Bainbridge’s first retail cannabis shop to open Wednesday

Published 7:42 pm Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Smile after smile came through the front door Saturday night.

And that was before the first small plastic bag of legal cannabis was passed over the counter at Paper & Leaf, Bainbridge Island’s new retail recreational marijuana store.

Located in an industrial park on Day Road, the shop hosted a “soft opening” Saturday for a group of nearly 50 friends, islanders and others.

Steven Kessler and Brendan Hill, the founders of Bainbridge’s first and only licensed recreational cannabis shop, recalled the reaction of one of the store’s employees after the public got its first peek inside the business this weekend.

The store — the only retail outlet for recreational cannabis in the area between Bremerton and Discovery Bay — will have a grand opening Wednesday, June 24. On Tuesday, workers were still wrapping up efforts to remodel the 1,800-square-foot space.

But on Saturday, while Disneyland may be the happiest place on earth, the new store at 8040 Day Road might have been the happiest place on Bainbridge.

It was something that wasn’t lost on the store’s seven employees, including the one who greeted guests during the two-hour preview.

“She was just so blown away by how much people brightened up right when they walked in. I think we kind of surprised them, and we’re only about 80 percent decorated,” Kessler said.

“But we are pretty well-stocked,” he added quickly.

“We were a lot busier than we thought,” Hill added. “I think that the word of mouth kind of got out there.”

A new vibe

Inside, Paper & Leaf has adopted a sort of art gallery/record store vibe. Think open and accessible. For those 21 and over, of course.

“We designed this to feel like a gallery,” Kessler said.

Display cases made of recycled wood — each with different varieties of cannabis locked inside — grace the walls like works of art, though one wall is blank for now because it actually will be used to hang art, in a rotating gallery with works by Bainbridge and other Kitsap-area artists.

“The history of cannabis is going to be our first [exhibit],” Kessler said, and will trace the path of the plant from 8000 B.C. to the present day.

Hill said it was important for the shop to create a safe, friendly and welcoming place; an environment that will help remove the stigma surrounding marijuana.

“We fully expect people to come in who haven’t tried the product in a long time and maybe just wanted to see what’s going on here. Maybe they’re not going to buy anything, but at least they’re going to pop their neck in,” Hill said.

“I think we’ve achieved in making a light, airy, welcoming place,” he added.

Paper & Leaf is located just off Highway 305, and Hill and Kessler expect the store will capture pass-by traffic — after all, 6 million people board the Bainbridge ferry every year — and also bring in customers from the other side of Agate Passage.

“There’s a lot of people who are going down to Port Orchard and Bremerton now,” Hill said. “We’re thinking that we will probably get some of that traffic.”

A different approach

The layout of the store is also something different, Kessler said.

“We want to be accessible to everyone in the way we are doing this

store. We feel that we have a different model of store that doesn’t exist right now anywhere in Kitsap County,” he said.

Visitors to other retail outlets often find all of the product squirreled away behind a counter, with much of it unseen, with a line of customers waiting to speak to a single clerk behind the counter.

People feel pressured to make a decision on what to buy quickly, Kessler said.

Not so at Paper & Leaf. Just inside the store is 12-foot-long table made by Coyote Woodworks from the slab of an elm tree, which will serve as the “discovery zone” for people who can sit down with a sales associate, who can guide visitors via iPad through the different types of products available. That includes offering advice on how uplifting one type of cannabis might be over another, or to explain the potency of the product, or its prospects for dizziness, paranoia and headaches.

The store’s sales people are offered samples to buy that they can take home and test, so they can speak with first-hand experience to customers, Kessler said.

Kessler said he was the original guinea pig for the store, and has tried everything that’s being sold. Take the kind called Purple Urkle, for example.

“I enjoy it in the evening. It’s very relaxing. It’s great to sit back and watch a movie with; it’s not going to keep you up all night. You’re just going to roll over and go to bed,” he said.

Long time coming

The Bainbridge store has been some time in the making.

Voters approved Initiative 502 in November 2012 — with Bainbridge having the highest approval margin of any city in the state with a “yes” vote above 70 percent — and city officials began a stop-and-go process of deciding if, when and where it would allow I-502 businesses on the island.

Kessler, who previously worked as a dog trainer and was known as “the Brooklyn Dog Whisperer,” met Hill, a 10-year Bainbridge resident and the drummer for the famed rock band Blues Traveler, a few years ago.

Kessler began his research for the store almost two years ago, and it’s included visits to more than 40 retail locations in Washington and road trips to Colorado for another 10 or so.

That extensive research effort has helped, the store’s owners said.

“Coming late to the game has been beneficial because we’re kind of learning from other people’s attempts,” Hill said.

A changing industry

The lexicon surrounding pot has changed with the times as 502 proponents and others in the cannabis industry push marijuana more into the mainstream.

The “m-word” has disappeared in favor of the word “cannabis”; the smokeable part of the plant once called “buds” has been replaced with “flowers”; cannabis cigarettes once known as “joints” are called “pre-rolls”; and store owners refer to “product,” the cannabis-fueled offerings that range from flowers packed in plastic bags according to weight to vapes (a pot extract ingested through a vaporizer) and edibles (marijuana-infused items such as cookies and candies).

Doing it right

Bainbridge’s new store offers a wide selection of products, but the owners noted they decided that Paper & Leaf would have its limits. That means no edibles that look like candy.

Hill said the business was going above and beyond state regulations in what the store would offer, and their guiding light for the Bainbridge shop has been “to do it right.” That includes their efforts to guide newbies, or those trying marijuana again for the first time since their college days, to start their cannabis exploration with less-potent strains or with gentler, easier-to-inhale vapes.

It also means advising customers to not mix cannabis with alcohol.

“We highly recommend to people that if you are going to choose to imbibe, make your choice between the two,” Kessler said. “You can’t experience what this product has to offer if it’s with alcohol.”

The store is also big on local growers, with some of the strains coming from producers in Kitsap.

“We’re trying to stay as local as possible,” Kessler noted, and added that roughly five farmers in the region are supplying the store already.

“We want to support our local farmers. We’re committed to supporting those growers,” he said.

An evolving menu

The cannabis collection at the store will change often, based on the varieties offered by growers as well as consumer demand.

The store currently has a long list of varieties, called “strains” (the names come in part from the plant’s ancestors) that proprietors say run the gamut from some of the least expensive to most expensive found in the region.

All told, Kessler said the store has tapped approximately a dozen different growers, with each supplying three to four different strains.

“We’re offering somewhere between 36 to 40 strains of flower,” he said.

Prices for the different strains — which include Dutch Treat, OG’s Pearl, Lavender, Afgooey, Tangerine Dream, Sour Diesel, OG Kush and Snoop’s Dream (named after the rapper and celebrated marijuana enthusiast Snoop Dogg) — range from $9 a gram up to $20. Per-ounce prices start with a “door-buster” deal on Afgooey at $199 and run up to $400.

New inventory lists are being made every day, and growers are supplying new product about every 10 days.

“The strains in here will change as product comes in,” Hill said.

The store is open only to those 21 and older — IDs are checked when people enter to store and again when a purchase is made. Summer hours will be 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.

Kessler said he expects islanders to welcome the new business.

“There are going to be those who are still attached to the old world stigma of cannabis. They have every right to express their opinion; they had their right to go vote about it.

“I don’t believe we’ll have a lot of pushback,” he said, and added that visitors will find the store a safe and inviting place.

“Bainbridge is ready to see that stigma changed,” he said. “It’s an amazing, open, liberal community that is going to embrace the changes coming.”