Harvest

Furnished with leather couches, TVs and an ample Wi-Fi signal, the lounge provides guests with a curated menu of rotating cannabis products from the dispensary. It gives dispensary visitors a glimpse of what a post-prohibition U.S. could look like.

“It’s like a social club, where members pay dues much like they would at any other social or athletic club,” Higgins says.

Unlike other café-style dispensaries in San Francisco, Higgins wants to provide more than just a safe space for cannabis consumption; he wants to emphasize the anonymity that a members-only atmosphere provides. Higgins says the lounge also hosts a variety of social, entertainment and educational events.

“We have meet-your-producer evenings, where some of our producers will come in and we’ll have tastings,” he says. “We look at it in a similar path to wine tasting and education.”

Higgins sees Harvest as “the future of cannabis retail.”

An inside look at the interior of the Harvest lounge.

Just like with the design of the lounge, Higgins sought to make the Harvest dispensary a “consumer-driven” experience.

“Purchasing cannabis is a sensory purchase,” he says. “You want to smell it, look at it closely — and in our retail format, our customers can have that experience.”

Harvest places its products in the open so shoppers can consider the various offerings in the same way they would shop for groceries.

“They can pick up several varietals and seek assistance where and when they need assistance,” Higgins says. “If they are familiar with the products in our store, they can certainly pick up the products and move right to a checkout counter.”

In addition to the flagship location on Geary Boulevard, Harvest was recently approved to open a second location in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, which Higgins plans to model after the original.