San Francisco will enable hashish consumption lounges to serve meals and nonalcoholic drinks, making the town the primary within the Bay Space to allow the “Amsterdam-style” mannequin for hashish cafes.
The measure is required to implement a state regulation handed in 2024 that permits cities to license hashish cafes. The institutions could promote hashish just for on-site use, and for a 12 months, solely present storefront retailers and their fairness companions can apply to open a hashish cafe, in keeping with KQED.
Backers hope the extra enterprise mannequin out there will assist resurrect a sagging retail sector.
“San Francisco simply gave our authorized hashish neighborhood an actual instrument to compete and develop,” Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman mentioned in a press release, in keeping with KQED.
“There’s no motive our operators shouldn’t have the identical instruments to compete and assist convey individuals again into our neighborhoods.”
Will hashish cafes assist retailers?
Supporters framed the cafes as a reduction for retailers hit by falling gross sales and rising prices. Statewide hashish gross sales dropped under $4 billion in 2025 amid worth compression and continued competitors from the illicit market.
The state estimates that California’s illicit market accounts for roughly 60% of hashish offered, KQED reported.
California’s excise tax rose from 15% to 19% final summer season earlier than a tax lower final fall. Nevertheless, retailers mentioned the hike pushed cost-conscious customers towards unlicensed sellers.
San Francisco positioned a moratorium on new hashish retail licenses in 2023, citing oversaturation.
At the least 23 storefront retailers have closed since adult-use marijuana legalization, in keeping with David Goldman, president of the Brownie Mary membership’s San Francisco chapter, as reported by KQED.
Is there opposition to serving meals in hashish cafes?
Not each operator welcomed the choice to permit meals and drinks to be served in hashish cafes.
Kevin Reed, founding father of The Inexperienced Cross and a veteran of metropolis hashish politics, urged the board to gradual growth till the market recovers.
“That is the primary time in my hashish profession that I’ve felt compelled to ask the town to gradual the growth of hashish companies,” Reed wrote in a letter to the board.
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What different cities supply meals at hashish cafes?
San Francisco isn’t the one U.S. metropolis that permits hashish cafes to serve meals.
A few of Denver’s on-site consumption venues additionally supply meals and nonalcoholic drinks, in keeping with The Denver Publish.
Cirrus Social Membership serves hashish merchandise alongside snacks and desserts.
Supporters say that hashish consumption lounges, which exist in some states whereas others wrestle to allow the license class, signify “the following frontier” for authorized marijuana retail. Nevertheless, that imaginative and prescient has largely not but come to move amid burdensome guidelines and regulators who’re “overthinking” the idea, critics have mentioned.
