Vunley Long
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01 — Project overview
Minnesota legalized adult-use cannabis in 2023. Levitated is a locally owned dispensary in the Longfellow neighborhood of South Minneapolis. It's backed by the same investors as Elevated Beer Wine & Spirits and shares its building on Hiawatha Avenue.
The owners wanted a destination dispensary: the easiest, most elevated way to shop, and a store that leads with education instead of just transactions. They needed a brand that could hang on a storefront and a website that could do real work. That meant ranking locally, sending shoppers to online ordering, and staying on the right side of a brand-new set of state advertising rules.
I designed the identity, built the website from scratch, and handled much of the launch: hosting, Google and Apple business listings, the newsletter, and the compliance updates after opening.
weeks from the first coded shell to a live site, two months before the doors opened.
02 — Logo, type & color
The brief was clear from day one: the dispensary should feel on brand with Elevated, the liquor store its investors already run in the same building. Customers walking between the two stores should know right away that they're related.
I presented four greens, from a muted sage to a bright chartreuse, each shown on white and reversed out of a solid block so the owners could judge it both ways.
The stacked logo was the hero, but storefronts, headers, and social banners need a wide version. I tested three mark-to-wordmark ratios to find where the chevrons hold their own without crowding the name.
Ahead of opening, the owners needed a large horizontal banner for the storefront. They were still deciding between "Dispensary" and "Dispensaries", and the banner had to share space with Looner Cannabis, a signage partner.
The primary brand color. On white it's 3.5:1, so it's used for large type, buttons, and UI, not for body text.
A darker partner at about 5.4:1. It handles links and small labels, so the green still passes WCAG AA at body size.
A warm off-white page and near-black text are easier on the eyes than pure black on white. Merriweather headings add a calm, editorial voice.
03 — Strategy
Levitated sells through Flowhub, a cannabis point-of-sale system that handles inventory, payments, and compliance in a hosted online store. The big question was how much of that store the website should try to rebuild.
Cheapest, but every search for flower near me lands on Flowhub's domain, not Levitated's.
Indexable category and brand pages on levitateddisp.com, each with a clear button into the matching Flowhub category to order.
Pull live inventory through the API and render every product natively. It's the best SEO, but too much build for a store about to open.
I recommended the middle path. When someone searches "buy flower Minneapolis," they should land on Levitated's site and then move to Flowhub only to check out. That gets SEO value on the brand's own domain with no API work, no duplicate-content issues, and low upkeep. A full headless build stays on the table for later.
The owners set up their category tree in Flowhub, and I matched it page for page: flower, pre-rolls, vapes, edibles, concentrates, CBD, tinctures, accessories, and non-taxed accessories.
The website's job is to be found and to explain. Flowhub's job is to take the order.
04 — Website
In late May I put a working shell online for the owners to click through. From there we worked in tight feedback rounds: they sent numbered notes, I sent back numbered fixes, often the same day.
No page builder. The site is PHP with shared partials, Bootstrap 5, and Sass, with the brand colors set as variables so every component inherits them.
05 — Compliance
Cannabis is one of the most tightly regulated things you can advertise. Minnesota's Office of Cannabis Management sets rules on who can see the site, what it must say, and what it must never claim.
My first version asked for a date of birth, the most cautious option. The owners preferred a simple yes/no, which is the norm for local dispensaries. I rebuilt it as a single-click modal that remembers the answer for 30 days, so returning shoppers don't see it again.
When the state issued new required advertising language in August 2026, I replaced the short footer warning with the full prescribed text on every page.
Working through a review checklist from the owners, I removed effect and wellness language across the category pages ("relief," terpene effects, "cleaner than flower"). I also rewrote the consumption, returns, and purchase-limit copy so it matches current law.
After launch, the age gate turned out to be the first H1 on every page. I changed it to a proper role="dialog" with an H2 label. It looks the same, but search engines and screen readers now see each page's real heading.
06 — Launch
Licensing in a brand-new market takes time. The identity went to work two years before opening day, starting with "Coming Soon" posts for Instagram and Facebook that announced both planned markets, White Bear Lake and Minneapolis.
The site went live in late June 2026, two months ahead of opening day. That gave Google time to find it. In the meantime, every Shop button pointed to a "store coming soon" page and a notify-me signup, so early visitors became newsletter subscribers instead of dead ends.
Google requires a live video walkthrough to verify a business, so I went to the space and streamed it. The Google Business Profile went live the next day. Apple Business followed in August.
The newsletter told subscribers the wait was over. The site switched from "coming soon" to live Flowhub ordering for pickup.
Cross-promotions with Elevated next door, medical-card offers, Ghost post metadata wired into share previews, and Search Console indexing fixes.
07 — Outcome
Next project — 06
Associated Logistics Group →