come in, get a straight answer, don't get pressured into anything, leave with something you actually wanted. Some days that's a cortado. Some days it's a conversation about the endocannabinoid system. Most days it's both.
If you've only ever come in for one side of this place, I'd tell you to try the other. Worst case, you get a good cup of coffee.
Wellness products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.