Best Budtender

Photo by Colin Houck
  1. Tyler Banks (Moss Crossing) 2751 Friendly Street. 541-636-3724. Mosscrossing.com.
  2. Darien McCartney (Moss Crossing) 2751 Friendly Street. 541-636-3724. Mosscrossing.com.
  3. Biff Miller (Eugene OG) 2045 Franklin Boulevard. 541-505-7575. Eugeneog.com.

Tyler Banks is a budtender at Moss Crossing who has worked there since its inception on the Winter Solstice three years ago. Moss Crossing is a clean and well-organized dispensary in Eugene’s Friendly Street neighborhood that radiates trendiness from its logo to the angular, minimalistic pipes displayed on its walls. It’s not your grandma’s dispensary. And if you’re a novice or a pot-smoking professional, Banks — the man voted Eugene’s best budtender — is there to help.

“It’s kind of a culmination of all the jobs I’ve had in the past,” Banks says, who thinks that his customer service history has prepared him to converse with customers, answering whatever questions they have — and some have a lot.

Banks says that Moss Crossing is unique because the business does customer consultations, taking weed customer service to the next level. He says that some people have hundreds of questions to ask about trying marijuana. “This is people’s livelihood,” he says. “There’s a big responsibility on our shoulders.”

It may seem surprising in Eugene, but according to Banks, many of his customers are fairly naive when it comes to buying weed.

“Maybe 50 percent of the customers that come in everyday are re-introducing themselves to cannabis,” he says. Many customers come in per a doctor’s recommendation, and the budtenders are responsible for answering questions that the doctors don’t have, he adds.

“There’s benefits from all these cannabinoids and how we can navigate that conversation is why we’re here to help,” Banks says. “People are actually using this to better their lives, I feel very fulfilled in contributing to that.”

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