Tokyo Smoke is a third-wave coffee shop that is redefining and elevating the cannabis experience. By combining coffee, clothing and cannabis, the unique lifestyle brand is a leading example of how Canada's cannabis market is maturing and evolving to cater to the needs of a more mainstream audience.
Located just as few blocks southeast of Toronto's Trinity Bellwoods Park, Tokyo Smoke combines a coffee bar and general store inside an old industrial shipping dock. The store's menu of custom roast coffee, high-end teas and other goods are based on the brand's four proprietary strains of marijuana: Go, Relax, Relief and Balance. Each of these strains is specially selected to provide consumers with the kind of cannabis experience they are looking for.
Trend Hunter recently had a chance to talk to Tokyo Smoke co-founder Alan Gertner about the company's mission to elevate the cannabis experience. Gertner compares cannabis to coffee by describing how each industry has evolved over time. He goes on to explain how Tokyo Smoke is ushering in "third-wave marijuana" by making the cannabis experience both beautiful and delightful for the consumer. In Gertner's words, Tokyo Smoke was built to aid in the transition to normalization through the creation of "a store where marijuana could look beautiful and marijuana could fit seamlessly into the rest of your life."
With cannabis culture rapidly becoming a mainstream phenomenon, Tokyo Smoke is leading the charge in fostering a reliable, understandable and ultimately beautiful movement.
Key Themes Behind This Trend
- Hybrid Cannabis Cafes
- Combining coffee, clothing and cannabis, hybrid cannabis cafés are making the cannabis experience both delightful and beautiful, appealing to a more mainstream audience.
- Third-wave Marijuana
- Similar to third-wave coffee, third-wave marijuana is all about creating a high-end, hand-crafted experience and elevating the cannabis culture.
- Normalization of Cannabis
- As cannabis culture continues to become more mainstream, there is a growing need to create a more reliable, understandable and beautiful movement.
Where This Applies
- Coffee and Tea
- With hybrid cannabis cafés, there is a growing opportunity to create unique blends of coffee and tea that are infused with cannabis and cater to a more mainstream audience.
- Retail
- By creating beautiful and delightful stores that combine cannabis with clothing and other consumer goods, retailers have an opportunity to expand the cannabis market beyond traditional dispensaries.
- Hospitality
- Cannabis-focused hospitality experiences, such as cannabis-infused restaurants and hotels, could appeal to a wider audience looking for new and exciting experiences while promoting the normalization of cannabis.
