Amid a swathe of illicit smoke shops, the Hell’s Kitchen Cannabis Collective has opened on W40th Street to bring a direct (and legal) link between cannabis growers and consumers in the neighborhood.
New York State’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) has approved Hell’s Kitchen Cannabis Collective as a Cannabis Growers Showcase. The farmers market at 356 W40th Street, between 8/9th Avenues, presents nine local New York State farmers alongside three processors. The shop sells raw products as well as a wide variety of packaged goods including vapes, edibles, pre-rolls, gummies and infused beverages — with bud tenders on hand to break down all the products and describe the farms.
“Everyone who’s walked in, they’ve gotten what I would say is the most boutique and personalized cannabis retail experience available in the city,” said Patrick Conlin, General Manager at Hell’s Kitchen Cannabis Collective. “The kind of products we’re selling encompass the entire range of cannabis products on the market — we have everything. If you’re new to cannabis, I always say start smaller than you think. You can always have more.”
The legal cannabis business in New York is complicated, with shops few and far between due to a slow licensing process, and cannabis farmers are very limited in who they can sell to. The Hell’s Kitchen Cannabis Collective is a pop-up retail enterprise, organized by Greenleaf Cannabis in collaboration with Legacy Dispensers and The Dope Connection.
“The farmers are incredibly financially distressed,” said Patrick. “So our model is geared more toward assisting them. We want to see them succeed, grow and benefit from this.”
The farms showcasing and selling produce at Hell’s Kitchen Cannabis Collective are Ravens View Genetics, Animal House, MB Farm Cannabis, Revert Cannabis, Flower House, Slack Hollow Organics, Claudine Farms, and Ithaca Organics Cannabis.
Due to the regulations and the slow licensing process, unlicensed cannabis shops are much more common across the city and have raised safety concerns due to their unregulated products. In August, New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal joined the fight against unauthorized cannabis shops — and called for a “hands-on approach” involving the Hell’s Kitchen community and for the OCM “to act quickly and aggressively to shut down these unlicensed stores.”
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“On this block alone, there are about six unlicensed stores, and they are not subject to any of the restrictions that we are forced to follow,” said Patrick.
“I want everyone to understand that it’s really unsafe. They are people exploiting New Yorkers and extracting wealth from New Yorkers and compromising their health, because the worst products from other states are coming into New York,” said Patrick. “It’s stuff that either failed testing or was so poorly grown that no one bought it and it sat around for years. If you’re proud to be a New Yorker, I would not be proud of shopping at one of those.”
He added: “It’s farm to table. It’s what I’m all about. We put New York wines on the menu 15 years ago and people laughed at us. Now New York’s nationally renowned for having specific wine regions and they’re becoming a player in the wine industry. I think that cannabis has every chance [to do the same] — the potential is there. It’s just about how the market develops and how the advocacy plays out with it.”
Hell’s Kitchen Cannabis Collective is open from 9am to 9pm every day — except for Wednesdays, September 27, October 11 & 25, November 8 & 22 and December 6 & 20, due to regulations that prevent the market from being open for more than 14 consecutive days. Its first Farmers’ Day is this Sunday, October 1, from 1pm-6pm, offering the chance to meet the farmers, put faces to the brand names, and gain insight into legal cannabis in NY.
None of them are welcomed. Clean NYC and make it a no drug zone.
Hi Adam, we’d love to change your mind. Come see us on 40st and we’ll answer any questions you have! All we want to do is help farmers put food on their table. -HKCC
welcome to the neighborhood! I’ll be visiting soon.
Wait, are we talking about tobacco farmers? I lost the script.
ha ha … too late. It’s legal. People are going to buy it whether is legal or not.
Are you suggesting we close all cafés and bars?
Or is it possible that your irritation with weed is a bit more specific than it being a drug?
Wonderful to see legitimate, legal cannabis retail that delivers quality, safe and ethical products for NYC’ers. Nice coverage W42ST!
Per your OCM conditional license, which was not approved by CB4 or the Hell’s Kitchen Block Associations, your market is licensed to sell cannabis only, not edibles, drinks, etc.
“the only products sold at the CGS will be cannabis flower (i.e., not gummies, vapes, etc.), and each CGS must follow a number of guidelines generally applicable to dispensaries. (See ocm-cgs_summaryoverview.pdf (ny.gov)).” – Cannabis Working Group, CB4
Your market is undermining the efforts of CB4, HK Block Associations, and our elected officials to bring legal dispensaries into our community, at our discretion and with our approval, and to close illegal dispensaries.
For all the good you claim to be doing, bypassing standard, established procedures and protocols for business license applications in our community sends a clear message to the community.
Julia Campanelli
President
Hell’s Kitchen Block Association
Since you claim to be interested in representing the community, I would personally be curious, as a resident of the neighborhood myself, to know how many members of the community you’ve consulted and what proportion of them take some kind of issue with the sale of edibles?
For all the good you claim to be doing, one might think that you’re more interested in putting up pointless red tape for its own sake rather than actually doing anything that members of this community actually want. I’d much rather see CB4 extend an offer of collaboration to sort out any specific licensing matters rather than moralizing about a purported offensive message to the community that it clearly is extremely out of touch with and not remotely representative of. I’d really urge you to consider just how truly representative of the community the Hell’s Kitchen Block Association really is, and to what extent it might oversample the kind of people that revel in being obstructionists as a way to feel a little bite of power. While I respect that regulations are important, it’s hard to interpret your motivation as being anything remotely related to truly voicing the will of the people who live here, and not just those who are bored enough and have enough free time to sit on neighborhood committee.
Cordially,
Gabriel
A random HK resident that occasionally enjoys some weed, like many people I know.
Hi Julia,
Thank you for your feedback. We are actually allowed to have one processor per every 3 farms at our CGS, who are allowed to bring “value added products” sush as gummies, vapes, infused beverages, tinctures, topicals, extracts such as resin and rosin, and hash infused joints. We are a collective of distressed farmers some of whom have needed to use processors to create products that will sell better than their flower alone.
We are an open book and we seek to be a resource for anyone curious about cannabis to get questions answered in a safe, clean, and welcoming environment. We are a much safer alternative to the unlicensed shops proliferating throughout the neighborhood, which sell untested or compromised product from other oversupplied states to minors.
We appreciate the role of CB4 in the community and we have even spoken to Jesse Greenwald about attending a Board meeting soon to introduce ourselves and answer questions any of you may have. I applaud Jesse’s work safeguarding the community of this area, and really appreciated his visit to the venue. You are invited to come by any time and ask questions. I’m on-site most times except evenings mon-wed. I look forward to meeting you sometime and hopefully connecting over our mutual desire to keep the community safe and informed. Hope you have a great day.
Best,
Patrick
GM – HKCC
I think this a great step forward in our community and will hopefully divert business AWAY from the illegal shops. The fact that HKCC even has a conditional license from OCM is more than can be said for the 40+ illegal stores in the neighborhood. We should welcome those who are committed to doing the right thing.
To my knowledge, there is no official framework that says these businesses must get approval from the community board and block associations. While that may have been something discussed by the CB4 Cannabis Working Group, CB4 has no power to create laws or regulations.
Well said.
This is so thrilling!! Grateful that the accessibility of cannabis is expanding for those of us that need it medicinally but may not have access through medical channels ✨
Yes! Welcome to the neighborhood and legally getting a license with legitimate merchandise. Julia Campanelli needs to get her head out of her a$$ and worry about more pressing serious matters.
Shut them all down. They attract homeless, undesirables, addicts, and wannabe addicts such as rich, mindless hipsters yupheads living throughout the area.
No good has yet to be seen with that law passed and an over saturation of said shops everywhere like Starbucks continually brings down the area = city.
Can we instead shut down the kind of people like you who actively refer to other human beings as “undesirables”?
I certainly hope you’ve never been to a bar or a café. I’d hate to see you lose moral consistency.