The aliens have landed on Long Island. Naturally, they brought DJs, budtenders, a movie studio and their own social network.

There are easier places to build a media empire than inside a dispensary in Farmingdale.

Planet Nugg apparently did not get the memo.

In less than two years, the alien-themed Long Island company has gone from opening its flagship to throwing literally hundreds of parties, building production studios, launching original shows, developing its own social platform and preparing a second dispensary on the North Fork.

Somewhere along the way, selling cannabis became only one department on the mothership.

From the parking lot, Planet Nugg still looks like a dispensary. Get closer and the thing starts behaving more like a collision between MTV, a neighborhood clubhouse, a tech startup and an extremely knowledgeable plug.

“We’re more than a dispensary. We’re all about the experience,” says Wally. “So from the moment that you walk through the door, how you're greeted even by the security guards to the detail and attention that the budtenders pay to people, we want to create and curate a customer experience like no other.”

That starts on the retail floor, but Planet Nugg has treated the store as a launchpad rather than the entire mission.

There are concerts and parties. There’s a podcast studio. There’s a branding agency. There’s television production and a movie studio. There’s an app. There’s a streaming network.

Dave Tubens puts the original intention more simply: “When we had started Planet Nug we didn't just create a head shop and we really wanted to create something special where everybody felt comfortable.”

The company’s tendency to keep adding rooms to the spaceship actually began with a very terrestrial problem.

Jimmy came to the industry from craft beer and marketing, expecting to bring many of the same digital strategies with him. Instead, he ran directly into the absurdity familiar to almost everyone working in New York’s legal market: operating a licensed, tax-paying business while social platforms can still treat your content like contraband.

“I did a post over here and I got shadow banned. These three shadow bans laddered up to get me literally kicked off a social media platform,” Jimmy says.

Planet Nugg’s answer was not to behave better.

It was to build its own internet.

“So really I think it was sort of this natural evolution of like, we have to build our own playing field. Nobody wants to play in our sandbox, so let's build our own.”

First came Planet Nugg Media, then Celestial Branding, its branding agency. A podcast studio followed inside the Farmingdale dispensary, then a larger television production studio and movie studio.

“And then we were like, you know what? Let's just create our own social media app and let's create our own TV network.”

So they did.

The app is Bluntlee, built as a cannabis-friendly social platform where users can talk about dispensaries, post reviews, discover events and earn rewards without constantly negotiating the censorship rules of mainstream networks. Wally describes it as something approaching “Weedmaps meets Instagram.”

Then there’s Plug TV, Planet Nugg’s forthcoming OTT network, built for televisions, phones and streaming devices with a slate stretching well beyond advertisements for what’s on the shelves.

That distinction is important to Tubens.

“We're looking to show the public and the masses what it's really about,” he says, describing programming that can move between wellness and exercise, cooking, culture and behind-the-scenes looks at how products are grown, processed and made.

In other words, Planet Nugg doesn’t simply want to advertise the industry. It wants to make television about it.

The Hot Box centers DJs and recorded sets. The Roll Out Room brings emerging rap artists into the studio. Nugtalk, hosted by Jimmy and Wally, gives founders room to talk about moving from legacy into New York’s legal market. The Cannabis Chronicles goes inside dispensaries and processing facilities with what Wally calls a “crib style view” of the industry.

Jimmy says the operation is working toward 12 original half-hour programs a week.

And Planet Nugg’s media ambitions make more sense when you look at what it has already done in the physical world. Since opening, the company has thrown hundreds of parties, concerts, community activations and brand events. The point isn’t simply to get people through the door once. It’s to give them reasons to remain in Planet Nugg’s orbit.

That matters as New York retail gets more crowded. Good products are easier to find. Beautiful stores are easier to build. Price can always be undercut.

Culture is harder.

And beneath the aliens and spaceship jokes, the retail operation itself takes education seriously. Planet Nugg mandates brand training for every employee, with custom training videos shot in its own studio, quizzes on the products they carry, and ongoing product education designed to make sure the people behind the counter actually know the brands on the shelves. Jimmy admits that even he got schooled by his own staff after walking in and asking for the highest-THC product.

“I thought I was a cannabis expert until I met them,” he says.

Planet Nugg’s clientele can be just as surprising. “One of our best customers is this 93-year-old dude,” he says. “He's walking in here on his own behalf. I don't know what he gets, but he's here a couple times a week.”

Now the mothership is headed east.

Planet Nugg’s second dispensary is planned for 720 Main Road in Riverhead, bringing the operation into a very different part of Long Island: vineyards, farm stands, beaches and destination weekends on the North Fork.

And instead of transplanting Farmingdale wholesale, the company is adapting.

“We're opening up in the wine region of the North Fork of Long Island,” Tubens says. “This is going to be a vineyard style dispensary.” The four-acre property, he says, is being conceived as an interactive, relaxed destination that fits the area rather than fighting it.

Planet Nugg isn’t approaching expansion like a conventional chain, where the goal is to reproduce the same store as many times as possible. The North Fork location is being designed for the North Fork.

“Everything here is a gamble,” Jimmy says. “We're taking a swing at the things that we know about and that we believe in and we know we can make better.”

That gamble gets at what Planet Nugg seems to understand earlier than most: retail can get you a customer. Culture can get you a following.

And a following will travel a lot farther than Farmingdale.

All the way to Planet Nugg.

We featured Plant Nugg on the cover of ou rmost recent print edition. Found here!

For more on Planet Nugg visit https://planetnugg.com and Instagram