About Lava Leaf Dispensary
Discussion With Tony Martinez
Lava Leaf creates cannabis sold all over the state that has been created from long time farmers native to Farmington, New Mexico. Not all cannabis is created equal. There are differences in the quality of the soil, the testing, and ensuring chemicals are not found in the cannabis consumed by customers. Lava Leaf takes pride in ensuring the highest level of quality assurance when many products are sold unchecked for many harmful chemicals.
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What is it that sets your dispensary apart in Farmington?
People traveling to or through Farmington would be drawn to and likely return to Lava Leaf as a destination dispensary because the environment is second to none. We created an environment that people can heal and learn in. A space that people feel uplifted upon entering whether they buy something or not. One that is stocked with all the best and trending products that people want to enjoy. Our customer’s report that we have done a really good job of pulling that off. We built a very comfortable high end retail space accented and energized by crystals, custom furniture, good educational material, and a simplistic product forward aesthetic.
Our med tenders find out what our customers needs and wants are by asking questions to ascertain their preferences, needs, and knowledge base. Based on that information we do a good job of matching them to what we feel like will best help them accomplish their goals. When people come in already knowing exactly what they want and don’t need education they are still going to encounter a friendly and compassionate med tender that cares about them and lets them know that we value them.
Lava Leaf has a current 20% OFF coupon of First Crop Edibles. First Crop is an example of a company that is unique in their formulation utilizing herbs and botanicals to optimize their effect for each product individually formulated for sleep, calm, relief and happiness. For those who live in Santa Fe or Albuquerque, both First Crop and Lava Leaf can be found at several stores.
We will go above and beyond just selling them some herb or edibles. We will tell them what local restaurants, activities, or locations they should check out based on the information they share. Branding ourselves as a destination dispensary is helped by the fact that we are neighbors with an amazing coffee shop on one side, a good tap room on the other, and surrounded by great food!
Most of the flower on our shelves is grown by our collective or my brother and father but we do bring in flower from other producers to make sure we have enough variety. When I’m talking to other producers and asking them for their offering, I ask that they only sell us the loudest smelling and best tasting genetics they have because all data aside the nose knows best.
At Lava Leaf we get super stoked on cannabis that announces itself and stinks up the room. Chances are if the herb smells good to you it’s probably going to taste good to you and is more likely to have an effect that resonates with you.
Why, is it good to have a trustworthy dispensary? Maybe share some of the things to look out for. So some of the threats or some of the things people may not know.
I’d say part of the reason why trustworthiness and integrity is such a priority for our company is simply because we’re here for the long haul. At Lava Leaf we value the healing properties of cannabis but all that goodness goes out the window when pesticides or other contaminants are introduced into the equation. We take patient health seriously and their trust is sacred to me and my family. We’ve seen other companies that have to keep spinning off other brands because they’ve burned the previous one out and eventually they burn their own good names out which we would never want to do. The fear of being “those guys” that are willing to sacrifice patient health for profit is a healthy fear.
An example of how this is applied can be seen in the labs we chose to work with. We use the labs analytical data to make decisions on how we’re going to run and possibly change our grow. It doesn’t do us any good to number shop for potency or to pass QA testing if the flower isn’t safe. We need reliable actionable data to continue improving and to protect consumers. Also when we have a 30%er we want it to really hit like a 30%er so the customer knows what a 30%er feels like, what a 20% feels like and so on…
In todays market that type of approach. Isn’t as common as it should be. What I see is people will abandon the labs that have a high level of integrity because they say, Oh, their wait times are too long to get a samples back or their their potencies were low and we hear those types of things all the time.
In my head and sometimes out loud. I am like maybe your flower just isn’t that potent? And you know, maybe they’re moving slow because they’re actually following every rule and reg, and they’re busy because other people have found that they have the highest level of integrity and are among the most trusted labs. In the NM market we do see a lot of numbers shopping.
We get to see a lot of flower because we get samples of from producers that want us to buy their flower and its clear that this should not pass. Sometimes I can visibly see mold and have to wonder how did this ever pass Quality Assurance. That’s where we definitely don’t play those games. We just want to be able to have data that we can rely on and know whether we’re really doing our job right or not. I’d say that those 2 are probably the greatest factors that I could easily highlight.
A third thing that I can share is that we have done a very good job of curating products that were derived from New Mexico true flower or biomass meaning that in the beginning of the adult use program. Unlike most States, we never had a shortage of cannabis or manufactured products. All of the studies, the analysts, and consultants including both major universities here in the NM agreed that we were gonna be in a shortage until after this past summer.
when, in fact, we actually started to see price pressure, which indicates that we are nearing saturation before we even pulled down our second greenhouse flip and we obtained the very first license issued under the cannabis regulation act. This was 2 years ago, when the program was in its infancy.
This demonstrates that a lot of outside flower moved into the state, which is now no secret. It’s common knowledge around here. And the States taking great effort to shut down a lot of these bad actors.
In the early days these bad actors were really welcomed, promoted, and given a lot of money for their illicit products that were then sold to consumers. In our mind, a lot of those products just weren’t safe.
Because of the safety concerns, we’ve had to pass up on carrying several brands that would have been very lucrative for us to carry. But we knew that the oils that those products were infused with did not originate here because the intrastate supply chain could not have supported it.
This definitely hurt us in the initial launch. But that’s the way we operate. We are willing to take financial losses to maintain and protect our integrity.