Nestled in the Whit on 1st Avenue is a brown wooden building with bright-colored murals on the exterior—the home of Going Green Eugene. This may seem like any other dispensary, but it’s far from it. To start with, Going Green Eugene is family-owned and operated. In fact, if you’ve ever visited a Going Green store in Sweet Home, Grand Ronde, or Albany, you’ve experienced the family-owned dispensary brand of which the Eugene store is a part.
Going Green Eugene and Sweet Home are operated by Travis Pomeroy and his two brothers. Their cousins own the Grand Ronde and Albany locations. Going Green began at the Sweet Home location in the medical days and expanded to Eugene in 2020. Both locations still approach selling cannabis with a “medicinal first, recreational second” mindset, understanding that people are often shopping with both in mind. The family business aspect of Going Green doesn’t start with the brothers or their cousins; it starts in their childhood and youth, with a father who was heavily involved in cannabis culture, and a family member with cancer who explored cannabis to alleviate symptoms. “Cannabis has always been a part of our lives; we were raised with it being normal,” Pomeroy expressed.
The family and community oriented aspect of cannabis is foundational to Going Green Eugene. “In the ‘before times’ [before legalization], we came from a place where you were friendly, and you were compassionate,” Pomeroy explained. “That is something you had to have in order to establish and maintain these relationships, and that’s something that you have to have now.” Raised in the eighties and nineties, Travis and his brothers grew up in the collective cannabis culture that was more than just a transaction—it was a shared experience. Your “dealer” was more like a friend than a stranger trying to sell you something. That’s what Going Green Eugene is.
“This culture has always been a word-of-mouth culture up until legalization,” Pomeroy explained, in context of how the culture of cannabis is baked into the training of its budtenders. Going Green Eugene’s staff is full of long-time employees; some, like Dee and Travis J. (yup, there are two Travises’), have been in the industry since the medical days. Another, Kris, has earned a spot on the Best of Eugene list every year since 2021. From Gen-Xers to post-Y2K budtenders like Jacob and Leah, the staff draw on decades of knowledge and diverse personal experience, while still regularly engaging with and learning from each other. “You learn this by doing it, and you learn this by being a part of it,” he continued. As Travis and his staff train each other in this more relational and cultural way, they end up with a deeper understanding and, from my personal experiences at Going Green Eugene, sharper relational skills to help customers make choices beyond just the numbers and percentages of cannabis.
“I have found over the years, handing somebody a pamphlet that has the information on it and saying, ‘learn this,’ is probably the most ineffective way to actually have them learn it. So, you know, there’s a lot of dialogue, lots of that, and sometimes there is just enough information to force you to go look something up. It’s okay to say, ‘I don’t know, let’s find out together.’” For Travis, a budtender should be focused on meeting the needs of the individual, which is separate from customer service in the way it honors that old-school cannabis culture. “All of us are just passionate about the plant, and so [we] are really passionate about learning new things,” he added. This desire to continually learn more about cannabis and the new products being made leads to budtenders who truly help their customers. “Helping people and helping them find what they need is also going to push you down these routes towards finding the information that you need for others.”
This approach to budtender training feels steeped in the pre-legalization era of cannabis culture. Conversations and compassion are at the center—recognizing that, while people need and want different things, everyone appreciates kindness (because let’s be real: no one was going back to the mean dealers in those days, unless they had no other choice). In an industry that is continually becoming more corporate and standardized, holding on to cannabis culture says a lot about budtenders and dispensaries. And Going Green Eugene absolutely integrates the experience of cannabis culture into the environment itself.
The dispensary’s exterior is adorned with murals, and the inside is equally filled with artwork, colorful and informative posters, and jars of beautiful flower on display. Travis and his spouse, Hayden, curate the décor and art on the walls, which is sourced from artists both local and from across the country. “Whenever I am out and about, I am hoping to find something that catches my eye or feels unique, just like the shop does to me,” explained Travis. The relationship between art and Cannabis can be seen across all parts of our culture and, while the pieces they curate for the dispensary differ immensely, the feel of the expansive art harks back to the collaged bedroom and basement walls often associated with “stoner” culture.
If you yearn for the cannabis culture of the olden days, before legalization, then you need to visit Going Green Eugene as well as the other locations. Cannabis culture is not immune to our ever-changing society, let alone the ways corporatization has impacted it, but there are still people and dispensaries that live in and celebrate it—Going Green Eugene is absolutely one of those places.
