SWAMPSCOTT — You don’t need to be green with envy any longer. Just roll up to Vinnin Square’s hottest new joint.
Terpene Journey, the town’s first marijuana dispensary, opened its doors Friday, giving customers a unique purchasing experience for all their recreational cannabis needs.
“We’re just getting started,” said owner Tom Bogacz, himself a Swampscott resident. “This is day one, but we have so many ideas beyond this.”
Bogacz and his husband, Justin Eppley, began working on opening the pot shop a few years ago after Massachusetts legalized recreational marijuana use. They began to pay attention to the laws that were passed governing the industry.
“We started to realize that we have the skill set and knowledge to do this,” Bogacz said.
Still, the process has taken a long time. The pair first leased their Vinnin Square location in October 2018, but still had to make it through the long local and state approval processes.
Bogacz and Eppley drew on research from other dispensaries when designing their business model, but they specifically wanted to address some customer pain points that they had encountered to make Terpene Journey unique.
Bogacz explained that they want to make the customer experience more transparent by putting the product out for visitors to see. The whole experience feels more like a cafe than the typical dispensary, with marijuana flowers, edibles and other products displayed prominently in glass cases at the counter and cleanly-designed menus on screens behind the cashiers.
“A lot of the time, you don’t see the product you’re buying until you’re at home,” Bogacz said. “We’re trying to take the surprise out of the situation.”
The company’s main selling point, however, is the source of its name: terpenes, the compounds that are responsible for the different flavors and aromas in each strain of weed. Unlike other dispensaries, this one focuses on terpenes, with a huge mural of the eight found in marijuana (terpinolene, limenen, caryophyllene, humulene, pinene, geraniol, myrcene and linalool) on the wall above the counter, organized from the most energizing to the most calming.
The menus are clearly marked with which terpenes can be found in each product and, on the shop’s online ordering page, customers can sort products by terpene with one click.
Bogacz said that often, customers haven’t even heard the word “terpene” before reading their name, but he and his husband are trying to make it easy for everyone, from novices to lifelong users, to understand.
“We tried to take something conceptual and make it real for people. Our goal is to change the way people buy cannabis,” he said. “Usually, they go right to the products with the highest THC (the compound in cannabis that gets you high), but research shows terpenes are what makes the difference.”
Eppley, a former data analyst, explained that he first got interested in terpenes when he started tracking how he felt when trying different strains.
“I started tracking my own data. Over time, you learn what affects you best,” he said.
Now, the couple offers information booklets with their products that include blank “tracking sheets” so customers can do the same thing.
“We’re trying to create a user-friendly experience,” Bogacz said.
