Q&A with Great Northern Cannabis’ Aaron Morse and Anita Bradbury

From their über-customer-focused store design to unique business challenges in The Last Frontier, these Anchorage, Alaska-dispensary shareholders tell all in this candid interview.


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Photo: © Nathaniel Wilder

Named one of Leafly’s “Hottest New Dispensaries That Opened in 2017,” Great Northern Cannabis boasts a modern, yet earthy vibe via its high ceilings decked with dark wooden beams; suspended, modern light fixtures; and custom wood and glass displays. Combined with its no-pressure customer service, the atmosphere attracts patrons to its central downtown Anchorage, Alaska, location across from the city’s Visitor Information Center—and keeps them coming back.

In this fast-paced interview, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing, Aaron Morse, and the dispensary’s manager, Anita Bradbury (both shareholders), share details behind their store’s inviting interior, chartering a plane to transport product and their expansion plans.

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Dispensary photos courtesy of Great Northern Cannabis

Brian MacIver: You have a great-looking store. How did you go about designing it?

Anita Bradbury: Great Northern’s initial shareholders had a vision for an upscale store—top of the line, with an inviting ambiance, where customers are immersed in an elite shopping experience.

The architect worked with us to create the high ceilings that draw the eye up and out and create a spacious feeling. You want to be able to breathe when you step into a store. You don’t want to feel like you have to run out or be pressured in any way. Many of our customers have told us they love our atmosphere, and we love that they can feel calm, unhurried and welcome.

We have four separate display cases—one for concentrates, the second and third offering sativa and indica, and the final case focusing on edibles and specialty items. Wall-mounted screens display a menu to guide customers who are interested in a quick overview and then below are the actual display cases where you can view the products.

Our budtenders are trained not to hover. If you have a question, the budtenders just kind of watch and see when a good time is to come in and help out.

MacIver: What goes into training the Great Northern Cannabis staff and the budtenders, especially?

Bradbury: A lot of the training is done on the job as well as during their personal time because they’re just so interested. Our staff ... want to be the best at what they’re doing.

As a recreational dispensary, we are careful to tailor the language not to be perceived as medical advice. We do a lot of targeted training with our budtenders on how to answer health-related questions without being on the medical advisory side of things—because we’re not doctors. Since no one in Alaska is licensed to sell medically, it is key to present information from a recreational perspective.

Part of our objective is to encourage education in our consumers and, to that end, we provide detailed test results for our products and make sure that our staff is aware of what those test results mean. When customers ask, budtenders can open the book and explain with confidence what the terpene profiles look like and how they relate to certain strains. So when a customer asks a question or shares a specific need, our budtenders can recommend an appropriate strain. But again, they have to state that it’s recreational—compliance is key, and we have made a significant investment to train our budtenders on state regulations, what the do’s and the don’ts are.

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Great Northern Cannabis uses an open concept to create a spacious, welcoming ambiance that helps guests relax and makes for a positive customer experience.

MacIver: According to a report by Alaska’s Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development, 86 percent of Alaskan communities are not connected by road. How does that affect how you source products?

Aaron Morse: Our transportation challenges are really hard. We’re in a unique situation because we frequently have to rely on air and marine transportation—rather than the road system—to move product. And federal involvement in those sectors complicates things. The TSA [Transportation Security Administration] has a policy where they allow cannabis to fly, and I think the airlines, as long as they don’t know about it, say it’s OK. But cannabis needs to be taken carry-on. [Editor’s note: For more information on this unique Alaskan allowance, read “High-Risk Flyers” in the June 2017 issue of Cannabis Business Times here: bit.ly/high-risk-flyers.]

As a result of the state’s rules on transporting cannabis products by air, if you’re trying to transport a liquid like our “Bare Spray” [a cannabis-based lubricant], that doesn’t work because the TSA has special rules around liquids. So, we actually had to charter an aircraft to bring Bare Spray up from Juneau. The round-trip flight to pick up the product and deliver it to Anchorage was almost $7,000.

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Custom wood displays and wood-paneled walls give the dispensary an earthy vibe.

MacIver: You are a vertically integrated business. What challenges come with that model?

“You want to be able to breathe when you step into a store. You don’t want to feel like you have to run out. ...” Anita Bradbury, dispensary manager, Great Northern Cannabis

Morse: Our costs to produce our own flower, because we’re vertically integrated, are lower than our costs to acquire third-party flower. We’ve been in this odd juxtaposition, which has somewhat chaffed our in-house growers—because we’re arguably producing some of the finest cannabis in the state, but sometimes we’re also selling it at lower prices than third-party cannabis. … Sometimes our growers get frustrated and are feeling like, “Wait a minute. Our product’s better, but cheaper?!”

MacIver: Looking forward, what are some things you’re excited about for your business?

Bradbury: I’m excited about seeing a full year of data. The tourist season will be here soon, and we’ll have numbers that include not only our local market, but also the visitors from ‘Outside.’ That should give us some good data to gauge our strategy.

Morse: We are expanding to a second retail presence. We’re hopeful that can be open this summer, and we’re considering other expansions, too, possibly into manufacturing or additional cultivation space. We want to be a major player in the state’s industry. That’s the goal. Has been from the beginning.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length, style and clarity.

Brian MacIver is the associate editor of Cannabis Dispensary.

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