This article originally appeared in the June 2018 issue of Cannabis Dispensary. To subscribe, click here.
At High Grade Organics, a medical/recreational dispensary in Bend, Ore., owner Nick Harsel is almost—almost—as concerned with offering an aesthetically pleasing environment for customers as he is with providing them the responsibly sourced cannabis they seek. Case-in-point: The artist-turned-dispensary-CEO built the retail location’s wood shelves and displays himself; he even laid the store’s concrete floors.
With jewelers for parents, Harsel admits he’s always been intrigued by art. He went to the University of Oregon to study it, then “moved to new mediums like wood and a little metal stuff,” he tells Cannabis Dispensary. So when High Grade Organics had the chance to move from a previous building to its current location on Davis Avenue, Harsel saw a chance to create the dispensary of his dreams—quite literally. “It was really fun to have something in my head, put what I saw down on paper, and build it out for the shop,” Harsel describes.
His sketches included horizontal strips of light- and dark-stained wood walls, sunset- yellow walls, countertops supported by wooden vertical beams, gray concrete floors, and some skylights bathing High Grade Organics in natural light—with the help of a few carefully placed LEDs.
That was Harsel’s vision for the dispensary, and it was one he built almost entirely by hand.
“It’s been a very freeing experience,” Harsel explains. After all, design can be “something you pay a lot of money for—and it may not be exactly what you want,” he says. By creating the dispensary’s design, he adds, “it's been a nicer experience—on my time line, and the way I want.”
The walls and cabinets were built from discarded pallet wood, obtained for the low cost of $0. “A few breweries give them away for free,” Harsel says, “so we picked them up, broke them down, … sanded and stained them, and fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle.”
That doesn’t mean designing the dispensary wasn’t without its challenges. For example, Oregon law requires that some cannabis products, such as flower, be kept out of the reach of customers. So, Harsel handcrafted glass display cases that roll out like a drawer, so customers can see products, but only a budtender can unlock and pull them out.
To read the full article in Cannabis Dispensary's June 2018 issue, click here.
Top photo by Bradley Lanphear
