CUSTOM WEBSITE · PHOTO & FILM
Blazed Cannabis
A family dispensary that can’t buy an ad, with a homepage menu eight months out of date. We rebuilt it around a live menu wired to the register — so the website finally keeps up with the counter.
5 min
how out of date the online menu can get now. It used to be eight months.
683
products on crawlable menu pages, each marked up for Google with price and brand
100
Lighthouse score on the live menu in all four categories, with 108 products on the page
THE FINISHED SITE
A first visit, recorded on the live site.
Through the 21+ gate, past the hero film, and down the homepage to the state’s warnings and the license number in the footer. Recorded on blazednm.com in launch week.
THE PROBLEM
A family shop, with a website working against it
Blazed is a family dispensary in the Agora Shopping Center in Eldorado, just outside Santa Fe — James and Jennifer, their sons Dominic and Anthony, and more than fifteen years in the cannabis business. The shop runs on regulars and conversation at the deli counter. The website ran on a Wix template the family updated by hand.
The menu was where it broke. It was a strain list typed into the homepage, and the Internet Archive caught it still reading “as of 10/10/25” in April 2026 and again in June — eight months after the date at its top. The “Order Online” button sent people to an old ordering store the shop no longer used. At kickoff, the family told us plainly: the menu online was wrong, and it was confusing customers.
And there was no way to buy around it. Google and Meta won’t run ads for THC, so for a dispensary the website and organic search are the whole storefront.
THE RECEIPTS
“Strain List as of 10/10/25”
Still the menu on the homepage in the April and June 2026 archive captures.
“Order Online”
Every menu and ordering link pointed at the shop’s old ordering store.
“Proudly created with Wix.com”
A template site with no live connection to what was on the shelf.
THE RULES
Five rules no template was built for
New Mexico’s Cannabis Control Division writes the rules for dispensary marketing, and they shaped every page of this site. The family’s compliance contact signs off on the final word; we built to spec from day one.
- 1
Nobody under 21 sees anything.
A 21+ gate stands in front of every page on the site, before a single photo or product loads.
- 2
No card checkout for THC.
Ordering runs through a licensed cannabis menu platform, paid in cash or cashless ACH at pickup.
- 3
Warnings and the license, every time.
The state’s required warnings on every product page, and the retail license number in the footer.
- 4
No health claims.
The family’s own notes tied products to ailments. None of that language could carry over to the site.
- 5
Nothing that appeals to minors.
No cartoon, candy-styled, or celebrity-branded packaging in the photography, and no one shown using.
THE PROCESS
How we walked through it, together
A standing Thursday call with the family, drafts sent early and often, and a simple question at every step: is this you? If not, what’s off? Here’s the path from kickoff to launch.
Jul 9
Kickoff
Three goals from the first call: move past mom-and-pop to a brand that looks as professional as the shop runs, grow organic traffic since paid ads are off the table, and teach the family to run the site themselves.
Jul 22
Five directions, on paper
Five complete design decks, nine slides each — palette, type, a homepage mock, photography direction for Wes. Every deck used the same homepage copy, so the family compared design, not words. When the discovery form came back “Bold & Vibrant: love it,” a sixth followed: Brick & Bright.
Adobe Dusk 
Canyon Road 
The Mercantile 
The Silversmith 
Piñon & Sage 
Brick & Bright· Chosen Aug 6
The winner, made theirs
Brick & Bright won the room, with one note: too contemporary, not enough them. So the second round came straight from the family’s own things. Horizon lines from the rays of their Zia logo. A gradient sampled from the logo file itself. And the brick wall regulars know, used as an honest nod instead of a costume.
Ember #AA2E23Burnt orange #D47C27Amber #E5A623Gold #E4C520Forest #0F3E25Snowcap #BCE4EAAug 10
The stale menu comes down
While the real site was built, blazednm.com switched to a clean interim page — address, hours, directions, the license, and no menu. Nothing wrong left online.
blazednm.com
Aug 27
The register, wired to the website
Flowhub’s inventory API, connected. About 1,150 raw inventory rows came back on day one. We collapsed the duplicates batch by batch, sorted everything into five collections, read strain types the way the shop actually records them, and priced deli flower by the gram, eighth, quarter, and ounce.
Sept
The shoot
Wes photographed the shop, the family behind the counter, and a fly-fishing trip into the high country, and cut a brand film. Then every frame went through a compliance pass: anything showing consumption, or cartoon, candy-styled, or celebrity-branded packaging, stayed out.
Sept 28
Live
Launch day: a final security pass, a clean crawl, and Google Search Console verified with the sitemap read. The family’s only note on the final review: the spelling of one name.
THE BUILD
A storefront that keeps itself current
Four pieces carry the site: a menu that updates itself, a phone-first layout, compliance built into the components, and search built in from the first commit.
The menu keeps itself.
Every product on the shelf is on the site, pulled from the shop’s Flowhub register every five minutes. When something sells out at the counter, it drops off the website on its own — nobody types a strain list again.
Order Ahead hands off to their licensed Flowhub store for pickup in Eldorado. And if the inventory feed ever hiccups, the site shows a calm “call us” note instead of an error page.
Built for the phone in the parking lot.
Customers check the menu on their phones — at home, in line, in the car out front. So the whole site — the gate, the menu, the collection pages, Order Ahead — was designed and tested at phone width first, then opened up for desktop.
Live stock counts sit right on the category list, so a customer sees how many pre-rolls are on the shelf (252, the day we recorded this) before they tap in.
Compliance in the components, not a checklist.
The 21+ gate stands in front of every page. New Mexico’s required warnings live in one reusable component on every product page, so they can’t be forgotten or reworded. The retail license sits in the footer, site-wide.
The Learn page explains cannabinoids and terpenes — what they are, how to read a label — without a single health claim.
Performance
Accessibility
Best Practices
SEO
The live Flower menu, 108 products on the page, on desktop and on mobile. Lighthouse 12, October 2026. The homepage scores 100 across the board on desktop; on mobile its full-screen film brings performance to 85.
Search, built in from the first commit.
With ads off the table, the menu itself has to rank. So it lives on real pages Google can crawl, not in an embedded widget it can’t read: 683 products, each marked up with its price and brand.
Add FAQ and local business data, an llms.txt so AI search tools can describe the shop accurately, and a sitemap Google Search Console read on launch day.
THE SHOOT
Wes behind the camera
The design asked for real photographs, so Wes made them: the family under the portal, James at the jar wall, Jennifer at the counter, and a high-country fly-fishing trip for the outdoor side of the brand. More than sixty original frames made the site, alongside a brand film that tells the family’s story in their own words.
Photography and film by Wes · Creative Flow Studio
THE SITE, END TO END
Scroll the site, not a picture of it.
The live Blazed Cannabis homepage, captured top to bottom at desktop and phone widths. You drive the scroll. The notes in the margin follow the page as it moves.
EVERY PAGE
One system, every page
The same horizon lines, logo gradient, and brick courses run from the live menu to the Lookbook to the Contact page — at desktop width and in your pocket.
THE RESULT
What changed, line by line
The menu
BeforeA strain list typed into the homepage, still dated 10/10/25 eight months later.
NowEvery product on the shelf — 704 in launch week — synced from the register every five minutes.
Ordering
Before“Order Online” led to an old store the shop no longer used.
NowOrder Ahead opens their licensed Flowhub store. Pay cash or ACH at pickup in Eldorado.
Search
BeforeOne Wix page, with the menu as a block of homepage text.
Now683 products with Product markup on five crawlable collection pages, plus FAQ and local business data, an llms.txt for AI search, and a sitemap Google has read.
Photography
BeforeVendor promo graphics.
Now60+ original photographs and a 75-second brand film, all shot by Wes.
Compliance
BeforeA pop-up age check.
NowA 21+ gate on every page, the state’s warnings in one reusable component, the license in the footer, and no health claims anywhere.
Ownership
BeforeA site rented from Wix.
NowTheir code, their photos, their film — owned outright.
The register keeps the website honest now. The family gets to keep their attention on the counter.
Launched September 28, 2026. Organic search numbers from Google Search Console get added here as they come in.
A family shop deserves a website that keeps up with the counter. Blazed has one now — and the menu updates itself.