Cannabis Edibles and Drink Review had the pleasure of sitting down with Sara Stewart, founder of The Highspitality Group, the first restaurant group in the cannabis industry.
CEDR: Sara, what’s your mission for The Highspitality Group?
Sara: My mission for Highspitality is to create a more structured and sustainable approach to cannabis consumption lounges that infuses gracious hospitality standards into the cannabis industry.
CEDR: Can you please share a bit about your background and how you got into the cannabis space?
Sara: I have actually been in hospitality for the past 15 years. I’ve been in L.A. for six of those, and I have been able to work at some of the most well-known restaurant establishments in the country including SBE. And then I was at TAO LA for three years. I actually helped open that venue.
I was always very open about my cannabis use. And I’m actually so glad that I was, because from TAO I was introduced with a new opportunity to help open the first cannabis consumption lounge in West Hollywood, which was called Lowell Cafe. It was unlike anything I could have ever imagined and really taught me a lot about the nature of the consumption lounge industry and the pitfalls. Obviously, first to market means first to mistake.
They have since changed the name to OG Cannabis Cafe. I saw about eight hundred people a day coming through TAO on its busiest days. Crazy enough at the Cannabis Cafe we saw over a thousand people a day. So, it really opened my eyes to the demand for a cannabis consumption lounge that has food and beverage programs alongside. There are a lot of consumption lounges out there that are just kind of glorified smoking lounges, but this was the first food and beverage space cannabis consumption lounge in the U.S.
CEDR: When you say food and beverage-based cannabis consumption, were the food and the beverage THC infused in some fashion or was it purely that you could eat a great meal and smoke something at the same time?
Sara: Exactly. Nothing was infused because you would have to have everything prepackaged or have a lab tester on site. So instead, we just did a standard food and beverage operation with an emphasis on coffees, teas, sodas and juices, but you could also purchase cannabis beverages, alongside everyday food and beverage.
CEDR: What were some of the things that you learned through the school of hard knocks?
Sara: Well, I saw about eight to ten people pass out per week, which was alarming. I actually learned that this industry in particular demands a more proactive approach instead of a more reactive approach that we take with alcohol, which usually comes with cutting somebody off if they appear to have had too much to drink. Whereas in this setting, it was about asking a lot of questions in advance, from “where do you live?” to, “how often do you consume cannabis?” to, “are you on any medications that we should be aware of?”
CEDR: And that’s done by the server?
Sara: Yes. I have really focused on bringing hospitality driven individuals, glorified sales individuals to the cannabis industry, because I firmly believe that any upscale dining server that is also a cannabis consumer can easily learn a cannabis menu and understand the products. I do feel like in terms of either hiring dispensary people to work in a restaurant or restaurant people to work going into a dispensary, the latter has made a lot more sense because it’s really difficult to teach someone how hospitality driven operations are run.
CEDR: Typically, in a restaurant, you need to turn tables in order to make your numbers. How does one do that in a consumption lounge?
Sara: We actually established a 90-minute table limit per person or per group, but we did a two-hour limit for large parties. As a manager on the floor. I was personally responsible for going around and saying, “Hey, guys, I’m so glad that you were able to come in tonight. Unfortunately, we have promised this table to another reservation. We absolutely don’t want you to leave, so please go and join us at the bar if you’d like to hang out and smoke or grab another drink.”
So, trying to encourage them to stay within the establishment and moving forward, I am working on a software program right now that will allow for the cannabis side of this business to operate with a table map and a reservation platform, much like any other restaurant you would see in the country. So instead of partnering with a food PLM, it will actually be partnering with a cannabis PLM for measurement compliant purposes. This will enable us to see people’s purchasing behavior as well. If someone passes out from a 30% THC joint, I want to jump on a metric and be able to pull up exactly what that product was and correlate that with any pass-outs moving forward, just based on what we’re seeing in the consumption lounge.
It’s really important to mention that dispensary budtenders all over the country are very familiar with selling cannabis to people. But this was one of the first times we’ve ever seen them actually physically smoking in front of us. So, it’s more so than just selling the cannabis these days, it’s actually about the entire experience and watching the effects from the cannabis that someone’s just sold you in-person.
CEDR: What are you working on at the moment?
Sara: It’s a bit premature, but I have partnered with a license holder on Sunset Boulevard that’s going to be bringing a really fine dining, upscale approach to a cannabis consumption lounge. That’s kind of the path that we’re taking moving forward. We’re not really going to college towns. We’re not building basement speakeasies.
We are building high end trendy establishments that can exist in every large market in the U.S; a place that would align very nicely alongside established bars and restaurants. As a consultant, I’m all about community over competition. If a couple people come to market and do this the wrong way, with the industry being in infancy, it is going to disrupt and potentially harm the market. So, I’m really trying to give as much information as I can to people (who reach out to Highspitality) to help the industry grow in a positive direction that we can all benefit from.
CEDR: Thank you Sara for the fantastic insights!
