Outside it was 99 degrees, even in the shade, and way too hot for humans and dogs, too. Inside, with the air conditioning blasting away, Red Door Remedies felt like a cool oasis on the edge of a desert. Opened only since mid-April, the cannabis dispensary on S. Cloverdale Boulevard is still forging its identity, but it already has a wide variety of top-notch marijuana products and a loyal clientele who come from nearby and from distant hills and dales.
The owners, Diana Schraner and Jammie King, are at the ready with all kinds of remedies. Theirs is the northern-most cannabis dispensary in Sonoma County. It’s also not far from the Mendocino County line, which means that it offers marijuana cultivated on farms in Mendocino, as well as in Trinity, Humboldt, Lake and Sonoma. The company tries to stay as local as possible so the salesmen and women behind the counter can genuinely say, “we know the farmer and his or her practices.”
Still, there are products from large corporations with big name recognition. Some customers want cannabis the equivalent of Bud Lite. Not surprisingly, local farmers complain that Red Door sells corporate cannabis. You can’t please everyone, but if you want diversity, you’ll find it here and at affordable prices, sometimes with discounts, especially for seniors and veterans. Many customers grow their own weed, but want a change of pace.
Nothing in the store is black market; the products are all tracked and traced. Every aspect of the business is regulated and everything is tested. That’s one of the major benefits of the brave new regulated, taxed and legalized cannabis industry. Consumers know what they’re getting, including the percentages of THC and CBD and the number of milligrams in each product.
Until recently, Cloverdale residents often drove to Santa Rosa to buy their medicine of choice. Now they don’t have to make that trek. Who was it that said, “It’s all about convenience”? It’s as true in the cannabiz as any other.
Red Door is near the S. Cloverdale exit/entrance to 101 and across the street from Starbucks. You can’t miss it, and, if it’s cannabis you want, you can’t go wrong.
Diana Schraner and Jammie King are business partners and friends. They’re both in their early 50s, look young and are definitely outgoing. Their kids went to school together. Schraner is the company president and the buyer. King is the CEO. Red Door Remedies is their dream come true and one that they pursued for years.
Jammie is married to Patrick King, a legend in the world of northern California cannabis who’s known as “The Soil King” and who has grown bodacious pot plants that produce 10 pounds or more. Recently, when asked to describe them, he said, “they’re big, beautiful and sexy.” Patrick added, “If I’m the Soil King, my wife must be the Flower Queen. I’m really proud of her and Diana.”
Over the years, Jammie has learned heaps from Patrick, as have hundreds of others in the cannabiz. She used his homegrown weed to treat a GI tract that wasn’t working properly and that gave her fits. Opioids didn’t help. Cannabis did. That’s a familiar story these days from Cloverdale to Sebastopol, Windsor, Healdsburg and beyond.
Diana was reared in a hippie household. She remembers her parents removing seeds and stems from their pot, rolling joints, getting stoned, listening to music and dancing. Hippies, she says, were far mellower than the folks who consumed alcohol and got into fights. Schraner’s husband and son are part of the legitimate cannabis industry with a long backstory in the outlaw days that provided a real education and garden smarts.
The two partners located the space at 1215 S. Cloverdale Boulevard in 2015; they paid the rent from 2016 until they opened in 2019. “The whole process, including working with the city, was blood, sweat and tears,” King said. It wasn’t until citizens approved the Cloverdale cannabis tax that she and Schraner knew their business would be a go. Then they had to raise money and convince themselves they could do it, without men. Yes, they can!
On the way to opening the dispensary they came across shady characters and learned about investment fraud in the cannabis industry. “Some people say still offensive things,” Schraner explains. “They think that Patrick King must be the real owner.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Still, Patrick did play a key part. After all, his marijuana healed his wife and sent her on the road to wellness.
If you live in Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Hopland or anywhere along the 101-corridor north of Santa Rosa and south of Willits, Red Door Remedies is worth a visit, not only for the cannabis products, but also for the opportunity to see a homegrown business that’s well-run by two savvy women.
Jonah Raskin is the author of Dark Day, Dark Night: A Marijuana Murder Mystery.
