Seeds in the City: Royal Queen Seeds Opens NYC Store

Royal Queen Seeds (RQS), the Netherlands-born cannabis seed bank now based in Barcelona, Spain, announced its first U.S. retail space in New York City. The store, within The House of Cannabis (THC NYC) in SoHo, offers a selection of over 130 cannabis cultivars, including autoflowers, feminized, and F1 hybrids.

“Once updates to the Farm Bill took place in 2022, and we began offering our legal products to the U.S. market, we knew we had to jumpstart our search for the perfect location to launch a physical footprint,” said Shai Ramsahai, president of RQS. “The House of Cannabis offers a unique environment in ‘The City That Never Sleeps,’ and we feel confident that with this partnership we’ll grow a leadership position in the cannabis seed and cultivation product market here in the States.”

RQS, recognized for its agricultural standards and research in cannabis breeding and cultivation, has sold nearly 500,000 seeds online in the U.S. in the last 10 months. Popular strains include White Widow, Critical, Northern Lights, and newer varieties like Cookies Gelato, Quick One, and Purple Queen.

Maxence Majot, technical manager and grow expert at RQS, compared cannabis cultivation to vegetable gardening, suggesting home cultivation enriches consumers’ understanding of the plant. “A store-bought tomato never tastes as good as one you’ve carefully grown and nurtured yourself,” he said.