Business model based on community fuels Arizona dispensary
By Patrick Wagner
Company: Valley Healing Group
Location: Bullhead City, Arizona
Employees: 20
Operations: Dispensary, 25,000-square-foot indoor, hydroponic grow
“Instead of looking at them as competition, I like to look at them as teammates,” director of operations Alfred Abramian said.
With nearly 80,000 qualified patients in Arizona, Abramian believes there’s enough business for every dispensary. Abramian said Valley Healing Group actively lines its shelves with products from neighboring producers and retailers, who then reciprocate the business.
“We all do business together,” he said. “We all share product. People should have the option of figuring out what is the best medicine for them.”
Valley Healing Group stocks about 60 different strains on its shelves.
The owners of Valley Healing Group opened the dispensary just 20 miles east of the Mojave Desert in 2013. Since then, the non-profit has expanded to include a 25,000-square-foot indoor growing facility and an extraction lab. A commercial kitchen has been added into the fold, and will be ready for business as soon as the company ensures all the ingredients are organic and locally sourced.
“The food itself needs to be healthy to begin with,” Abramian said.
He said having a deeper connection with patients is paramount for a business in a city with less than 40,000 people.
“You can’t get the same personal relationships if you’re seeing hundreds of people,” he said. “The wholeness with the community allows us to interact with patients and actually listen to their problems and genuinely try to help them and guide them toward the right product.”
Wholeness with the community is something that Abramian said has been incorporated into the design of the store, not just in the aesthetics, but in the entirety of the consumer experience.
“This is home. Everybody who comes in here, we already know their name,” he said. “A lot of these people are on a heart-to-heart basis with the budtenders.”
He said it’s a completely different experience than a lot of other dispensaries offer.
“It’s cozy like it would be at your home.”