A first for this Fresno neighborhood, Sweet Flower cannabis serves Fig Garden, Tower
Inside Look is a Fresno Bee series where we take readers behind the scenes at restaurants, new businesses, local landmarks and news stories.
Tim Dodd saw an opportunity the first time he stepped into a dispensary.
He’d been injured in a bicycle accident and was looking for a way to avoid opioids for the pain. He went to cannabis store where he was living in Los Angeles and “it was a horrible experience.”
Dodd remembers thinking: “If this is the standard of retail, it sucks.”
And that was the catalyst for Sweet Flower, the dispensary chain that Dodd opened in Los Angeles in 2018.
Since then he’s opened nine locations across the state, mostly in southern California cities like Culver City and Pasadena, but also in Chico, and now Fresno.
The new Sweet Flower store in Fresno officially opens 8 a.m. Saturday in a storefront in a strip mall at Shields and Maroa avenues. It’s next to El Premio Mayor taqueria and A-1 Liquors.
The grand-opening party will include door-busters and discount deals, plus grab bags, free tacos and a DJ.
The dispensary sells the full range of cannabis product, from flower and pre-rolls, to extracts and edibles.
Sweet Flowers has its own product line, but also carries brand exclusives like A Golden State, which operates out of Mount Shasta.
The neighborhood pot shot
Sweet Flower sits within a pocket of residential neighborhoods near Fresno City College on the border of both the Tower District and Fig Garden.
It’s also blocks away from the busy Blackstone Corridor and the first dispensary to open in central Fresno’s council District 7.
“We’re kind of at the intersection of three cool districts,” Dodd said.
Originally, Dodd grew up in a farming town in New Zealand, a place that makes Fresno look like Manhattan, he says. He lives in southern California now, but has logged thousands of miles and traveled back and forth to Fresno nearly 50 times to try to get a true sense of the city.
“Cannabis is about community,” he said.
If a dispensary isn’t an authentic part of the community, “people can feel that.”
So, Sweet Flower went 100% local with its hiring.
That’s everything from its management and staff to the building contractor, the artists who painted murals inside the shop and the content producers it partners with on social media.
Of its staff, 65% fall under social-plan hiring, which includes veterans and those formerly incarcerated, Dodd said. The company also signed memorandum of understanding with several community groups such as the Poverello House, Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce and Hmong Business Incubator.
“We’re really proud of the work we’ve done in Fresno.”
Fresno could soon have a dozen dispensaries
Sweet Flower is the second dispensary to open in Fresno this month and becomes one of nine retail cannabis locations across the city.
Others includes: Dr. Greenthumbs (on Wishon Avenue in the Tower District); Higher Level, Cookies and Embarc (all on Blackstone Avenue between Ashlan and Shaw); The Station (on Shaw Avenue across from Fashion Fair Mall); The Artist Tree (at Palm and Nee avenues) and two Culture Cannabis Club locations (on Bullard at Highway 41 and at Maple and Jensen avenues)
Several other dispensaries will open soon.
Haven, which operates a dispensary in Porterville, should open within the month inside the old Fui Hai Chinese restaurant at Belmont and Blackstone avenues.
Bayan Tree Fresno had its own pre-launch party on Saturday, according to its social media. The dispensary is slated to open on Sierra Avenue just off Blackstone.
A second Embarc location is slated for its grand-opening May 4 at Shaw and West Avenues. A soft-opening is planned for May 1, according to Eventbrite.
