Green Lightning is a new cannabis dispensary and cultivation/manufacturing facility which opened recently in Cinnaminson. I visited the 1,500sf dispensary (opened early January), and got the full tour of the 23,500sf cannabis growing and manufacturing facility! Honestly it was very interesting and a lot more scientific than I expected!
The retail aspect of Green Lightning offers a friendly environment for customers to shop the largest selection of cannabis products in the state. I chatted with the “budtender” staff who were very knowledgeable, friendly and eager to educate.

For the grow rooms, every aspect of the process from the temperature to the lighting, watering and even the “recipe” of the water itself… is fully controlled and monitored by a sophisticated computer system which is programmed by the staff!
And every variable that goes into the grow process is tied to specific strains. For example, while I expected that the water would be filtered before used in the facility, I was blown away to see that there was a large room just for blending water with the required nutrients into specific recipes matching a particular strain of cannabis… which is then stored and pumped into the automatic watering process directly to the plants.

Absolutely just seeing the grow rooms and then learning more about the process, it immediately made me think of Epcot in Orlando… “The Land” ride where they showcase advanced agriculture techniques. I joked with co-owner Tim that all they needed to do was add the boats and sell tickets for a tour!
Note: They do not offer public tours of the cultivation and manufacturing aspects.
And for those immediately asking, when I entered the growing facility stood amongst thousands of plants… it just smelled like plants. Just like they were growing tomato plants.

Tim said they put a lot of care into air management, and in fact all of the air handling equipment that you would normally see on the roof of a building, are located INSIDE the facility.
Located at 1503 Taylors Lane, Green Lightning Dispensary and Cultivation facility is 3 minutes from the Route 130 intersection where the new Popeye’s and Tim Hortons are located.

Green Lightning Dispensary
The Green Lightning dispensary is located at the front of the building with parking on either side.
Open daily from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, you enter at the front center of the building where after a simple check-in process you head to the right to enter the store.

While there are larger cannabis stores based on square footage, Tim tells me they carry over 10 different brands and 400 products… which is the largest variety of products in the state.
And this is before the Green Lightning product starts becoming available in about two months!
Product categories include the full gambit including flowers, concentrates, edibles, pre rolls, vapes, merchandise and more.
Green Lightning also offers a loyalty program which offers member only benefits such as generous discounts, early access to new arrivals, surprise gifts on your birthday and personalized offers.

Green Lightning Cultivation and Manufacturing
The retail aspect of Green Lightning is a very important part of the business model, but clearly the cultivation and manufacturing aspect at 15x the square footage is a much larger portion of the business … where they expect 90% of the products they produce to be sold at other dispensaries in the State of New Jersey.
Which is an important part of the New Jersey Cannabis industry because State laws state that all of the product sold in New Jersey dispensaries be grown and manufactured within the state… which keeps the jobs within the State.
When fully operational Tim expects they will employ about 40 people in the Cinnaminson facility.

The building previously existed as a warehouse, but what the team has done is basically built a building within a building!
Each of the seven grow rooms are free-standing within the walls and fully self-contained… sealed off by special doors.
As I walked through several of the grow rooms I had to wear protective foot gear because in an effort to grow the best product, they want to make sure that no other outside aspects make their way into the facility.

And as mentioned the air is processed and temperature controlled fully inside the building, the water is filtered and nutrients added before use… and then everything is systematically balanced for each individual plant!
You would likely expect this, but the lighting systems are also computer controlled to create the optimal day/night scenarios which can vary as the plant matures.
All of this innovation takes the growing process from a 16 week cycle down to about 12 weeks!

So I have never been next to even a single cannabis plant before in my life so I am far from an expert, but standing amongst hundreds of plants in a grown room it was clear to me that this level of control and science produced probably the healthiest plants of anything that I’ve ever seen!
The separation of multiple grow rooms does allow them to isolate strains where necessary, but mostly it is designed to keep a constant flow of plants reaching maturity so that every few weeks there’s another batch of cannabis ready for the manufacturing process.

There are several single-level rooms for the plants to do their more significant growing, but then realizing in the very early stages from seed to small plants they don’t need 9 feet of headroom, there are several rooms where the plants are positioned in two or three levels.
And every single pot has its own dedicated water feeding tube, the soil is tested for water content and nutrients, and the system just does what it was programmed to do in creating a healthy plant.
For the manufacturing aspect of Green Lightning they are just bringing that online now. If you factor in it takes three months to grow a mature plant they smartly focused on the “grow” side first and are now building out the manufacturing.

Green Lightning will be manufacturing the full product assortment including flowers, vape cartridges, gummies and even chocolates which were somewhat recently approved for sale in the state of New Jersey.
There were at least four different rooms allocated for the manufacturing process commonly smartly divided specific to the product.
The team expects the first “Grown and manufactured in Cinnaminson” Cannabis products to hit their retail shelves in mid/late March.

Links and Location
Green Lightning Dispensary and Cultivation/Manufacturing
1503 Taylors Lane
Cinnaminson, NJ 08077
Dispensary Open daily: Monday to Sunday
Hours: 9AM – 9PM