After over three years of community engagement and collaboration with the City of Pasadena, numerous community organizations, stakeholders and local community leaders, Sweet Flower, Los Angeles’ largest owned and operated cannabis retail chain, is delighted to announce the opening of Sweet Flower Pasadena.
Pasadena remains the most competitive merit-based license process undertaken by any municipality in California, and Sweet Flower’s selection as one of only four stores to open in Pasadena (from a field of 122 original applicants) reflects Sweet Flower’s stalwart commitment to the communities it serves throughout California, and its best-in-class operational track record.
“Sweet Flower Pasadena is the culmination of over three years of community engagement and ongoing commitment to the City of Pasadena. We are honored by the trust shown in us by the City of Pasadena, its City Council and by all the communities we serve in this great city, and we look forward to continuing to fulfill our commitment to Pasadena,” said Timothy Dodd, CEO and co-founder of Sweet Flower in a statement. “Successful cannabis businesses are built on meaningful community engagement. Sweet Flower Pasadena will bring to Pasadena thousands of hours of volunteer engagement, an ongoing commitment to hiring locally, inclusively and diversely through our groundbreaking Memorandum of Understanding with the Pasadena Community Coalition, ongoing contributions to local non-profits under the direction of our local Community Advisory Board, and deep partnerships with local businesses and local entrepreneurs.
“Sweet Flower reached out over a year ago to build a deeper relationship with the communities in Pasadena most negatively impacted by the war on drugs, the only cannabis operator in Pasadena to do so,” said Martin Gordon, CEO of the Pasadena Community Coalition. “Through our Memorandum of Understanding, Sweet Flower has hosted multiple job fairs in Pasadena, funded expungement clinics for Pasadena residents and launched Pasadena’s first African-American owned cannabis brand at all its stores, long before being open in Pasadena. Sweet Flower shows up and follows through; it says what it will do, and then does what it says, and we look forward to their opening and to their ongoing community engagement in Pasadena.”
“Sweet Flower respects its workers’ right to organize, and we are proud to work with Sweet Flower to bring a locally owned and operated, best-in-class operation to Pasadena,” said United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 770 President John Grant. “We look forward to continuing to build a partnership that will ensure Sweet Flower and its employees grow and thrive together.”
Sweet Flower Pasadena opens Friday April 15, 2022 at 827 E Colorado Blvd., in the Playhouse District, and at opening will feature 30% representation of black- and brown-owned cannabis brands, fifteen times the state average, including numerous social equity brands and Pasadena’s African-American owned cannabis brand, Octavius.
The addition of Sweet Flower Pasadena brings Sweet Flower to a total of six directly owned and operated retail licenses in greater Los Angeles, in addition to ancillary manufacturing, distribution and delivery licenses, making Sweet Flower the largest directly owned operator in greater Los Angeles.
