A buyer’s guide to navigating the Vermont cannabis shopping experience

What is it like to purchase weed in Vermont’s new legal adult retail cannabis market? It’s a very different shopping experience than for other products you’re probably used to buying.

A variety of regulations dictate everything from how product is displayed and handled to who can enter the store.

As of the beginning of October when retail sales began, one dispensary in Burlington — Ceres Collaborative — had obtained its retail license and opened. On its heels, a half dozen locally owned shops across Chittenden County were busy with construction altering their shops to ensure compliance and to provide a welcoming customer experience that would define the way a new product is purchased in Vermont. Many of these retailers were putting the final touches on their stores and had expectations for opening before the end of the year.

What will be different about the marijuana buying experience?

Other types of shopping might allow a customer to browse and touch products on their own, but at cannabis shops, it’s necessary to interact with workers.

Tito Bern is in the process of converting one-third of the Burlington-based glass-blowing shop Bern Gallery into a retail cannabis dispensary and said that’s where a concierge comes in.

[Read more at Burlington Free Press]