There are dispensaries, after which there may be Seaweed.
Tucked into the Rockaway Peninsula at 73-13 Seaside Channel Drive in Arverne, New York, Seaweed RBNY opened its doorways in December 2025 as Rockaway Seaside’s largest hashish dispensary. From the second you step inside, it’s clear that measurement was by no means the purpose. What Seaweed constructed is one thing far tougher to duplicate than sq. footage: an area that truly feels prefer it belongs to the neighborhood it serves.
The inside leans into what the founding staff calls an “upscale coastal” aesthetic, with sandy tones, ocean blues, open sightlines and beachy particulars that make the house really feel brilliant and simple to be in. No harsh lighting. No velvet ropes. No intimidating counters separating employees from clients. Only a calm, welcoming surroundings the place adults 21 and up can discover hashish at their very own tempo, guided by individuals who genuinely need to assist.
In a authorized hashish market nonetheless discovering its footing, that form of intentionality is rarer than it sounds. New York dispensaries have proliferated quickly because the state started issuing adult-use licenses, and with that development has come a variety of experiences, some scientific, some chaotic, some extra centered on shifting product than on the individuals shopping for it. Seaweed is a deliberate departure from all of that.
For founder Adam Linet, the imaginative and prescient began lengthy earlier than the doorways opened. In mid-2021, as New York moved towards legalizing adult-use hashish, Linet started quietly laying groundwork. He researched the regulatory panorama, related with legal professionals, architects, distributors and OCM representatives, and spent years shaping an idea that would match each the size of the constructing and the expectations of the neighborhood. The title Seaweed got here up throughout an informal gathering along with his staff from his different Rockaway enterprise, Vino by the Sea, and it caught instantly. It was coastal. It was straightforward. It was utterly theirs.
“I had been hanging out with my employees and kicking names round,” Linet remembers. “The title Seaweed emerged and instantly resonated as the proper title.”
What adopted was greater than 4 years of coordination with the Workplace of Hashish Administration, architects, contractors, landlords and licensing attorneys. It was an extended and winding highway that many aspiring operators in New York by no means full. Seaweed did. And the endurance behind that journey is seen in each element of the completed house.
What makes Seaweed actually distinct isn’t just its aesthetic or its product choice. It’s the story of the way it got here to exist in any respect.
Linet and his spouse Sam, together with shut pals Patti DiBart and Kevin Joyce, fashioned a founding group early within the course of and made a deliberate choice to carry the neighborhood into the mission from the beginning. They opened Seaweed to funding from the individuals round them—neighbors, family and friends members who had spent years collectively on the seashore, at events, at weddings, within the rhythms of Rockaway life. At present, 40 neighborhood members maintain an funding stake within the dispensary, making it one of the genuinely community-owned hashish companies within the state of New York.
“Within the post-Covid isolation period, we neighbors truly like one another and revel in spending time collectively,” Linet says. “It’s a mission that was born of the love all of us have for the place we reside. Seaweed brings us all delight for being domestically owned and operated.”
Kevin Joyce, who serves as Treasurer, brings over 25 years of public accounting expertise and 15 years as Govt Vice President at Citco Fund Providers to the staff. A Rockaway neighborhood member since 2015, his monetary experience and neighborhood roots replicate the form of management mixture Seaweed was constructed on. This isn’t outdoors capital coming in to open a hashish retailer. It’s a Rockaway establishment constructed by Rockaway individuals.
That collective possession tis mirrored all through the shop. Each design choice, every bit of copy, and each employees interplay was formed via the identical neighborhood lens. The bodily house was deliberately designed to reflect the expertise clients encountered throughout Seaweed’s web site, model collateral, and academic supplies, making a seamless transition from on-line to in-store.
Consistency between the model story and the in-store actuality was by no means an afterthought—it was the inspiration.
Getting into a Market That Wanted a Totally different Sort of Dispensary
Seaweed entered Rockaway Seaside at a genuinely complicated second in New York’s hashish panorama.
The adult-use market was younger, extremely regulated, and nonetheless constructing shopper belief. In Rockaway particularly, authorized hashish choices had been restricted whereas legacy and casual channels had long-standing relationships with native consumers. Many residents had been conversant in hashish itself however far much less conversant in what a totally licensed, compliant dispensary truly appears to be like like, the way it operates, what it might probably and can’t say, and why selecting a authorized possibility issues.
On the identical time, New York’s regulatory surroundings made it genuinely troublesome to construct a dispensary with persona. Strict guidelines round promoting, in-store expertise, and buyer communication can simply push operators towards bland, generic shows that do little to earn actual loyalty. Seaweed’s founding staff understood that the compliance problem and the model problem had been the identical problem: How do you construct one thing reliable and legally sound that also feels heat, native and price returning to?
Their reply was to make the model itself the differentiator. Moderately than competing on product choice or value alone, Seaweed invested in constructing a model expertise so cohesive and community-rooted that it will be genuinely troublesome to duplicate. The shop can be Rockaway’s dispensary, not a dispensary that occurred to be situated in Rockaway.
Hashish With out the Intimidation
Seaweed serves a remarkably diver buyer base. There are veterans and longtime customers alongside curious newcomers testing the waters for the primary time. Some are returning after years away, now snug revisiting hashish in a authorized, regulated market. Others are locals stopping in after work, beachgoers wandering in from the boardwalk, or day-trippers the Rockaway neighborhood affectionately calls “DFDs”—brief for “Down for the Dayers”—who uncover Seaweed whereas visiting the peninsula.
What unites them is a need for readability and luxury, and that’s precisely what Seaweed delivers. The employees approaches each interplay with training on the middle. Merchandise are defined in plain language, organized so clients can navigate by format, consolation degree or event. There are not any upsells disguised as suggestions. No strain to decide quicker than somebody is able to. Simply trustworthy, useful conversations.
Instructional supplies all through the shop proceed that method. Playing cards and signage clarify key ideas, product sorts, and results in pleasant, accessible language—the identical tone that Seaweed makes use of on-line, in its weblog, and throughout its social presence. Seaweed has rapidly been acknowledged as a spot the place individuals really feel snug asking questions, bringing pals who’re new to hashish, and returning as their data and preferences develop.
What’s on the Cabinets
Seaweed carries a thoughtfully curated number of hashish merchandise sourced solely from licensed New York cultivators and producers. The complete lineup spans flower, pre-rolls, edibles, hashish drinks, vapes, concentrates, and topicals, with a rotating roster of manufacturers that provides regulars a cause to see what’s new each time they cease in.
Linet describes their curation method as intentional relatively than exhaustive. The manufacturers Seaweed chooses to hold are inclined to prioritize native New York cultivation, small-batch or craft rising practices, cautious cannabinoid and terpene formulation, and transparency round sourcing and manufacturing. It’s the identical philosophy Linet has utilized for years at Vino by the Sea, the place he constructed a following by championing smaller producers and serving to clients perceive what they had been truly consuming.
“As somebody who additionally sells boutique wine and spirits, it’s nice to see our Seaweed clients actually gravitate towards a number of the micro and smaller producers we feature in-store,” he says. “Prospects have been excited to see what new drops we get each week.”
For newer customers, the staff usually factors towards low-dose edibles or hashish drinks, lighter, extra sessionable codecs that permit individuals to ease in at their very own consolation degree. Pre-rolls are a pure match for social settings and seashore days. Flower appeals to skilled customers who know precisely what they need. The breadth of the choice means there may be genuinely one thing for each form of go to.
Past hashish merchandise, Seaweed additionally carries its personal line of branded merchandise and equipment, items designed to replicate the model’s coastal aesthetic and native delight. Merch is accessible in-store, via the Seaweed app, and through nationwide delivery on-line, extending the model into on a regular basis life nicely past Rockaway’s borders.
Mushy Residing, Rooted in Rockaway
One of many extra distinctive issues about Seaweed is the way it frames the hashish expertise—not as a leisure escape from on a regular basis life, however as a pure, seamlessly built-in a part of it.
The model attracts deeply on what it calls “tender dwelling,” a philosophy of intentional, low-pressure enjoyment that mirrors the Rockaway lifestyle. It’s the hashish equal of the Sunday farmer’s market, the sluggish morning espresso, the end-of-week decompression ritual. Seaweed speaks to clients who need hashish to really feel prefer it belongs in that world.
That native id extends nicely past the shop partitions. Seaweed publishes a devoted Rockaway Seaside information on its web site, highlighting native spots, meals, tradition and issues to do, positioning the dispensary as a plugged-in neighborhood voice, not only a retailer working within the space. A month-to-month “What’s Taking place in Rockaway” social collection spotlights occasions, gatherings and seasonal highlights tied to the neighborhood’s rhythm all year long.
Business developments align intently with how Seaweed has positioned itself. Extra adults are incorporating hashish into wellness routines, social gatherings and on a regular basis moments relatively than treating it as a standalone exercise. Low-dose codecs and sessionable drinks have grown in reputation exactly as a result of they match naturally into the move of day by day life. Seaweed was constructed for precisely this shopper second, approachable by design, academic by default, and native by selection.
Poseidon Membership: Loyalty That Feels Like Belonging
Prospects who need to deepen their relationship with Seaweed can be a part of the Poseidon Membership, the dispensary’s loyalty program out there via the Seaweed app. This system presents unique presents, member perks and rewards that develop with every go to, a significant strategy to acknowledge and provides again to the neighborhood members who’ve made Seaweed a part of their routine.
The Seaweed app itself is central to the model expertise. Prospects can browse the present product choice, place orders for in-store pickup or native supply, and handle their Poseidon Membership membership multi functional place. Supply is accessible inside permitted areas throughout Rockaway Seaside, Queens, and Nassau County, making Seaweed accessible nicely past the bodily retailer.
For Linet, the loyalty program is about greater than retention metrics. It’s about constructing the form of ongoing relationship between a neighborhood enterprise and its regulars that’s used to outline native retail, and that hashish, as a still-maturing business, has hardly ever had the runway to develop.
A New York Hashish Story Nonetheless Being Written
Linet is candid in regards to the broader challenges New York hashish operators are navigating. Strict promoting restrictions, uneven ecommerce infrastructure, and a still-developing regulatory panorama have created actual friction for dispensaries making an attempt to construct sustainable companies.
“I hope that a number of the limitations which have been created with laws, or the dearth thereof, begin to clear up,” he says. “From onerous promoting guidelines to clunky ecommerce to a neater skill to pay in retailer.”
Regardless of these headwinds, his outlook is clear-eyed and optimistic. He sees the subsequent part of New York’s hashish market as one outlined by native id, the place community-rooted dispensaries construct actual loyalty, and the place training and programming develop into the defining differentiator between the companies that final and people that don’t.
“As legalization settles in, extra adults who had been beforehand hesitant have gotten curious,” he says. “They need steerage and a snug surroundings to study. Folks need to perceive what they’re consuming and the way completely different merchandise match into their way of life. Clear, trustworthy training will matter an increasing number of.”
Trying forward, Seaweed is targeted on deepening its Rockaway roots, constructing relationships with different native companies, increasing neighborhood training programming, and rising its presence throughout the borough and past. Multi-location development is on the horizon. An occasion house, as rules permit, is a part of the longer-term imaginative and prescient.
No matter comes subsequent, the inspiration is a enterprise genuinely constructed by and accountable to the individuals it serves. “To offer a very elevated expertise to those that have needed to beforehand buy hashish within the shadows is a pleasure to see day by day,” Linet says.
For adults 21+ in Rockaway Seaside, Queens, and Nassau County, Seaweed is already precisely that, and it is just simply getting began.
