Colorado Dispensary Reviews

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Originally Posted by lampost

I just posted this in the original thread, but moved it over here:

>>>Why don't you make a website that connects independent caregivers with patients!? That's what we desperately need and if that took off it could generate ad revenue for sure. Or you could have a nominal fee for caregivers to advertise... or a private board (Vbulletin) that has a small membership fee? Bulletin boards like this seem to be popular. If you could reproduce the CO regional section of cannabis.com but allow free talk of patient-patient, caregiver-patient sales and offers then you'd have a great site!

Maybe you could combine this website with the review site somehow? Or rely on revenue from the less dispensary-focused site which would allow you to make KR ad-free.

A good caregiver-patient website is definitely needed. The only one that I'm aware of now is Craigslist which is lacking in features and full of law enforcement and scammers... there's no feedback on these people.

I agree that you have to introduce anonymity into your bud procurement and pay for samples. This is the only way, as has been pointed out with the restaurant industry.<<<

I'm biased myself because I'd rather see dispensary reviews than "strain" reviews. One of my pet peeves is when someone tries to get too specific with a strains medical effects!! It seems misleading to me...

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I love the patient-caregiver directory/matching service idea, but the legal wrangling and issues that could be presented with something like that are too great (for me at least). Maybe someone with more resources and a good lawyer can take up the call though, as I agree that it would be a great addition to the MMJ community.

And yeah, I know that people want dispensary reviews. I was going all-out at first (see the Botanico review), but it's simply too difficult to give a very detailed review or a meaningful score unless you've been to a place over and over (which again introduces credibility/bias questions). I don't want to give the impression that a place is shoddy because I was there one day when the new guy was working, it's not fair to them or to the readers.

Anyway, that was my issue with dispensary reviews, so I shrunk them down quite a bit and will hopefully get more of those happening soon. Again though, the issue becomes the ability to be fair without trying multiple samples of meds, edibles, and getting familiar with the staff's level of knowledge, all of which can introduce bias of their own and come with a lot of expense on the reviewer's part. I don't want to just be a quasi-directory service saying "uh this place has 15 strains and they looked pretty good".. quality reviews are my aim.

As far as the anonymity in the bud procurement, I don't think that really matters unless the site also does dispensary reviews, specifically reviewing the staff. The free samples thing is obviously an issue for readers, but the actual going in and getting the meds isn't at issue in my mind. If a place knows I'm a reviewer, they might butter me up a bit.. but I haven't actually received anything that was free except a Cheesecake Lady edible in exhange for a review after the fact (Native's Choice does that for people who post review on too).

The reviewer not knowing where the bud is from is a more important measure to take I think, as well as not knowing what strain it is when they try it. I say that both because of personal preference about the dispensary and its staff but also in regards to the bud itself -- if you're told something is Sour Diesel, you look for certain things that you might not otherwise, etc. I am not able to do the blind testing thing since I'm essentially a one-man operation at the moment (I have a friend acting as webmaster but that's it), not to speak for them, but maybe KR can implement some sort of process along those lines since they have several reviewers. I'd be interested to see how the results turn out if they go that route.

Myself, I'm just gonna keep chugging along and trying to get as many reviews done as possible while still paying my bills. I'm still noodling on the pay idea, but some sort of income stream seems like an inevitability at this point if I'm to keep the quality up and the content frequent, much less expand the site and improve the quality.

I look forward to chatting with the KR guys to see what we can do to make ourselves as useful as possible to the community while not running ourselves ragged for little return. Thanks for the input lampost, I'm surprised anyone read my screed haha.

I'm glad to see that we're all throwing ideas out there and making this a better place. I've long considered a website, but I was thinking more along the lines of a Colorado board for people that had different forums (moderated by leaders in the field who would donate time for the sake of the cause as well as to have a chance to be a voice and bring in business for themselves) with a couple being about MMJ.

An outdoors forum, a food and brew forum with restaurant reviews, a "swap meet", the list goes on. Basically, what do you want to know about and who do you want to connect with if you live the Colorado lifestyle. I believe it could work, and taking the MMJ community there first would anchor the board and set a tone. With a large number of members meeting, we could have somebody who is versed in law making give us updates in layman's terms and tell us what we should do in order to advance the cause. It could become a powerful meeting place for us.


YEARS ago, on the old Golf Magazine forum, in between the stupidest early internet flaming you have ever heard, a small group (maybe 20) of us became friends. A guy decided to open his own forum and run it right. Long story, it took off and became one of the biggest golf forums in the world. Once there was a legit place to talk about things and what not, it drew people like CRAZY. Dude ended up making $$$$$$. At first, we members bought the banners to keep the board up. By the time I signed off, the biggest names in the business were advertising on there. And he almost didn't do it, even though we all agreed he was best suited for the job. A job that ended up being worth life changing bank. Some people just need a little shove. :thumbsup:

LOTS of GREAT ideas out there guys, lets make good things happen.

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Originally Posted by ColoradoCareMMJ

Why not break some ground and take a new direction away from dispensary sponsored reviews? Create a members-only site that you have to pay 5 or 10 a month to be a member of.... that way you can cover your costs and put some money in your pocket while not having to worry about boosting any sponsors egos. I think ALOT of patients would be more than willing to spend 5 or 10 dollars for this service...

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This is a quality idea. However, it sort of goes against some of my intent and mission, which is to save patients money. I don't really want someone paying for my site and then going and paying $50 for meds on top of it... Not to be too presumptive, but I think that dispensaries are more able to fork over a few bucks a month for something that is providing them advertising than patients are for something that isn't bringing them a measurable monetary benefit. I know some patients can afford it and would gladly pay, but I want to make my site available to all MMJ patients, many of which are low-income and can barely afford their meds and living expenses, much less a paid review site to help them make buying decisions.

It would definitely be nice to have some mega-site where you have reviews of a ton of strains coming in daily from all over the area from qualified reviewers... if it took charging $5 or $10/month for access, then maybe it would be worth a shot. I'm certainly open to the possibility, but my first option for a pay site would be getting funding from the primary beneficiaries (dispensaries) rather than from patients. With all the integrity issues and muddying of the waters that causes though, maybe the non-dispensary ad route is really the only way without charging patients... It's tough, especially for someone like me who loathes internet ads and would hate to muck up my site with them ("legal buds", how I hate you).

Maybe a partially paid site... like a members area with access to ALL the review archives but a front page with a selection of the most recent 10 or so... I dunno, it would be tough for me to limit content in that manner, but you're right that it would be a good solution to the ego issues and everything else that comes along with dispensary-funded review sites. Something to thing about I guess.

Thanks for your thoughts Bryan. I hope to meet you soon as well, I'll try to make it in on Saturday so I can see your shop.

Well you've got to do something to eliminate bias, or even the perception of it! The website idea or vbulletin is not bad... expand it to go beyond strain reviews like I mentioned and it'll be worth people's $5-10/month!! I think branching out is a good idea anyway. Strain reviews will become less relevant as we accumulate 500+ of them and the MMJ novelty wears off. Sure, everyone wants to see what new genetics/crosses are like, but blueberry and g-13 reviews will get old.

Here's another. Team up with a non-biased 3rd party and have them go pick your samples up and label them and then you review them without prior knowledge of what they are.

KR agrees with MMJinCO for the most part. We are not about charging the patients more to get information, our site started with the intent to get as much info as possible to as many patients as possible. That said, everyone here has raised multiple issues that certainly need addressing. KR.com is working on a blind process as we speak. We ran a test run and immediately found some complications so back to the drawing board we go. We have a meeting set up with MMJinCO to collaborate more, and we are working with a new guy in town who is set to launch coloradodispensaryreview.com on 4.20. It is possible we (KR and MMJ) can acquire our samples from dispensary review sites and have them delivered blind but that also worries me about chain of custody (maybe that's all the crim law classes i was stuck in) management.

I know we won't charge patient's for strain review information at any point in time, but maybe if MMJ, other sites, some of Steve's ideas are combined with KR and we've got an honest offering of value -add services beyond just the medicine info and some patients want to pay for that? I think we are willing to explore that option, but to be honest, and MMJ can vouch, that sounds like a lot more work under the same banner of broke without time.

We've approached many of the larger advertisers to try and get away from dispensary adverts but even with 23,000 page views in February most of these places say, nah, that's not enough. We will be bigger than that in March for sure but not 100,000 which seems to be the start point for most of these places.

In the mean time, a gram sample from the places that are consistently turning a profit and recieving PR seems like a suitable means for going forward, albeit with safeguards and diligent policy in place.

Another thing I was thinking about last night that doesn't seem to have been brought up is that right now KR has only sold advertising to a few shops that believe in what we do and have established enough of a relationship with us as people to trust we will be honest. That encourages KR, as a psychology, to focus on relationship building (yes we learned LOTS of lessons over the past week or so), pushing the bias out as far as possible, and creating honest reviews so that the dispensary doesn't suffer any negative kickback. I see this in two opposing lights. We all know how things went down with the UrklexOG grade of A- we gave, but let's say that was the same but CCF had a paid ad on our page. If a patient went and got it and was like, whoa man, this is actually an A or A+ in my mind, will they be distrustful of the KR/Paid Ad relationship? Likely not. On the other hand, if I gave a StrainX an A+ and the shop had my top banner and patients went in and said, this crap blows and is really a C+, would they have suspicion and be founded in their beliefs?

I guess what I'm trying to say not so eloquently is that as a business owner I must be very mindful of the reputation I participate in for any of my paying advertisers or I will lose that revenue. I must also be very careful to deliver honest reviews to the patients or they won't come to the site and our mission will have failed and we won't have advertisers. KR, and other reviewers, are sandwiched in the middle of two pretty strong forces and I think that some of the bias concerns raised in numerous threads, while totally valid, have been given a heightened emphasis as compared to our every day reality.

In my opinion some people are taking this way too serious. Its legal marijuana relax. Who cares about all these review sites. Everyones opinion is different, and everyone likes different kinds off weed. Judging marijuana is an impossible task, i know because i have been to two cannabis cups. The sites are a good way for patients to find new places and new medicine. All this beef over an A- or A+ is silly.

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Originally Posted by neversummer

In my opinion some people are taking this way too serious. Its legal marijuana relax. Who cares about all these review sites. Everyones opinion is different, and everyone likes different kinds off weed. Judging marijuana is an impossible task, i know because i have been to two cannabis cups. The sites are a good way for patients to find new places and new medicine. All this beef over an A- or A+ is silly.

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Bingo!

dispensary sponsored reviews = biased


there is no getting around it. the only way to NOT be biased is to start a review site that does not base its pay around the dispensaries it reviews.

nobodys going to pay money to get a shitty review. plain and simple.

theres too many jokers out there and if nobody is out there with the bullhorn calling them out, then patients are the ones who end up losing. why candy coat every shop out there? why not a real review that calls it for what it is??? we dont need any more popularity contests.....

I already alluded to this in the other thread and it's been mentioned several times here too. It's just plain hard to review a strain. It's like trying to review an apple from a grocery store. Even if it was great when you got it, doesn't mean the next batch of apples is going to taste great. Plus some like Red Delicious, others like Granny Smith.

I do appreciate & like to read reviews on dispensaries. Sure maybe the new guy is working the counter but if he's a good hire - he should know when he's getting in over his head and call in a more experienced staff member. Plus even if you get the new guy, you can observe how the other staff members are interacting with other customers. Have been in places that had decent product, and the staff was nice but not very educated on the strains they were carrying. Have also been in places that had great staff, pretty well educated, but only ok meds (which they honestly stated and informed me their own were in the process of being grown). Have been to both high-end & ghetto places. Had good & bad service at both. Have found good, mediocre, and crap at every place I've been in (which at last count is over 50!). It got to be expensive so I don't go to too many places now. Luckily more places are opening up closer to me so no more driving 30mins! Yeah!

If any review site would like an honest dispensary reviewer, I'm available. Could even develop a "checklist" of items to look for & questions to ask, so things are more standardized.

One idea I think someone sort of mentioned is a forum. Each part of town would have it's own forum, further divided by dispensary subforums, further divided by threads on each strain they carry & also a general threads like daily menu & overall review on the dispensary.

Example:
Colorado MMJ review site
-- Denver forum
---- Dispensary #1 subforum
------ daily menu thread
------ general Q & A and site review thread
------ strain #1 thread with reviews from the public
------ strain #2 thread with reviews from the public
------ strain # etc....

Part of it could be to public like the daily menu, other parts would require a small membership fee - particular the strain part.

Of course some schilling will probably happen but it's usually easy to figure out after awhile.

Just tossing out ideas...

oh and as far as ad revenue, what about coffee shops, cafes, pizza joints, sub shops, etc.... A patient's gotten eat!