When Bryce Berryessa thinks about cannabis, he also thinks about how the industry can positively affect a community.
So when he co-founded Treehouse Cannabis in January 2018 in Santa Cruz, California, a city where he’s operated in the medical space for more than a decade, his goal was to find ways for the business to partner with the surrounding community. For Berryessa, that meant making Treehouse the first — and so far, only — certified cannabis business in Santa Cruz as part of the California Green Business Network, as well as supporting local artists by letting them display their work in his shop.
“My vision was to do something that had never been done before,” he says. “We want to be community-driven and eliminate boundaries between the store and the people.”
As a way to invite the community in, Berryessa laid out the dispensary using an open design, with wood floors, products on kiosks and tree branches decorating the shop.
“We’re trying to create more of a visitor experience than it just being a pot shop,” Berryessa says. “We also want to participate in local events and to partner with nonprofits to help the Santa Cruz community.”
The company is also dedicated to diverse hiring practices, equal pay and ethical treatment of workers.
Berryessa got his degree in microbiology and farm management in his home state at the University of Utah in 2005, and originally got into the industry on the agricultural side. He and a partner, David Burke, also run an edibles company called La Vida Verde, which is focused on product safety, organic ingredients, no refined sugars and no preservatives.