Redefining — And Refining — Our Long-Held Values at The Travel Agency

From the moment The Travel Agency opened its first location at Union Square in February 2023, social justice work via community, inclusivity, and education has been our North Star. We’re more than a cannabis store — our existence helps support those who have been harmed by the War on Drugs, all while destigmatizing cannabis and elevating the everyday for countless New Yorkers.

As we enter a new era for our dispensary with the opening of our fourth location in SoHo, we are refining our longtime mission and vision statements to even more powerfully serve our community and customers. Here’s where we are today and how we got here.

The Travel Agency’s Four Pillars

Pillar 1: Creating space for vibrant retail experiences

We craft our dispensaries to match New York’s creative, always-on energy. Our stores are as spirited and sophisticated as the city itself, and when you visit us, you’ll feel inspired and connected to the spaces we’ve cultivated. That’s true whether you’re a busy professional or a culture lover moving at a more relaxed pace.

“We’ve leaned into design to create really beautiful spaces, but also unique experiences for our customers and for us,” said Arana Hankin-Biggers, president and co-founder of The Travel Agency. “The spaces are supposed to serve as a respite from the crazy streets of New York City and give our customers a world-class experience.”

Pillar 2: Meeting travelers where they are with personalized guidance

We point you in the right direction. First-time consumers and experienced cannabis lovers alike feel heard through our inclusive, personalized approach to helping our travelers achieve their goals for incorporating cannabis into their lives.

When you visit us, our knowledgeable, friendly staff will tailor the advice and education they give you to ensure a trustworthy, approachable, and simply fun experience. Our team is passionate about cannabis and about helping people. Our budtenders are always so happy to see you because they love what they do.

“It’s super important that we’re able to serve every single customer that walks in the door, regardless of what their background is,” Hankin-Biggers said. “We invest in upskilling our team at each of our stores by giving them the tools to grow their cannabis knowledge and their customer service skills. Our customers are consistently receiving the best in class attention.”

Pillar 3: Thoughtfully curating a menu through high-quality products and partnerships

Our menu is your map — we thoughtfully curate and regularly update our selection to connect you with the hottest, best quality, and most interesting products in New York. Everything we offer is responsibly sourced, going above and beyond to serve New York City’s exceptionally high standards and broad tastes. We take pride in bringing this elevated perspective to your experience.

“All the products in the legal market have to be tested by licensed laboratories here in New York State, but our standards at The Travel Agency are higher than those,” Hankin-Biggers said. “We’ve instituted, within our company, the more stringent standards that have been drafted in New Jersey and Massachusetts.”

We also spotlight local growers and brands owned by BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ folks through our rotating menu additions. Our content, such as our conversations with queer-owned brands and our guide to women-owned cannabis brands, further fuel this mission. Our partnerships extend beyond the cannabis world, uplifting local community organizations and cultural groups such as The New York Film Festival, for which The Travel Agency was the first-ever cannabis sponsor, and the Cannabis Justice & Equity Initiative, which trains formerly incarcerated people to work in the legal cannabis industry.

“We did an amazing screening recently with Fab 5 Freddie and B NOBLE, which is a film [Freddie] made called Grass Is Greener… that tells the story of Bernard Noble,” Hankin-Biggers said, noting that Noble was sentenced to 13 years in prison for two joints’ worth of cannabis. “We’re constantly looking for creative ways to partner with folks to bring attention to the inequity around cannabis.”

Among The Travel Agency’s other partners have been the cannabis program at Kingsborough Community College, the Department of Veterans Services, and the Last Prisoner Project.

Pillar 4: Rooting ourselves in community and in social progress

Yes, we sell cannabis, but more importantly, we’re here to create meaningful change within and outside the cannabis world by prioritizing inclusivity above all, remaining transparent, and evolving with our customers.

Through our roots in equity and community, we shatter stereotypes and forge meaningful connections, fostering a culture that empowers everyone within it. We support communities harmed by the War on Drugs to actively address the devastating impact of cannabis prohibition, particularly upon people of color. Many of us are from these very communities, as reflected by our ownership and focus on diversity.

We advocate for BIPOC-owned cannabis brands at all our locations, and at our Union Square location, we work closely with The Doe Fund and donate a majority of our profits to this organization. The Doe Fund uses these funds to support thousands of people per year who are facing homelessness or reentering society following incarceration.

“I don’t know of any other company in the country that redirects 51% of their profits to not-for-profits, but that’s essentially the structure we’ve created with The Doe Fund,” Hankin-Biggers said.

This focus extends to our other stores: The owners of our Downtown Brooklyn and Fifth Avenue stores are people who have experienced cannabis-related injustices. Our SoHo location is a partnership with a disabled veteran who, upon finding cannabis, was able to escape a debilitating drug addiction.

“There’s a cultural understanding with everyone who works in cannabis that the industry really has a responsibility to give back,” Hankin-Biggers said, “especially in light of the thousands of people that are still incarcerated for minor nonviolent cannabis possession crimes.”

Where we’ve been, where we’re going

Inclusivity and community are the soil from which our roots have grown as we’ve expanded from one store to four locations. We uphold our values from our origins to our ownership and how we use our profits, and also in the name we’ve chosen for ourselves.

“‘The Travel Agency’ alludes to the feeling you have when you consume cannabis, that you’re able to travel without getting away, but it also connotes transformation and change in some regard,” Hankin-Briggers said. “We’ve leaned into that to connect [The Travel Agency] to the work that The Doe Fund is doing to transform lives. It’s about building a business with this amazing not-for-profit that works to reverse the damage done by the racist War on Drugs. That’s our primary goal.”

Part of reversing that damage is eliminating all stigma around cannabis in a time of increasing legalization. Here at The Travel Agency, our goal to include everyone in the conversation around cannabis has driven our design choices from day one.

“We wanted to make it very clear from the get-go that we’re not an illegal shop,” Hankin-Briggers said. “We had a corner store, and we weren’t trying to hide… We invested to create more of a higher-end experience, but an experience that was not exclusionary.”

Fast forward to now, and The Travel Agency is a 250-employee operation with three locations in Manhattan and one in Downtown Brooklyn. We’ve maintained the experience we’re known for across all our stores while continuing to prioritize our values in all that we do.

“We’ve been very purposeful and very much guided by our brand pillars and giving back since the beginning,” Hankin-Biggers said, “but now, we’ve actually had the time and the space to articulate them, document them, and share them with our team. … [They’re] our guidepost as we’re expanding, growing, exploring new opportunities, [and] thinking about the curriculum we want to roll out to our budtenders and in-store teams. These are the things that are constantly guiding us with everything that we’re doing.”

Inclusivity, community, and education always intersect at The Travel Agency

If there’s one thing we could say about our mission and vision, it’s that the intersection of inclusivity, community, and education drives everything we do. That’s true of both what you experience when you shop with us and what our employees experience while working here.

“We serve an incredibly diverse clientele, so we want to make sure that everyone feels welcome in our spaces,” Hankin-Biggers said. “The majority of our customers are regulars. … We have folks that come in once a week to pick up product. We have people who come in once a day, so our customers really get to know the budtenders and come in asking for their favorite budtender. They’ve learned a lot from engaging with our budtenders about cannabis. … We continue to build important connections between our team and the customers we serve.”

“We want our employees to feel empowered,” Hankin-Biggers added. “We’re committed to making sure we have systems in place to allow for feedback from our team, and then building meaningful connections.” The company, Hankin-Biggers said, also prioritizes “leadership training to help empower folks who have been with us, who want to advance within the company. [We] give them the skills and the tools to grow within the organization. … We have brands that come in and speak with our team on a regular basis, almost twice a week.”

At The Travel Agency, as we prioritize inclusivity, community and education follow naturally.

The Travel Agency is a leader in New York City cannabis

As we’ve elevated the experience of procuring and consuming cannabis, we’ve brought more people into our world — a world shared with so many New Yorkers. We’re proud that our values have empowered us to act as a lightning rod for New York City’s cannabis community and others beyond it. We’re delighted that our stores’ design and experience are as cherished among our customers as our ongoing work to give back. We think this is a model to which all consumer-facing businesses should aspire.

“We don’t want to be just the best dispensary in New York City,” Hankin-Biggers said. “We want to be the best retailer in New York City.”

From our commitment to advancing social justice to the quality standards we work tirelessly to advance and uphold, we’re on our way to achieving this lofty goal. Come travel with us to see why for yourself.