So you’ve built out your dispensary and you’ve got your dispensing area looking great, but now you glance with a degree of trepidation at the bare space that will soon – hopefully – house your waiting room and reception desk. What do you do next? What components make up a great waiting area in a dispensary? Is entertainment part of the experience? Art? Magazines? Tasteful bulletproof adornments? What makes for a great waiting space for consumers to chill before they make their purchase? @DispensaryOwners: is there an element you feel is critical to your dispensary waiting room? @memberdirectory: what could be added to a dispensary waiting room that could make it a more pleasant experience for consumers?
Great point, @nick! How do you help mitigate wait times?
I once went to a dispensary in the Phoenix area that looked remarkably similar to the interior of our local DMV. All the waiting faces wore the same unmistakably haggard expression that you frequently witness in government waiting rooms: “when can I get out of here?!”
I have been in a few that you kinda feel like you are getting processed for an overnight stay in jail. (Heard from a friend )
Vending machines and Video games would be my first “Go To” for the younger generation. But for the older folk like me, I say something inviting, soft on the eyes, and not too busy. Nobody wants to spend a lot of time in the waiting room but I understand there are times that it happens so I would say just make it as comfortable as possible without causing overhead.
The first things that come to mind for me are minimalist styling, comfortable chairs/couches, good music, WI-FI, water cooler and refreshments, brochures and magazines, a few coffee-table books, a small library of cannabis books, and if there is room, an arcade game.
Great topic. For me there’s subtle things like lighting, which is encompassed by mood. Most of the places that I"ve seen try to be sleek and modern looking, and then there’s some with bad lighting at it looks like I should be placing bets at the window. Some nice music is always good. What’s the mood? Do the people waiting with me seem crazy or nice. Are there conversations happening?
It took me a while to be ok with openly buying weed. It took me awhile to feel ok with that space. Ambiance goes a long way.
Really nice hand crafted art pieces and furniture, desks, counter, shelving, put together by a local artist [wood]. The waiting room would have a large window to allow natural light. A bathroom, an ATM, and the same environmental controls [on small scale] as used in the grow room [including a carbon filter in the bathroom]. A matching coffee table with interesting magazines and a TV mounted on the wall. Once you walk in you see the nice glass and wood display and a set of large windows allowing the patient to see the grow operation. A small area just for viewing off to the side for people that want to watch or ask questions [or for regulars to see their favorite plants, or ask about a new one, etc]. A fridge with water.
The Farm in Boulder has the best I’ve seen. Couches, head shop, SWAG (the good kind), good art, good people. Used to take buddies there who had been to Amsterdam and they were blown away.
One of my favorite visits was in the winter on a Saturday morning. It was full all the chairs were taken up and a couple of desk chairs pulled out. A younger kid sitting next to me maybe 20 years old starts a topic discussion and I enter in before you know it the whole room was talking amongst a group now it was awesome I didn’t even want to be called up because of all the people and knowledge I was learning from. I think that is what makes a good waiting room is the patients themselves who have created an atmosphere seperate from the materials in the room.
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