THC-friendly Hi Flora restaurant in Minneapolis to close after fine, financial hardship

Minneapolis’ THC-focused restaurant Hi Flora has announced it will close in early December, citing financial struggles following a $7,500 fine from the state’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) over a variety of alleged violations.

Chef and owner Heather Klein, who opened the restaurant in July 2023, posted on Sunday that the business at 2558 Lyndale Av. S. will close Dec. 5.

“This reality has been hard to accept, especially since we’ve built a one-of-a kind safe space that’s all about plants, wellness, healing and connection without alcohol,” Klein said in her announcement on Instagram.

Hi Flora was hyped when it opened a little over a year ago for pairing vegan food with THC “tinctures” — liquid solutions that customers could either take home or add to their food or drinks. The restaurant also sold THC beverages. Klein did not sell alcohol at the restaurant, saying she wanted it to be an alternative for people who don’t drink.

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But financial hardships set in following an incident in August, she said, when a woman ingested too much THC and her party called an ambulance to the restaurant. Charlene Briner, the interim director of the OCM, said it was a “serious adverse health event.” Klein described it differently, calling the episode “a little anxiety” that subsided within 20 minutes.

The ambulance crew reported the incident to the state, which led to an investigation and seizure of some of the restaurant’s products.

“Our enforcement team responded and conducted an inspection that identified numerous noncompliant products and practices,” Briner said. She added that “this was not the first instance of complaints about this business leading to inspectors finding violations.”

The alleged violations from the state included on-site consumption of THC products without an alcohol license, selling products exceeding the legal amount of THC and permitting customers to leave the restaurant with “open cannabinoid products.”

Klein denied selling products exceeding the legal amount of THC. She said that while she did have concentrate products that exceeded the limit, those were only being used as an ingredient to create tinctures that were of a lower THC content.

Klein has applied for and been granted temporary liquor licenses in the past through the city of Minneapolis in order to allow on-site consumption of THC products. But as of Monday, the alcohol license for Hi Flora had expired, according to a city spokesperson.

Because the state said that some of the tincture bottles were mislabeled under a new law that says they need to be labeled as “topicals,” the business has further struggled because they have not been able to sell tinctures, resulting in a 50% drop in sales, according to Klein.

“I would honestly just like [the OCM] to be a little more patient with businesses as they’re navigating this whole system and the new rules,” Klein said in an interview last week.

Klein said she is interested in finding a new, smaller location to reopen Hi Flora in the future.