A cannabis cafe in Cape Coral has done something Florida has never seen before: it secured a liquor license. Seed and Bean, which already operates a location in downtown Fort Myers, opened its Cape Coral outpost with a full cocktail bar, a sit-down kitchen serving breakfast through dinner, and hemp-derived wellness products - making it simultaneously one of the most ambitious and most legally complex hospitality concepts the state has produced in recent memory.
Eight Months, One Bureaucratic Frontier
Getting there was not simple. Co-founder Cole Peacock spent eight months working through a state permitting process that, by his own account, had no established roadmap. The complication: Seed and Bean is not just a bar, and not just a cafe. It operates as a marketplace - a hybrid retail-hospitality model that required regulators to evaluate it on terms they hadn't applied before. "Getting the liquor license had never really been done before," Peacock said. "We had to spend time going with the state and working through the process of what we're doing, because we also have a marketplace in here."
That friction is actually instructive. Cannabis cafes - establishments where customers can purchase hemp-derived products and consume them in a social setting - have multiplied across the country since the 2018 federal Farm Bill opened the door to hemp products containing delta-9 THC below the 0.3 percent dry-weight threshold. But pairing that model with a full liquor license has remained rare, partly because state alcohol control boards have little precedent for assessing the liability and regulatory overlap. Seed and Bean's Cape Coral location is now, according to Peacock, one of the first such establishments in the nation to hold both.
What the Experience Actually Offers
Walk in, and the concept makes immediate sense. The space greets visitors with a mural anchored in Cape Coral imagery, sliding glass windows that open the interior to the outside air, and a bar that stocks conventional spirits, beer, and wine alongside hemp beer and non-alcoholic seltzers. The food menu runs from morning through evening. The wellness section lets customers choose hemp-derived products at their own discretion - or skip them entirely.
"We've got the beer and wine, the liquor, the coffee, the food that goes with it. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner," Peacock said. "Not a lot of the restaurants here do that. And then you also have the ability to enhance your wellness components if you come in here."
Cape Coral resident Sharetha Davis, who also frequents the Fort Myers location, was direct about the difference: "This one has quite a few more perks, especially when it comes to the painting and the ambiance that they created here. And it's like the sliding glass windows - you can't beat it."
The thing is, ambiance is doing real work here. Cannabis retail has long struggled with an image problem - sterile dispensary lighting, transactional atmospheres, none of the warmth that draws people into a neighborhood bar or brunch spot. Seed and Bean is explicitly building against that. The goal, according to Peacock, is a family-friendly environment with something for everyone, whether that means a cocktail, a hemp seltzer, or a cup of coffee.
The Non-Alcoholic Angle Is Not Incidental
Peacock's decision to stock hemp beer and non-alcoholic alternatives reflects a shift that the broader beverage industry has been tracking for several years. Consumer demand for low- and no-alcohol options has grown steadily, driven by younger demographics who are drinking less but still want something interesting in a glass. Hemp beverages - which can carry the mild, functional effects of cannabidiol or low-dose THC - have emerged as one answer to that demand, occupying a middle ground between a soda and a cocktail.
"If you're looking for something, a non-alcohol alternative, which is a big thing these days, we have hemp beer, we've got seltzers," Peacock said. Fair enough - and for a business trying to serve both the Saturday-brunch crowd and the wellness-oriented weekday customer, that breadth matters. It also reduces the awkwardness of a venue that, without those options, might implicitly pressure every visitor toward either alcohol or hemp products.
What This Model Signals for Florida's Hospitality Sector
Florida has not yet legalized recreational cannabis in the traditional sense - a ballot measure failed in 2024 - but hemp-derived products operating within federal guidelines have expanded aggressively across the state. The Seed and Bean model sits in that space: legal, regulated, and deliberately positioned as wellness-adjacent rather than counterculture.
The liquor license is what sharpens the signal. By clearing that regulatory hurdle, Seed and Bean has demonstrated that the hybrid cannabis-cafe-bar concept can be structured in a way that satisfies Florida's alcohol control framework. That matters downstream - other operators now have a rough blueprint where none existed before. Whether regulators maintain the same openness as this model scales is a separate question, and probably the more interesting one. For now, Cape Coral has something genuinely new.
