Jon Campbell 23 January 2010 News 4,545 views One Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Chuck “Cheese” Ziegenfelder wants to provide his patients with the most affordable medicine he can, and he’s figured out a way to do it. By selling other stuff.

The owner of PB 420, in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego, Ziegenfelder says his business model is simple. Turn a profit on t-shirts, soaps, hats or hemp sneakers and use that to subsidize the cost of medicine for their approximately 300 collective members.

“Like the Girl Scouts,” says Ziegenfelder, noting that organization sells cookies to offset the cost of its other programs.

Marijuana at PB 420 is grown by members and sold at bottom-of-the-market prices. PB 420 has a $15 per gram maximum and many strains come in at $5 or $10 a gram, a price at the low end for San Diego dispensaries. Sales of hats and other gear pay for most of the collective’s operating costs.

Ziegenfelder always makes sure his members understand the connection between reasonable prices at the counter and the t-shirt rack in back.

“Worse case scenario, if we’re in dire financial straits, you could say to the collective member, ‘We need you to buy a t-shirt. Please, feel free to buy a t-shirt, so we can keep the doors open,’” says Ziegenfelder.

Rasta colors on the balcony and Technicolor signage make it hard to overlook this dispensary. But Ziegenfelder said the location is a challenge. The building, which was empty when he set up shop and renovated in July, is on a busy divided roadway, and one-way streets make it relatively hard to reach. But plenty of parking is available and the slightly out-of-the way location is less exposed than some other store front operations, giving patients a more private experience.

Patient comfort is also a big concern for Ziegenfelder. Only one patient is allowed into the back room at a time, something Ziegenfelder says is just common sense.

“When you get to the pharmacy, you don’t have someone standing right behind you. It’s patient confidentiality,” says Ziegenfelder, who is battling cancer.

The store sells only flowers and no concentrates of any kind, which are common in other dispensaries in San Diego. Ziegenfelder says he doesn’t believe those products are legal under California law, underscoring the still-convoluted enforcement situation in this city. Ziegenfelder says he has not had any visits from law enforcement, despite raids in San Diego as recently as October.