How the world’s largest cannabis dispensary avoids social media restrictions

Planet 13 is the world’s largest cannabis dispensary. Located in Las Vegas, blocks off the Strip, the facility is the size of a small Walmart. By design, it’s hard to miss. Planet 13 is upending the dispensary model. It’s big, loud and visitors are encouraged to photograph everything.

As part of the cannabis industry, Planet 13 is heavily restricted on the type of content it can publish on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms. It’s not allowed to post pictures of buds or vapes on some sites. It can’t talk about pricing or product selection on others.

Instead, Planet 13 encourages its thousands of visitors to take photos and videos. Starting with the entrance, the facility is full of surprises tailored for the ‘gram. As a business, Planet 13’s social media content is heavily restricted and monitored, but individual users have a lot more wiggle room.

Social media is a challenge for a lot of so-called vicetech companies. Social media companies often use a heavy hand when it comes to policy enforcement, and ancillary sectors suffer. When Instagram banned vaporizer companies, businesses in the medicinal and recreational fields were also removed.

With blanket bans in place, companies like massive Planet 13 need to use creative means to advertise its products to potential customers throughout social media.

The dispensary, a publicly traded company, continuously creates viral, ephemeral experiences. Throughout the building, delightful details encourage visitors to take and publish photos.

Co-CEO Larry Scheffler said their goal is to create experiences visitors will want to share. An interactive floor sourced from London greets customers; outside the pizza and coffee shop (yes, this dispensary has food) are custom-made teacup chairs Schefller commissioned from a California artist. Recently, in the viewing gallery of its edibles manufacturing facility, Planet 13 added a VW minibus with a smoke machine that allows visitors to fill up the van and simulate exiting a hotboxed bus.

Planet 13 manufactures a variety of cannabis products, ranging from vape cartridges to edibles, with most items created in full view of the public. As machines spit out cannabis-infused chocolates, gummies and drinks, visitors watch (and photograph) the process through glass partitions. But that’s not enough. There’s an aerial show with large, motorized orbs that float around the dispensary’s show floor in a colorful display. Soon, oversized robotic butterflies from Germany will meander around the ceiling of the main lobby, flapping and fluttering like the real thing.

Scheffler tells TechCrunch he’s okay with showing off most of the operations, even to competitors. After all, he said, it’s his growers and chemists who hold all the secrets; the edibles are made with off-the-shelf machines that use standard manufacturing processes.

This process is neat, but even Scheffler confesses, it’s a bit boring. Which is why they’re importing fighting robots from Germany.

Soon, two robots will be added to the drink manufacturing line. One will load empty cans into the machine and another will remove the cans and put them in packaging. Each hour, these robots will get into a fight, complete with swinging swords, throwing a can and pouring a perfect glass of infused beer in honor of the winner. Then, they’ll get back to work until the next show an hour later.

These art installations are critical to Planet 13’s growth. Scheffler repeated the adage that word of mouth is the best advertisement. Becasue the company can’t exhibit most of its wares on Instagram or Facebook, this is the next best thing. As he explained it, the company can create pages, but as soon as it gets flagged for cannabis, Facebook pulls the accounts. But customers who go online to share content they created at Planet 13 aren’t bound by the same restrictions.

This approach seems to be working well; Scheffler told TechCrunch this single location accounts for 10% of all of Nevada’s cannabis sales, with a good chunk coming from tourists. Approximately 3% of all Las Vegas tourists visit Planet 13, he added.

Outside the facility is a considerable water sculpture. A large, red ball (like a planet) greets visitors. And from my casual observation, it seems like a lot of visitors take photos with this sculpture, sometimes enlisting the help of a parking lot attendant to snap the picture.

David Farris, VP of Sales and Marketing, joined the company in 2016 and says the company has six to eight people managing social media.

“We are heavily restricted with our [social media] capabilities,” Farris told TechCrunch. “We have to be very careful about what we post. We try to remain educational and say to our followers that we cannot discuss any prices or sales aspects of cannabis. We try to showcase the store and the uniqueness of our products. And we try to be careful and abide by Facebook and Instagram’s policies.”

As an example, Farris says Planet 13 is allowed to say that a specific strain embodies certain effects, as this stops short of promoting the sale of the product and instead focuses on the educational aspect.

He noted that the company spends a lot of time ensuring it’s checking all the right boxes for publishing on different social media platforms. As for the content it does release, Plant 13 abides by Nevada state regulations that require the dispensary to include a warning to keep the products out of reach of children and are only to be used by adults 21 years of age or older.

Planet 13 started in a much smaller facility. The vision, as explained to me, was to create a facility that showcased the brand and promoted it heavily. Because the company is so heavily restricted, they had to create this environment.

“People just naturally tag us in things and promote that they were at Planet 13,” Farris says. “People show up with their luggage in hand, and this was their first stop [in Las Vegas]. That usually positively affects us because we’re able to gain traffic on our social media site and have people learn about us without having to advertise. We have these people who are customers and they showcase their experiences because they’re proud of it.”

What’s the most photographed item in Planet 13? Scheffler and Farris had the same answer: an interactive virtual koi pond located in the dispensary’s entrance. Visitors love it, Scheffler said with a smile. And I get it. During my visit, I played with the koi — and published a video of my experience to TechCrunch’s Instagram story.