New York Spa Gives CBD the Upscale Treatment Standard Dose offers an array of CBD products and experiences.
By Joan Oleck
New York City has no shortage of spas -- centers of calm featuring masses of tea lights, waterfall soundtracks and soft-voiced assistants clad in white and ready to offer a massage, facial or guided meditation.
So, the addition of yet another spa opening Wednesday would have been no big deal, except for the fact that this spa, called Standard Dose, had a twist: It's a "NOMAD" neighborhood storefront, at Broadway and 26th Street, that's selling CBD products and "experiences."
"For me, this is a wellness destination around plant-based medicines," Standard Dose's founder and CEO Anthony Saniger told a visitor. His mission, he explained, is to get Americans off Ambien and Xanax and onto legal CBDs and therapeutic mushrooms. Surrounding Saniger as he spoke during a party Tuesday was an invited crowd of well-dressed young people sampling CBD hors d'oeuvres and CBD cocktails and browsing the store's small displays of curated CBD products.
Those products been selected for Standard Dose's ecommerce website and brick and mortar outlet, Saniger said, following testing by a hand-picked focus group; he emphasized that all products are in compliance with legal guidelines -- meaning they're made of industrial hemp and contain no more than 0.3 percent THC. (Notably absent: edibles, which city authorities recently cracked down on, citing those products' untested, uncontrolled ingredients. However, a spokeswoman said that Standard Dose this summer will offer plant-based food choices that comply with local and federal rules).
Meanwhile, what the Broadway location did offer included CBD patches for sleep issues, hangovers and menstrual pain. Luxury creams for backaches. A Wildflower CBD Wellness Tincture ($79.99). Standard Dose's own Tincture ($89). A hemp-infused raw honey by Potli ($54). Natural Sleep Cream by Dr. Kerklaan ($65). And Maison for Recovery Body Balm ($65).
For what Standard Dose calls its "experiential" offerings, there was an upstairs roof which will host yoga and special programming and, downstairs, a wellness spa slated to open in June.
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On the ground floor were those product displays housed within an attractive Moorish style decor with archways and earth tones designed by architect S R Projects. Further back was a meditation space with a bar which will serve complimentary CBD teas. The space was lit up by an impressive "skylight" depicting cerulean blue sky and an LED-mimicking "sun" -- designed by CoeLux, and reputed to calm the heartbeat rates of hospital patients.
Standard Dose isn't New York's first CBD retail outlet; dispensaries are already operating in the Big Apple, of course. And CBDs are widely available in grocery stores and bodegas. But the notion of specialized CBD collections is something else; newcomers include Come Back Daily, a TriBeCa outlet for the marketplace website Leafley, which opened in January; the Alchemist's Kitchen; MedMen -- and others.
Standard Dose seems to be pursuing the most upscale level of this CBD collections segment -- with a carefully cultivated connection to wellness and luxury and an emphasis on its extensive pre-product-testing phase, in which brands are required to submit laboratory results.
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"This space is a physical manifestation of the Standard Dose brand," Saniger said in a press release of his startup. "It's a calm escape built around guiding and educating consumers on ways to soothe, balance, and alleviate through CBD and plant-based wellness. We want to encourage an informed and honest dialogue about CBD and bring clarity by elevating the standard in a space that is still widely unregulated and misguided."
