Torrey Holistics is the dispensary that rang up the first legal adult-use cannabis sale in California history at 6 a.m. on January 1, 2018, on a license the state numbered A10-18-0000001. Eight years later it is still a family-owned independent on the same Sorrento Valley street, still rated 4.5 out of 5 by hundreds of Leafly reviewers, and still the dispensary I send out-of-towners to when they ask for the most painless first-time experience in San Diego.
I drove down on a Wednesday at 1 p.m., walked in on a quiet weekday lull, and spent forty-three minutes inside. I left with an eighth of Wedding Cake at $48 out the door, a 1g Stiiizy pod at $58, and a single $9 pre-roll. The flower was lab-tested at 27.1% total cannabinoids, the budtender named the dominant terpenes from memory, and the line at checkout never went above three people. That is the case for Torrey Holistics in twenty-eight words.
Torrey Holistics · San Diego, California · rating 4.5 / 5
10671 Roselle Street, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92121 (Sorrento Valley) · (858) 558-1420
Open Monday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
California adult-use license A10-18-0000001, the first one issued in the state.
The first legal rec sale in California happened here
On January 1, 2018, the morning California’s adult-use market officially opened, the line at Torrey Holistics on Roselle Street was already wrapped around the building before sunrise. Henry Wykowski, an attorney representing the shop, told Times of San Diego that morning that Torrey was one of only two San Diego retailers ready to sell on day one and the only one that had received the state license number A10-18-0000001, the first dispensary license the California Bureau of Cannabis Control issued for adult-use sales. The first customer was reportedly served at 6:00 a.m. and the shop sold flower, edibles, vapes, and concentrates to a stretched-out queue all day.
You can verify the license still on the California Department of Cannabis Control license search by typing the address or the license number into the lookup tool. The store has held the license continuously since issuance, has not changed hands to a multi-state operator, and has not relocated. In a state where most independent operators have either sold to an MSO or shut down, that is the rare combination.
What forty-three minutes inside actually looks like
The shop sits in a low-rise commercial strip that looks more like a biotech office than a dispensary. There is a small painted sign, a grey-and-white facade, and a parking lot with maybe twenty-two spaces and an electric vehicle charger nobody was using. Walking in, you pass a security guard who scans an ID, then a small lobby with a reception screen, then through to the main floor.
The main floor is one large rectangle with the bud bar on the left wall, edibles and tinctures along the back wall, and concentrates plus vape hardware on the right. Lighting is warm and the music is mostly Khruangbin, mostly low. There were six budtenders working when I came in and three customers ahead of me. I waited four minutes to get checked in at the front, two more minutes for a budtender to be free, and the rest was conversation about flower.
The budtender who took me, who introduced herself as Jasmine, asked what I was after. I told her I had not bought from Torrey before and I wanted to see what their top-shelf indoor flower looked like in 2026. She walked me through three jars: a Wedding Cake from Cresco at 27.1% total cannabinoids, a Mendo Breath from Stiiizy at 24.9%, and a small-batch Zkittlez from a craft cultivator I had not heard of called Proof at 26.4%. She named the dominant terpenes on each from memory and pulled up the COA on her tablet to verify the lab numbers when I asked. The Cresco Wedding Cake was $48 out the door for an eighth, including the 21.91% combined city, county, state, and excise tax bite that California layers on every receipt (per CDTFA and the San Diego City Treasurer).
The bud bar smelled like a humidor that had been left open. Each jar was Boveda-stabilized and the flower was photographed and described on a little card next to the jar. The Wedding Cake was a dense, frosty, slightly purple bud the size of a thumbprint, gas-forward on the open jar, no shake at the bottom. That is what top-shelf in 2026 looks like in California, and Torrey is one of the shrinking number of shops that can still source it consistently. The receipt came on a printed slip and a digital copy emailed to me. I was out the door in forty-three minutes flat.
The menu is deeper than the room looks
The menu carries 130 to 150 flower SKUs at any given time, broken into a clear ladder. The bottom shelf is small-batch outdoor and mids in the $20-to-$30 eighth range, which is rare to find at all in San Diego now that most independents have abandoned the under-$30 tier. The middle shelf sits at $35 to $45 an eighth and includes most of the staple California names, the Rythms, the Cookies, the Connected, the Alien Labs flower drops on the days they show up. The top shelf, where I bought, is $45 to $58 an eighth and runs Cresco, Stiiizy, Proof, and the occasional small-batch indoor that drops in unannounced.
Concentrates is where the menu gets deepest. The bench has live resin, live rosin, badder, sauce, diamonds, and full-melt hash from the usual California rotation: Papa & Barkley, 710 Labs, Traditional for solventless, Raw Garden for live-resin sauce. The 1g 710 Labs persy rosin sat at $90, which is fair for that operator. Stiiizy pods on the bottom shelf were at $35 for a half gram, the Liquid Diamond pods at $58 for a full gram. Edibles included Kiva, Wyld, Papa & Barkley patches, and a Torrey Holistics private-label gummy line at $18 to $22 a tin. The pre-rolls bench had eleven different singles from $9 to $18 and infused multipacks from $30 to $55. I have written the Wyld Elderberry Gummies review separately if you want to read on that line.
What you do not see at most California dispensaries anymore: a working delivery operation that radiates out of the same Sorrento Valley building. Torrey runs its own delivery fleet within most of San Diego County and the same in-store menu shows up on the delivery menu, which most multi-state operators have stopped doing in favor of dropping delivery entirely or routing it through a third-party app.
Pricing is honest, taxes are not
This part is not Torrey’s fault but it shapes the visit. California layers a 15% state excise tax on the post-discount retail price, plus the standard 7.75% county sales tax, plus a city of San Diego cannabis business tax of 8% on gross receipts (per San Diego City Treasurer). Add it up and the visible price on the menu jumps roughly 22 to 24 percent at checkout. A $40 eighth becomes $48.76. A $58 vape pod becomes $70.69. None of it is hidden, the receipt itemizes every line, and Torrey is at industry-standard pricing on every category I priced against the competition. But you should expect the math.
The shop’s daily deals are real. Their loyalty program, called the Torrey Holistics Rewards Program, is a points-per-dollar system with redeemable discounts at higher tiers. They run a 20% off Wax Wednesday on concentrates and a 20% off pre-roll Friday that you can confirm any week on the torreyholistics.com daily-deals page. None of those deals require an app, just an account at checkout.
The Sorrento Valley location is a feature, not a bug
Sorrento Valley sits between La Jolla and Mira Mesa, off I-805 and Sorrento Valley Road, in the canyon corridor that holds most of San Diego’s biotech and tech offices. The 10671 Roselle address is six minutes from UCSD, twelve minutes from La Jolla Cove, fifteen minutes from downtown San Diego, twenty minutes from Pacific Beach, and twenty-five minutes from Coronado in normal traffic. There is one major chokepoint on the inbound, the Sorrento Valley Road / I-805 interchange in the 5 p.m. weekday hour, and otherwise the drive is uneventful.
The trade against the location is that you are not walking from anywhere except the surrounding office buildings. The trade for the location is that the parking is free, the lot is rarely full, and the in-and-out is faster than any storefront I have visited closer to the coast. If you are coming from out of town and renting a car, this is a feature. If you do not have a car and are staying in PB or downtown, the Sorrento Valley Coaster station is a six-minute Lyft from the shop and the Coaster runs hourly to and from downtown San Diego.
Who actually runs Torrey Holistics
The shop was founded by a small group of San Diego operators including Jeff Kahler and Jonathan Daly, and has been described in Cannabis Business Times coverage and the company’s own press as family-owned and independently held. The leadership has not flipped to a multi-state operator the way most original 2018 California licensees have, and the shop has resisted the consolidation pressure on independents that Green Market Report has documented across the state since 2022. That ownership stability matters in California cannabis the way it does in restaurants. The buyer, the budtenders, and the manager I have talked to over the past several visits have been the same people. The buyer’s hand on the shelf shows.
The first-person verdict, expanded
Torrey Holistics is what San Diego cannabis retail looks like when it works. The flower bench is the deepest in the city. The budtenders know what is on the shelf in detail and can pull a COA on demand. The pricing is fair against the California baseline once you account for the 22-to-24 percent tax bite. The location requires a car but rewards you with frictionless parking and the fastest in-and-out I have measured at any San Diego dispensary. The shop has held its license continuously since the morning California rec sales opened, an eight-year run that almost no other 2018 operator can claim, and the family ownership and the buyer’s eye that goes with it shows on every shelf I walked.
The trade-offs are honest. You will not find the lowest possible flower prices in San Diego here, and you will not find the lounge or coffee-bar experience that Planet 13 in Las Vegas built. Torrey Holistics is a 1,800-square-foot retail floor that is good at being a retail floor. If you came for the spectacle, you will be disappointed. If you came for the flower, the verdict is straightforward.
Best for, skip if
Best for: First-time visitors to San Diego who want a low-friction, lab-verified, deep-menu shopping experience without the tourist-tier markup. Locals who care about flower and want a budtender who can actually talk terpenes. Anyone who values an independent shop that has been on the same corner since the day rec sales opened.
Skip if: You are bargain-shopping for the lowest possible eighth in San Diego (try the Mira Mesa value tier instead). You want a lounge, an on-site bar, or any kind of experiential build (Las Vegas tourist dispensaries do that, San Diego retail does not). You do not have a car and you are staying in PB or downtown without a way to reach Sorrento Valley.
What we got here
Torrey Holistics · 10671 Roselle Street, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92121 · (858) 558-1420
California adult-use license A10-18-0000001. Open Mon-Sat 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sun 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Frequently asked
Was Torrey Holistics really the first legal rec dispensary in California?
Torrey Holistics was the first dispensary licensed for adult-use sales in California, holding license number A10-18-0000001 issued by the California Bureau of Cannabis Control on January 1, 2018. Multiple dispensaries across the state opened on day one, but Torrey held the lowest-numbered state license and rang up sales starting at 6 a.m. on Roselle Street.
Where is Torrey Holistics located?
Torrey Holistics is at 10671 Roselle Street, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92121, in the Sorrento Valley neighborhood between La Jolla and Mira Mesa. The shop is six minutes from UCSD, twelve minutes from La Jolla Cove, and fifteen minutes from downtown San Diego in normal traffic. Free parking on site.
What are Torrey Holistics’ hours?
Torrey Holistics is open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Phone: (858) 558-1420.
Does Torrey Holistics deliver?
Yes. Torrey Holistics runs its own in-house delivery fleet across most of San Diego County. The delivery menu mirrors the in-store menu, which most California multi-state operators have stopped doing in favor of third-party app-only delivery.
Is Torrey Holistics expensive compared to other San Diego dispensaries?
Pricing at Torrey Holistics is at the California industry baseline, with a flower-bar ladder running from $20 small-batch outdoor on the bottom shelf to $58 top-shelf indoor at the top. Expect a 22-to-24 percent tax bite at checkout, which is California’s standard layered tax structure (state excise plus county sales plus city cannabis business tax) and not specific to Torrey.
Is Torrey Holistics still independently owned?
Yes, as of 2026 Torrey Holistics remains independently and family-owned. The shop has held license A10-18-0000001 continuously since 2018 and has not sold to a multi-state operator, which is increasingly unusual for original-cohort California licensees.
For more San Diego picks, see the top 5 dispensaries in San Diego hub. For California brand context, see the top cannabis brands in California roundup.
