To Be Blunt: Travis Freeman of Healthful Flowers wants to promote 'health over a high'

Walk into Healthful Flowers, and the first thing you'll notice is the pungent aroma. 

"We're a hemp and CBD store," says owner Travis Freeman. "But even some of the dispensaries now don't even smell like cannabis anymore."

Healthful Flowers isn't just any CBD and hemp shop. It's the winner of the Arizona Daily Star's Readers Choice award for Best CBD Store.

Located in a shopping plaza at the corner of East Speedway Boulevard and North Craycroft Road at5460 E. Speedway Blvd., suite 104, Healthful Flowers blends into its surroundings on the outside.

It differentiates itself from the restaurants, tax-help center and barber shop with a bright purple sign sporting mountains and a sun that contains the letters "CBD," tipping off any curious cannabis seekers about what lies inside.

More than anything, form the outside, it gives off the vibes of a vitamin or health and wellness shop.

That's partly by design according to Freeman. He and his business partner Taylor Reed founded Healthful Flowers during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic to appeal to a customer base looking for something a little more health-and wellness focused than your traditional, state-licensed dispensary.

To Be Blunt Caught up with Freeman to talk about the origins of Healthful Flowers, what it was like getting the business off the ground during one of the most difficult time periods in modern history and what customers can expect when they visit.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. If you'd like to hear the entire 45 minute conversation, you can listen below.

To Be Blunt: Talk to us a little about Healthful Flowers, where did the idea for the business come from?

Travis Freeman: The major story behind us is we opened up as an alternative to medical and recreational dispensaries. During COVID, my business partner (Taylor Reed) and I were kind of spending a lot of time at home, just smoking a lot of cannabis, trying a lot of edibles, things like that because there wasn't much else to do.

A lot of businesses were closed and obviously dispensaries were labeled essential at the time, so it was something that we could frequent. That being said, we spent a lot of time at these places. And at first the money seemed to be something that we noticed, but realistically it was like our mind-state that kind of was seeing a big change.

You know, possibly being locked up, possibly being isolated was a big part of it as well. But overall, I'd say, the mental change that we saw amongst the two of us... we both definitely noticed that there was something going on, beyond just the COVID thing.

We thought to ourselves it could just be from the higher amounts of cannabis that we were consuming, and then the higher percentages of cannabis that we were consuming. We were doing a lot of concentrates, things like that, with potency levels above 50% THC, all the flour. So we were trying to see if there was something lower, even in the THC spectrum of things that we could do.

We started going to a lot of dispensaries looking for low THC products. That was hard to find, so we started looking for other means, and we saw CBD online. At first we ordered it online and it was kind of like a whole sketchy experience. We got the packages in the mail... Getting it shipped into the Arizona heat after a day or two in a truck, you're probably gonna stink pretty good.

Not only that, but your mailman's gonna be curious what's going on at your house, things like that.

So at first I felt really apprehensive about ordering more products and the part about it was the best products that we found online were the stinkiest ones. Obviously good flour usually smells, so we found great CBD flower, but it really, really stunk.

I thought that had to be off putting to other people beyond myself.

Then we started looking for CBD flower in town. I was like, "who has CBD flower in town?" There were a handful of shops that did. We didn't necessarily like the flower that we had gotten compared to what we had gotten online.

Then the price points were a little high for us as well. It was just kind of a searching game, playing cat and mouse between online and searching locally, and we never really found what we were looking for.

So it hit us. Why not try to bring all the awesome things we found online to people here locally so that they can find one place to just go to source all these things without having to get stinky packages into their house.

TBB: So it sounds like necessity became the mother of invention for you. What was the process like actually finding a suitable spot and opening a brick-and-mortar CBD store during the pandemic?

Freeman: Actually, it was a unique transition because this space used to be Charlie's Comic Book Store. So a lot of people remember Charlie's Comics from just being a youth and frequenting that place. It was a long established staple here in town. So when we first came in here, it just had this rectangular shape that was obviously meant for a comic book story.

It was something I saw a vision for us fitting into, but it needed a lot of changes. We actually did all the remodeling ourselves. I thought about where things are gonna be headed with, honestly, the homeless population and things like that, and how people just go into businesses to cool down and try to get out of the heat.

I noticed that it happens a lot in this area. So my first thing was making sure that it was secure.

We did our buzzer system for the front door, which kind of makes it one-step of a little bit more privacy, even when people are in here. We separated the lobby from the rest of the shop. And that wall is actually bulletproof, it could be pretty much hit by a car. It is a pretty secure wall in itself.

… We have physically been in this location since October 15th, 2020, mid-pandemic. The idea really came into fruition in July, and then the groundwork kind of was laid from there.

We opened the doors in October and then initially we thought, "oh, this is such a cool idea, the doors would be bum rushed."

And it was a real learning curve, trying to get people in, trying to educate people, let them know that what we have isn't another weird snake oil, it's not another piece of CBD that's just gonna get your money and we never want to see you again.

We price things so that we can see you on a repetitive basis. Our plan is to not only be here, but expand ourselves out as far as we can go without limiting our customer service, our quality, or our bottom line of what we want to do for folks and that's provide health over a high.

As long as we're able to do that and still get our product out to people that's affordable, we're willing to go as far as we can go. Right now we do a lot of vendor fairs, like the street fair, things like that to try to get out there and meet folks.

But we do have plans to move to the northwest. This is a part of the growing process, not over expanding before it's too early.

TBB: For people looking to come in and check out Healthful Flowers, what kind of products can they expect to find?

Freeman: A lot of people, like I said, have CBD flower, but our CBD flower selection is by far up there in the country by being the most inclusive, the most extensive and the most affordable.

So even amongst some of the strands that we carry, um, in other cities and states where they grow, Um, our price points are usually cheaper, um, than even the growers, some of the other retailers alike

One unique thing, we have vegetative clones. We provide plants for folks because we see that it's really hard for people to come across plants here in town. Mm-hmm. So, with plants being underneath the threshold of 0.3% THC, it would classify as hemp.

We try to do our best with helping people out with the educational part of the plant all the way up into the sale of the actual products. We really try to encourage people to grow their own, you know, as a means of sustainability, for long term purposes, but just overall education of the plant, to destigmatize things and show how easy it is.

A lot of people think that there's a lot involved with it, but just having this set up here with our plants, it just kind of signifies that it's not the hardest thing to do.

In addition, we carry a multitude of edibles and tinctures. We actually started off by carrying a lot of the products that we sourced online, like I mentioned previously. And in that process we really did find the best products in the country.

We might have found the best tincture, the best edibles, you know, the best. Whatever it might have been, whether by being an award winner, highly reviewed, highly rated, us trying the products out and comparing it, price point to effectiveness, things like that. So when we opened, we really had an amazing line of products.

That wasn't really necessarily our issue.

What our problem was, we had a lot of products that were branded by other companies and things like that, so product retention was tough for the people that did want to order online. What we ultimately ended up doing was creating partnerships with either the farms or facilities where either we could buy formulas or buy our own portion into the company so we can have these products made ourselves.

Then we're able to provide it, with the Healthful Flowers name. So now we have our own gummies, we have our own tinctures, we have our own topicals, things like that. So now when people try the products that work great here. It just draws them back to our location more so than ordering online.