New York’s Union Square Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store Partners With House of Cannabis on Delivery, Education
Guests at the House of Cannabis can use onsite kiosks to order cannabis products for delivery from Union Square Travel Agency in a unique collaboration designed to enhance the experience of visiting the attraction.
Guests at the House of Cannabis can use onsite kiosks to order cannabis products for delivery from Union Square Travel Agency. Photo courtesy of Union Square Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store
As of Oct. 6, THC NYC guests who want to consume cannabis products as part of their visit can order from USQTA through onsite kiosks that connect directly to USQTA’s delivery service. USQTA will then deliver the order within an hour, and the overall ordering experience mirrors the one consumers would have if they visited USQTA’s storefront, located at 835 Broadway in New York City.
Kiosks at THC NYC connect directly to USQTA's delivery service.
Tickets to THC NYC are not required for customers to place orders with USQTA. The kiosks are located on the ground floor, adjacent to the attraction’s gift shop.
“We’re trying to make cannabis accessible and convenient, making sure that people are able to navigate a licensed and legal entity that provides safe products in a convenient way,” USQTA Senior Director of Marketing Jesse Tolz tells Cannabis Business Times. “The partnership is really for us to marry our accessibility to cannabis and cannabis products that are grown, produced, tested and distributed in the state of New York with their whole experience. That is very much something I’ve never seen before, implemented in the way that they have implemented.”
For Matt Cohen, THC NYC’s chief marketing officer, the partnership made sense because many people stop into THC NYC thinking it’s a dispensary, but the business does not actually sell cannabis.
Instead, THC NYC describes itself as “the first-ever multi-sensory, immersive experience journeying guests through cannabis culture.” The interactive attraction showcases 10 experiences created by artists and filmmakers that combine cannabis’s connection to fashion, music, art, pop culture and agriculture. Located in the Soho neighborhood in New York City, THC NYC has five floors spanning more than 30,000 square feet, and also features a retail shop, café, and private work and lounge space.
“Being able to have a great partnership and the education tools from Union Square so people can order and learn about [cannabis], and then have another tool to garner educational information from not only ourselves but from our partners at Union Square Travel Agency just puts the icing on what we’re trying to do holistically as the House of Cannabis,” Cohen says.
An Immersive Experience
Cohen says THC NYC was meant to be an immersive experience in New York City and has since evolved slightly to cultivate connections with local artists and the broader community. He says it’s not only about cannabis, but also about expressing creativity.
Tolz says USQTA’s partnership with THC NYC has allowed USQTA to basically build out a satellite space inside the attraction that aligns with USQTA’s branding. THC NYC visitors can use two tablets to peruse USQTA’s full menu and place an order for delivery.
“It’s really like a multifaceted retail and café environment with some experiential pieces to it on the first floor, so they can hang out there while they wait for their delivery,” Tolz says. “Or, really, what we have enjoyed seeing is people go up and through the whole experience floor by floor of the House of Cannabis, and then their delivery is made to the … front desk.”
Visitors enter THC NYC near the retail store, café and lounge, and glass blowing takes place near the entrance on the weekends. Guests who wish to enter the full immersive experience can head into a hallway that takes them to a film screening room with a floor-to-ceiling LED wall. Visitors can lay down on plush couches to watch the film. The current screening is called “Higher Self,” which the artist created by feeding items from his life—photos, receipts, etc.—into an AI machine.
“The idea behind what he was trying to create was giving the illusion of people being stoned or high without actually consuming anything,” Cohen says. “You really feel stuff through your entire body. It’s really very interesting. We’ve had that in since opening. We’ve been talking to some other artists and the idea is to continuously update programming around each of the different rooms, to showcase new artists, to have opening-night events, to have community come in here and experience what we have to offer as a whole.”
When guests leave the screening room, they go up to the second floor and enter what THC NYC calls the park, an open-air space with a large wooden tree in the center.
“People can come hang out, kind of converse,” Cohen says, adding that many visitors use the area to paint, draw, and write poetry or music.
On the third floor is the Disorientation Room, where a short video highlights the history of cannabis and some of the cultural and political aspects of the plant. The immersive video sets the tone for the rest of the third floor, Cohen says, which also houses what THC NYC has named the Euphoria Room.
“It’s a giant turntable, and it’s like a silent disco,” he says of the Euphoria Room. “You put headphones on, and you lay on the turntable, and then there are lights on top that are coordinated to the mix that you’re listening to. … Something that we’ve been talking to other artists about [is] coming and bringing in their mix tapes or new album drops, and then having their record release parties there, or partnering with record labels to have their artists in rotation so the music stays fresh and relevant. Then we [can] keep the customers coming back on a regular basis.”
The third floor of THC NYC also houses The Forum, which Cohen describes as an educational room with stories from formerly incarcerated individuals who were convicted of cannabis-related crimes. The Forum also presents a historical timeline on the evolution of cannabis over the years.
Located on the fourth floor is a gallery space that currently features rock-and-roll-themed photographs from a California-based photographer who worked with Rolling Stone. As with some of the other art on display, Cohen says the goal is to rotate the photographs on a regular basis to showcase different artists across a variety of genres.
Finally, on the fifth floor of THC NYC is a lounge designed for private events.
A Focus on Education
Photo courtesy of Union Square Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store
USQTA's storefront in New York City
Overall, USQTA’s partnership with THC NYC aims to build on the education that the dispensary already provides to its customers.
“If I could distill [what] House of Cannabis [is], yes, [it’s] experiential all the way around, but very much focused on educating and guiding people through, what is cannabis?” Tolz says. “And for us, that is very much at the forefront of what we aim to achieve with our customer base and our community. … We have our team go through 40 hours of training before they start on the sales floor—that’s top to bottom, everybody in the dispensary, budtenders and beyond.”
A back room of USQTA’s dispensary has been converted to a flower lounge, an educational experience guiding customers through the cannabis plant’s composition. The lounge has elements that cover cannabinoids, terpenes, the endocannabinoid system and the entourage effect, with each topic put into simple terms for guests.
“[We] really try to get people to navigate less through the science and the compound structure, and more about thinking that terpenes and other components are directly attributable to an experience that you might want to achieve through cannabis,” Tolz says. “That, I think, is a beautiful synergy where both of our organizations, … in different ways, are really aiming to guide people into and through the world of cannabis.”
For Cohen, he would like THC NYC to be viewed as a safe environment for guests to unleash their creativity and cultivate culture, not only as it relates to cannabis, but also as it relates to the broader artistic community.
“I think, heading into 2024, [the] bigger picture is to have regularly scheduled programming around all different education [and] awareness, [having] communities getting together and continuing to let artists and individuals cultivate and thrive within the four walls of our experience,” he says.
