Sparked by the need for calmer, healthier choices without the high, Healthful Flowers founders, Travis Freeman and Taylor Reed, opened their CBD hemp-focused dispensary, as an alternative to THC cannabis.
Health over high is their motto.
“Taylor and I have been best friends since high school,” Travis Freeman said, “and we came up with the idea one night in my backyard just trying out products from different dispensaries during COVID…We spent a lot of time together, and we spent a lot of time smoking regular cannabis, and we both started seeing some negative effects from sitting at home smoking cannabis all the time.”
Freeman and Reed looked to see what was available that gave the same effects of THC, minus the high.
“We researched what was available that helped out with anxiety, stress and things like that without having to be on cannabis all the time.”
They discovered CBD flower for sale online. They purchased it and when the flower arrived it had the same weed smell as THC cannabis flowers.
“It (CBD) is very similar to cannabis; it just didn’t have the psychoactive portion and it wasn’t addictive,” Freeman said.
“It smelled stinky like cannabis, so it made me super nervous, it made him (Taylor) nervous. I didn’t want them to think I’m having weed shipped to my house, and get in all sorts of trouble.”
They searched for stores in Tucson to purchase CBD flower and other CBD products.
“We found a couple places, but they were limited,” Freeman said, “and the way they were presenting it seemed a little off putting to us, and the whole transparency behind it wasn’t there, and we would ask questions about the product, and they really wouldn’t have any answers.”
They then knew there was an opportunity to join the market with a better customer service-oriented business and more knowledge of CBD products.
Freeman and Reed did in-depth research across the nation on who was providing the products and who was providing the best customer service.
“So when we opened up on Oct. 15, 2020, we were actually opened up based off of the best products around the nation,” he said. “So we were getting in relationships with the best online retailers, it was people selling products online, but they didn’t have brick and mortar locations.”
Healthful Flower was born and has been extremely successful.
“We ended up carrying their products here,” Freeman said. “Eliminating that whole process of people having to order it online, having the stinky packages delivered to their houses and offering an option for people to come in and see the product before purchasing it, as well, was a big portion of it for us.”
Freeman said he and Reed test their products before selling them.
“We ordered from every company online, from every farm, every retail shop, everywhere across the nation,” he explained. “So, we had this whole Rolodex of who was doing good business, who had good customer service, who had good products, who had great lab reports, who was transparent about their products.”
They developed their business model for their brick-and-mortar store based on this research of the best businesses and products of online retailers. Healthful Flowers, they said, is the only purveyor of organic indoor hydroponic CBD and CBG cannabis in Tucson.
Healthful Flowers has CBD and CBG products, but they also sell products containing hemp-derived Delta-9 THC, such as their own 3:1 ratio vegan mixed-fruit gummies, which contain 75 mg of broad-spectrum CBD and 25 mg of hemp-derived Delta-9 THC as well as their own 3:1 vegan dragonfruit gummies containing 10 mg of broad-spectrum CBD and 3 mg of Delta-9 THC. These products will be reviewed in Tucson Weekly’s next issue, the Cannabis Bowl issue.
Healthful Flowers
5460 E. Speedway Boulevard, Suite 104, Tucson
520-279-1819
11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday
10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
