Laura Trujillo & Amanda Terpstra: From College Teammates to Cannabis Trailblazers

In this episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast, host TG Branfalt speaks with Laura Trujillo and Amanda Terpstra, co-founders of BestBuds, a woman- and Hispanic-owned dispensary based in Woodbury, New Jersey. Lifelong friends turned business partners, Laura and Amanda share their remarkable story of bootstrapping a licensed cannabis retail business from the ground up—navigating community pushback, lawsuits, zoning battles, and a grueling fundraising process along the way.

Together, they break down how their complementary skills, entrepreneurial drive, and deep community engagement helped them overcome early resistance in a small-town setting. The conversation touches on fundraising challenges for women and minority founders, the changing product landscape in New Jersey, and why staffing and personality fit are critical to cannabis retail success. It’s an inspiring and highly practical look at what it really takes to open—and sustain—a dispensary in today’s regulated environment.

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TG Branfalt:

Hey there, I’m your host, TG Brand Fault, and this is the ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I am joined by Laura Trujillo, COO, and Amanda Terpstra, CEO, their co-founders of BestBuds, a woman and Hispanic owned dispensary based in Woodbury, New Jersey. How are you doing this afternoon?

Laura Trujillo:

Great. Doing great. How are you doing?

TG Branfalt:

I’m doing doing just fine, just fine. Excited to hear about your story. It’s really, really interesting. You guys have a history together and then have brought that to the cannabis space. So why don’t you tell me about your background and how you ended up in the cannabis space?

Laura Trujillo:

I think I’ll start. I’m Laura Trujillo, the COO and co-founder of BestBuds. I think our story goes back to college. Me and Amanda met playing college soccer where our bond was initially formed, running suicides on the soccer field and just dying on that sideline. But through life, through college, we’ve remained best buds, so we really are in fact best buds. We just don’t have it for a name, and it was my grandiose idea to come to her after going over to the West coast for corporate work functions. I would try to go to as many dispensaries as possible on the west coast, knowing that eventually it was going to come over to the East coast. And being a cannabis consumer myself for many years, for PTSD, I always would just like to see how the cannabis industry was helping within the community and how it impacted.

Of course, west Coast and Colorado was probably one of my first stops, and so they were also doing a lot of breweries as well. So wherever there was a brewery, there was a dispensary. So on family vacations, my husband would go to the brewery, I’d go to the dispensary. It is a win-win for everyone. Then I be in my best butt. Amanda, I knocked on her door and one day, and I know she was kind of trying to figure out her what’s the next challenge to be, and I was kind of tired of corporate America and traveling between Jersey and West Coast and I said to her, let’s open a dispensary, man. I came knocking on our door and she looked at me like I was crazy and told me to get out of here, but then I was like, Hey man, let’s go to this Canna Gather event in New Jersey.

Probably one of the first events, it was right when they decriminalized can cannabis and Trenton, so it would be like a $50 fine. And from that moment on, I think we saw the vision and the potential and the networking and just being able to bring something different to the community in Woodbury that will also help Woodbury grow. As a small town in New Jersey, we are a small business and we really want to grow our community around us through the power of cannabis being women. And Hispanic owned is also another niche that we have in the market as well. There’s not very many of us out there that have actually opened, but we’ve been through the rigors, we’ve been through the lobbying, the ordinances in New Jersey, fundraised ourselves. You’ll find that me and Amanda are often called peanut butter and jelly. I am all things creative design. I designed the logo I came up with, the name was on top of getting that trademarked early on. So we are registered, which is really important and she’s all things, I call her my legal and my HR and my business, but I wanted to give Amanda a test to introduce herself in her words.

Amanda Terpstra:

Hey everyone, thanks for having us here today. I’m Amanda and CEO of BestBuds. Yes, I’m all things business. My background comes from a family of entrepreneurs, which is actually how we got located in Woodbury. My grandmother was actually an owner of her own business. She did have a male partner. A lot of people don’t realize that it wasn’t really until the eighties that women could get their own loans and start their own businesses. So to have someone like that in my life so intricate without realizing it and now living my dream of owning their own business, amazing. But ultimately that’s how we got to Woodbury was being familiar with business downtown and the people in the community helped us a lot to get to where we are. But yeah, is Laura’s original dream and vision coming to life, but mine in a different way at the same time

TG Branfalt:

She said that you were maybe a little bit hesitant at first. Do you want to sort of elaborate as to your feelings at the time?

Amanda Terpstra:

Well, I think it was more like Laura was like, Hey, let’s open a dispensary. And I was like, what are you talking about? And she kind of explained to me that cannabis was legalizing and I honestly was a little bit blind to the fact. So it was quite interesting to go to this event and to learn about this emerging industry, and I was at a pinnacle in my career of what’s my next step? So after a lot of thought and discussion and brainstorming and we figured it out and my husband was like, we can do this. And I was like, all right, I’m going to do it. And that was it. The first day I left my job, I actually went to another networking event on cannabis just to keep the ball moving. But yeah.

TG Branfalt:

So tell me a little bit about those early days. Tell me about Woodbury. You described it as sort of a smaller town, right?

Amanda Terpstra:

Yeah, Woodbury, it’s in Gloucester County, New Jersey right across the Walt Whitman from Philly is the county seat of Gloucester County. I grew up in Woodbury Heights, the town over, but my family owned and operated businesses in Woodbury. My grandmother had a title agency, so I grew up doing all this admin work, which you don’t realize what you’re learning until later in life sometimes. But yeah, it’s a cute little small town. It’s redeveloping, it’s growing right now. I think small town America is really making a turn for the comeback and we’re excited to be a part of that with my family and friends being down there, it was nice to kind of reconnect and regroup and there’s a lot of great organizations in the town that are doing a lot and coming together to really try to improve the downtown and get the community back. I think everyone’s kind of on a curve from covid and figuring out what’s going on now and going back to work and things of that nature, but love to be there and continue my family’s legacy. In terms of the city,

TG Branfalt:

Did you guys experience any sort of pushback from maybe local zoning, local authorities, anything like that? Because of the sort of small town nature, it’s often as much harder I think for these types of businesses to get the permits, the necessary permits.

Amanda Terpstra:

I think we were the first cannabis business to be sued for our location in New Jersey.

We got our ordinance passed and we got our resolution and then there was the lawsuit, and it is because we’re downtown, it was harder to get that at first. The city drafted an ordinance that excluded specifically South Broad Street, which is the downtown area, so we had to fight for them to include that and revise it, and then we got the approval and then the lawsuit is that there was a daycare in a church a few doors down, and in my mind, if we have a toddler wandering around the streets that far, I think that that is a bigger concern than cannabis. But yeah, so it was quite interesting. We did win obviously. I mean we got a lot of pushback. They almost opted out and then we kind of rallied a bunch of, we did all kinds of social media email and calling and the town really came out. The people really came out and we rallied and we were one of the first cities in the state before the optout where they opted in and it created a lot of attraction. And then there was some berating at some town council meeting, public sessions of who we are. And I won’t get into the nitty gritty of that, but it was, I don’t know, I don’t know if you want to talk about it, Laura,

Laura Trujillo:

Give you a little bit more color too. At that point, once we decided that we wanted to have our dispensary in Woodbury, New Jersey, we started with going to every single town council meeting. We didn’t want to be people that just showed up and say, Hey, we need this. We wanted to know the town. We wanted to know what was going on, where the needs were. Eventually you got to a point where it was cheers and everybody knew your name. Even just we would present, we knew the people we knew miss so-and-so with the roof, and you start to get to know the community and what they need and where their money is going into and not just going, we would present to the town and at this time it was CBD, the hemp bill had just passed too, but we just started educating them and just having a basic informative educational session on the agenda, not in the public speaking moment.

So it’s official. And so just educating them on CBD and cannabis and very, very elementary stuff to get them to see that you start to create that knowledge and people start to dig a little bit more. It’s power. It’s powerful when they start to research everything and see that it’s not just going to be a bunch of hippie standing around on the corner because that’s what they thought. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you have your people on council that are stuck in that old time ideology. That’s what you’re fighting against because in the towns, those are the people that have the vote and saying, you need an ordinance or you need zoning. So and educating your local town council members and your local zoning officials to really say, Hey, this is a secure facility, more secure than a jewelry store or a casino shop, and it’s not going to smell eventually leading up to it.

But yeah, we did have a lot of pushback and we fought those battles too with expungement events within the town, partnering with local communities and local charities and showing that we were an active partner within the community without even having a business yet, just having the idea of wanting to have a business there. So it took us about probably two years or so of consistently working with the town eventually where we knew that the time was ticking on when to opt in if you’re going to be a New Jersey town in New Jersey to opt in to have cannabis businesses within your town. And then of course once you start that process, then you have to get your zoning, your property. Originally we thought we wanted to go into the medical side before recreational came legal in New Jersey, but that was just a really big, you had to be vertically integrated and it was almost a godsend that we didn’t go into the medical because there’s a big lawsuit, New Jersey, it held those operators and manufacturers back about a year or two.

That’s a year, the two of them paying rent and for something that they don’t know that they’ve even got as far as licensure. And it took probably another year for licensing and hey, we hit the pavement, we fundraised on our own. We had fundraising, we had a fundraising coach for investment and we for almost every day for a year, it was like, how many people can we get in front of and tell our story and take the chance to invest and fine tuning our numbers and our projections and the marketing and the decks and networking, networking, networking. And you just keep working. You just keep believing and keep having faith that you didn’t come this far to come this far. And that’s something that still rings true for us today, even now that we’re open.

TG Branfalt:

That’s reallys really good advice and it’s really incredible story. How did you identify these people within the community to sort of partner with on the expungement events that you mentioned and just sort of the community outreach in general?

Amanda Terpstra:

So I’ll take that. This Amanda, I quit my job and was a hundred percent full-time BestBuds and my goal was just to network, network, network, but also learn at the same time. So as I was networking when the area I joined the local chamber of commerce, we became 365 members of United Way through networking and then I also was on the Gloucester County Economic Development Board. There’s a lot that the county’s done economically to continue to try to build things, but that’s where I kind of met people. There’s a local nonprofit in Woodbury obviously that does expungements and they focus on reentry programs in general. So as I was networking and learning, obviously social equity is a huge thing in the cannabis industry. At the time when you had to apply for medical licensing in New Jersey, it originally had to be that you also had a connection with a nonprofit.

So a lot of people were creating their own nonprofits and I was like, there has to be a nonprofit we can work with because it’s a lot of work to do that itself. So luckily I found a gentleman and their company specialized it. They already had, it wasn’t as attorney driven as some of the programs that you see, which are great as well, but it was really just through constant networking that we met all of these wonderful people. It’s where we built the support with the town. When we had to rally, I mean even these years later when we finally got to site plan approval, we were still calling upon these people like, Hey, we’re hitting this roadblock. Can you help? What do we do? Who do we talk to? So it it’s been the journey, but nonetheless it’s all those connections and all that networking and time and effort put in that has given us that validation and the capability to kind of do things without having to do them ourselves. It’s about who sometimes not how.

TG Branfalt:

And I do want to take a sort of step back a little bit too, and you guys met in college and I do want to know how you each utilized your college degrees in the cannabis business that you started.

Laura Trujillo:

Well, I’m a create graphic designer, bachelor of arts in college, got my degree and my experience, I kind of took everything that I’ve run. I’ve worked at a small business hand coding websites, HTMO, search engine optimization. Back before there was WordPress, I was building and creating and working in marketing and then I worked my way up to a medium sized business where I laid out employment law handbooks and worked in the IT and fixed the network. So I got that knowledge and then I worked at Samsung and I got the security knowledge and managing global teams and international and branding and logo registration and trademarks and setting up trade shows and art and banners. And I took all of that and I put it into BestBuds and I came up with the logo. You needed a slogan, you have to get registered, you want to protect your intellectual copy. That’s Samsung website from the very first job that I did. And I’ve always worked with websites and I built our website.

We started with hemp, CBD to really understand the regulations and really understand, I mean at that time too, it was like 20 19, 20 20 hemp CBD was big on the market and we got a lot of questions from our family members on what’s legit, what’s great. And we created a system to source premium quality CBD. Amanda created this amazing questionnaire to verify lab results and where it was grown to make sure, I think it was to the point where some of them started using our questionnaires. It’s incredible networking to just be able to provide, it’s always been about providing the best product for our consumers to give them the best quality of life that’s always been behind BestBuds. And throughout the journey we’ve become best buds with our town, with communities, with our everybody that we know is our best. But at the core it’s always been about education and just giving human beings like ourselves and everyone around us that better quality of life through the power of cannabis and CBD is a part of that.

And just applying all that to the dispensary side. Now, Amanda and I had security. I worked at Samsung and I was in charge of setting up their trade show booths for their security cameras. So what do you need in the cannabis industry security? So I had my connections and my network backing of great sales guys that are vice presidents and presidents now of companies and just keeping that dialogue going and super, super supportive. Even when back in the day when I was the only one with a med card in Las Vegas and we had a Las Vegas trade show and I would go get some weed for the team, it’s a little bit of full circuit. It’s like you go through the stage of life of learning and absorbing and now it’s like how do you apply it to what you really want to create in life?

And for me, it’s really applying all of my assets. I mean even now I work part, I still have a full-time job and the pharmaceutical industry as a creative director for a small medical communications company. So I see that whole, I work with the FDA and regulations and passing pharmaceutical drugs. So you see if federalization comes down, what that looks like in the cannabis space as well. So it is really applying all those lessons to our business and knowing, although it’s a different animal, I mean I’m sure Amanda can speak to all her finance and business knowledge. So you can start to see the clear lineage here between the till. It

TG Branfalt:

Is kind of crazy though the narrative that people who open these dispensaries become rich overnight. You’re still working another gig.

Laura Trujillo:

We don’t even pay ourselves, man. For us, not yet Lauren, not yet. We’ve been in this, we’ve worked the hardest. We’ve worked two jobs. I mean I would say we work three jobs because we’re moms too

And wives. So it’s a constant balancing effort here. But for us it’s more important to set the company off. First of all, it’s play our employees before us and we’re actively involved. We’re there about two, three times a week at the shop. Not to mention that’s about an hour and 50 minute commute for me, sometimes a two hour commute for Amanda. So it’s balancing your family and schedule and having the employees that are dedicated and really understand that this is your baby and that they just, sometimes we just need you to run the store and we’ll take care of all the other business but can’t clone ourselves and look for us, it’s more important to have a solid team that doesn’t have to worry about their paycheck and their solid 40 hours we’ve been making due for the past six years that we can make, do a little bit more and make sure that we’re off on the right foot.

And that’s also Amanda too because I’m always, sometimes I’m like, man, when we go get paid, you’re not a millionaire because you have a dispensary. Unless you are someone that comes in it from a different business and has made your money and you have the capital to spend, it’s very slow profit growth at it at the beginning. Any qualified investor, anybody will tell you that. It’s not like you get in and first of all, we fundraise 2.25 million. So we had investors to, it’s not like we had it. We went as door to door as you can get, as self-made as it gets, man. And I don’t know if Amanda wants to add anything to it.

Amanda Terpstra:

Yeah, it’s very nice to have when you want a website change or a marketing thing done, I just go, Laura, but I don’t have the wait. That’s the on-demand part. It’s struggle sometimes. But yeah, so I am the all things business. My background, my degree is in business management. Shout out to FDU, Fairleigh Dickinson. That’s where Laura and I met. We also had some fun jobs in college, but

So with business management, ironically Laura looking back and maybe I’m going off on a tangent here, but I took management. I didn’t have a real focus. I didn’t know if I want to do accounting marketing, I wasn’t sure. And I thought I was really going to do marketing and I had someone copy someone else’s work on my team and then we had to go in front of the dean and all this stuff and I was like, I don’t think I’m going to do marketing. Maybe that’s for a good purpose looking back. But yeah, I think growing up in a business world, my grandmother owned title insurance. My grandfather and my father were construction, so it was a perfect match, worked odd jobs in several retail facets. And then out of college I thought I was going to get in the mortgage industry and I left banking and went, I worked at Bear Stearns actually in human resources of all things. I was in my early twenties. It was quite the experience because I was on a Sunday, my boss was calling me, I was like, why is my boss calling me? And it was like, we’re not sure we’re going to open the doors tomorrow. And I’m like, shit. I was like, wonder what is going on? I don’t know. I’m like 22.

TG Branfalt:

That’s a crazy story of itself, man.

Amanda Terpstra:

Yeah, so luckily we got saved by JP Morgan, but I went through, we did all the hiring and I did all the orientation for New Jersey. So it was quite the facet to go through that aspect of HR and learn a lot. I was going to lose my job, but that’s when I got into financial advising. So I got a job as an assistant and I just worked my way up, got fully licensed. I’m actually A CFP by trade, so I was which a certified financial planner. So I left wealth management. And that education I think is what really helped us, not just on the business spectrum and understanding things through my degree, but through that financial experience understanding how do you fundraise? What do these terms mean? What’s a convertible note? What are different ways of fundraising? It’s different when you’re applying those things you learn. But yeah, it’s funny, I’m the legal compliance nerd. I tell Laura, we can’t do that or we can’t pay or that’s not going to happen. I’m always like, you get to do all the fun stuff. And I’m the HR legal nerd. So it’s a fun combination, but that’s where we’re very yin and yang and it works out in terms of being friends, but also because trust me, it reaches the point where we have our moments, but we’re like sisters, then we’ll be like, let’s go smoke a bowl and get some pizza. I don’t know.

Laura Trujillo:

Yeah, I mean look, and a lot of it’s from our soccer relationship, from being teammates from you miss. She was defense and I was offense. I score goals with my head. I am like, yeah, I hated playing. She hated marketing me. But I think it’s just I know what I’m strong at and accepting what I’m strong at. And I am completely, I don’t know, she runs the numbers and the spreadsheets and she’s like Einstein over there and it’s really amazing whenever we get together all the time because she learns something and I learn something new every day and we see each other for that and we don’t try to pretend or we really just bring out the best of each other. And I think that soccer ball always allows you, if you miss a goal, you got to let it go and move on. We go our thing goldfish, we go, yeah, be a goldfish. It’s a hundred percent true. Be a goldfish. They’re the happiest animals in the world. This

Amanda Terpstra:

Is an animal, not really.

TG Branfalt:

So tell me about hiring staff. How do you identify people that you can leave the day to day I guess, or the shop to? How do you find those people and what do you look for?

Amanda Terpstra:

I’m going to jump in really fast on this. Yeah, we had a lot of learning lessons with staffing and I can’t explain to everyone how important personality tests are. It is really interesting. I think if you’ve worked in corporate job, you’ve probably taken a personality test at some point, but from a small end perspective, it’s so much more intimate. And we did not instantly take personality tests. We took them a couple months after. We had hired four different managers at different levels of work and everyone was a protagonist and I was a law ian, so I had all these empath, creative free spirits. And here I am like, can we get to some spreadsheets today? Where’s the order and the structure? And I was like, this is why I’m losing my mind. I’m like, everyone has great ideas and we do get our work done, but there’s there’s no real order. And it was eyeopening for me in terms of how important that is when you’re hiring people, especially your closer management team. That’s just one little facet. But we did all of our own hiring really with our general manager.

Laura Trujillo:

We did our own hiring. And I think when it comes to hiring people, I think the reality is is that some people are meant to be part of your journey for the whole way. And some people only met for a certain amount of time, and that’s the reality of business and to just really be grateful and thankful for whatever presence they were in your journey. And that allows you to grow and learn and narrow down what you really want. There’s a lot out there when you’re opening a business of a lot of advice on you should have this kind of structure or that kind of structure. But at the end of the day, I think you have to go through some of these trials and tribulations and projecting that. A lot of it comes down to how much money you’re bringing in too. It’s a business at the end of the day, and that determines your staff when you’re actually open. But I think a lot of it too is you’re just constantly learning. You’re learning how different personalities work you as an owner want. What are your core values? What are our core values? We have a big poster in the dispensary. I think our dispensary is described as really opening. It’s almost like a festival vibe.

Me and Amanda have gone to tons of festivals together. We’re big fish and Dave and Keller and Tom Petty fans. So we created the dispensary as a representation of us. And you want to have that open atmosphere of everyone’s inclusive. We’re super inclusive, super supportive, but there’s only certain people that can actually do the job that is required to at the end of the day. At the end of the day, there is a hierarchy. There’s an organizational chart that we don’t like to follow by labels, but you kind of need it, although we’re kind of free flowing, but then Amanda, it’s like, no, we need structure. And I’m like, you’re right.

Amanda Terpstra:

And I think to speak back to the personality test, it’s been interesting. Now we’ve had our whole staff do the test and it gives us a better grasp of like, okay, these people are in this role and they’re all the same personality. It makes perfect sense, but what can I give to them to keep them going on to what are they looking for? We have a lot of commanders and they love to work with startups. And that’s the other part is we’re a startup. We’re not an MSO. You’re not stepping into somewhere where you’re kind of a number. And we do a lot more leaning on our staff for information, asking questions, but at the same time teaching them because they’re growing and learning with us. And I think that helps us too. That’s always helped me. If I can explain things to Laura, then I’m like, okay, I can it and I get it myself even more so now. So it’s not only does the staff want to be part of that and do they want to learn and grow, and this commander grow is great, but I’m like, how do I keep them wanting more and growing and learning? And so it’s coming with creative ideas like that too, around how to keep your staff because you have to find the right people, especially in a startup phase.

TG Branfalt:

So how has the industry’s changed since you opened the business in New Jersey and how have you sort of adapted to those changes?

Amanda Terpstra:

Sure. So we did get a later start, and some of that was to our learning experiences. It is interesting. In New Jersey there was kind of a few and far between dispensaries in Woodbury, we were one of the first to pass, but we were second to open, and MSO came in and opened in Woodbury and another experience operator opened not too far away, probably six to eight months after that. So now we’re at the point where there is becoming saturation. It’s not too heavy, and I think the opportunity is still there, but now it’s battling changing consumer habits. It’s also you’re starting to see price compression because there’s more brands coming out. So it’s where are you buying and how do you maintain your margins through people dropping their prices? And you can only get so many credits and things like that from your vendors. So it’s interesting, we are still expanding in New Jersey, but at the same time everything’s compressing because of competition. So it’s interesting

Laura Trujillo:

Product variety. Before you were limited to what the big guys, the corporate cannabis guys were putting out there with New Jersey, they established the industry because they’re the ones that had the 20 million to be able, they had had to be vertically integrated on a medical level as well. And then you had to be able to have the supply on a rec level. And let’s be honest, there’s not too many local small businesses that can bring up 15, 20, $30 million to have that kind of operation. And then that’s just a raise. That doesn’t mean to continue it, but now you’re getting what I call is that craft cannabis in New Jersey, the local, the small guys being able, so the product landscape is changing. Then within the next six months to a year, you’ll see a lot more. And the regulatory commission has recognized that edibles are a big part for consumers in New Jersey.

So they expand it to brownies and now there’s chocolates. Before it was just hard lozenges, and now we have gummies and then you’re seeing drinks come on, people having drinks come on board. So as far as product, what you see in West Coast that’s slowly trickling over and then you’re fighting consumer habits. People like the MSO cannabis had a guy come in and he is like, I saw that you were women owned. I’m just looking for a different vibe now because you tend to get bored a little bit. And we have a great variety. So he came in and that for every person that comes in, it’s probably like 10 other people that they tell. As far as on a marketing level, it’s difficult. It’s nothing like it is on the west coast. I can do podcasts and probably some more advertising in Philly with a billboard. I can’t advertise in New Jersey, I can’t put anything out in front of my door except park around the rear. I can’t advertise like a liquor store. I can’t advertise on radio. Our Instagram gets taken down every time. So on the marketing side of it, it’s very challenging to be able to let people know that you’re open. So you have to constantly be thinking out the box mailers, okay, what works? So it’s a constant evolution when it comes to from then to now,

Amanda Terpstra:

What’s been fun though is like I’d say MJ unpacked last year in Atlantic City was they moved from New York to AC and it was so much more Jersey focused because Atlantic City’s like you’re only going there for a reason,

But they had the after hours event and it was at the pool and they have this whole outdoor section, and it felt like it was, first of all, a lot of the west coast is out here now, so that’s fun because you guys are, it’s fun, but you guys, they brought that vibe with it and it was finally a cool, fun consumption friendly, oh, that’s cool party in Jersey. It was cool. And that’s the part where you get wrapped up in all this stuff going on over here with the business, but it’s taking that back and remembering those moments. And that was a really cool, fun time. And it was like, I can’t believe this is my job.

TG Branfalt:

Well, you had mentioned about the consumer tastes are changing, and I know that in New York, one of the top selling things is low dose edibles followed by pre-rolls, and it may be flipped that pre-rolls are sort of the bestselling thing followed by low dose edibles. What products are you seeing sort of emerge in New Jersey?

Laura Trujillo:

I think Flower King where we’re at, and you got to remember pa, we’re 20 minutes from Philly, so what is it? I think it’s called.

Amanda Terpstra:

So

Laura Trujillo:

They don’t have any pre-rolls on the market, so you want to capitalize that. And right now I think what we’re leading is vapes, flowers, vapes, and edibles right now, very low on pictures. I think that’s, oh, concentrates have been pretty big for us recently as well too. So you are getting more of a somewhat educated consumer. You still have your new consumers that come in, but you are getting more people that have tried things into the market, but flour still remains king and try and get some brownies and cookies in people, some of that all, there’s only so many edibles. Woodstock, it’s pretty much

Amanda Terpstra:

Ies and chocolates butter case is the only one that does the cookies and brownies right now. But you’re starting to see some of these new brands come out just, but the manufacturing is probably going to be the biggest expansion this year, I would say. But interesting low dose edibles. I feel like jersey’s still in the market of cheapest price, highest THC, which is so frustrating because it’s like all you do is educate, educate, educate, and they’re like, what’s the highest DHC? You’re like, no.

TG Branfalt:

Do you guys trust the testing results that you get on those products?

Amanda Terpstra:

No, no. I think there’s so much controversy around that and there’s still so much I don’t, yeah, I don’t want to tell stories.

Laura Trujillo:

I think we leave it to, we’re consumers too, and our staff consumes and we are very open. I don’t know how it works in other dispensaries, but of course we get samples and stuff. But I always tell, it’s funny because my social media manager, we just brought in dog walkers and I’m like, take this, go get high and walk your dog. Tell me what it’s like, videotape it, take some pictures, videotape it for social media content. But a lot of it is tapping into the different generations, first of all. So it’s important to have a multi-generational workforce as well, because different generations like different things. I have a couple employees that they only dab and they love concentrates me, I love flower. I’m old school festival pre-roll, give me any kind of flour, I’ll vape. I have some edibles. But then you start talking about your bioavailability and how that affects your tolerance and everything like that.

Amanda Terpstra:

Laura went down an edible patch and

Laura Trujillo:

Then it was very rough. Yeah, I needed a tea break as they cooked, but that’s not an option. But I think for us too is testing the product, talking to our customers. Amanda was in there this weekend and asked customer feedback. What do you they know people know. I think it’s being able to have that open line of communication.

Amanda Terpstra:

Yeah, and it’s interesting, I might like your brand of products, but there’s some shitty disposable vapes out there. Sorry, I don’t know if I can say that word, but it’s like I might buy your carts. I like your carts, but your vapes always clog. So I’m not just talking, buy your bes and that is what it is. And I think that’s where Laura was talking about the MSO product versus these newer brands. You’re starting to see higher quality of things and I think that’s going to change, but some of these high price points got to come down no matter what.

TG Branfalt:

Are you getting more customers who are talking the sort of language of chemistry? You’re talking about terpenes and flavanoids and that sort of stuff. Is that something you’re starting to see more of?

Laura Trujillo:

Not so much when we, but definitely terpenes. Not so much flavors, terpenes. We actually have a AI bud tender called Turly on our website and on our kiosks by a great team. Eric Mercado does it and he learns recommendation based on terpenes and it learns. You sign up, it learns what you’re buying, and it’ll start to recognize because not everybody wants to come into and talk to a bud tender. Although our average customer stays about a half hour in our store, so chill.

Amanda Terpstra:

Really? No, not that long. It’s like six to eight minutes. It’s longer than a, well,

Laura Trujillo:

I’ve had people stay longer, but it’s the dialogue of terpenes. What kind of mood are you looking for? And I’ve had some more people that are a little bit more terpene knowledge. I’m looking something with some Carlene or what has the most myrcene in it. Fucking love myrcene. What are the Terps in this? Yeah,

Amanda Terpstra:

That’s not are the, in this one, Laura makes beautiful, we have a whole terpene festival thing. She makes these terpene posters and it goes over different things. And we have on our website, you can have, this month is Tural, what is it? Oh, lol. No, it’s Lionel this month. And so she has Icks and then she has lion law focused heavy products. So we’re trying, that’s cool,

TG Branfalt:

Man.

Laura Trujillo:

Some people are very, I make the poster, it’s like a festival, so it’s like your artist lineup.

TG Branfalt:

That’s cool.

Laura Trujillo:

The wear stage in Bonnaroo, the over there stage can have full tilt, but you’re being creative with dropping the names, but you’re not necessarily saying the things that’ll get you banned. But I made a 12 month calendar, I designed it all, and it’s almost like it’s a throwback to when you go to a fish show and Madison Square Gardens, you go to a Keller show and then you get a custom limited poster.

TG Branfalt:

That’s an amazing, amazing idea. So I do want to sort of switch gears a little bit and ask you what could or should the cannabis industry be doing broadly to support more women and people of color in this industry?

Amanda Terpstra:

For me, I think it’s the fundraising. I think fundraising in general is very complicated. I think that there’s still a shortage of probably women and I’m not sure, but I would say minority within the financial services industry in general. But fundraising is very hard. And I think if as a woman, we’ve all had those moments, no offense, but with men and it’s complicated in itself and I think that people are often overlooked that are really passionate and have opportunity. Yeah,

Laura Trujillo:

I think it’s definitely on the fundraising and when it comes to, I mean I don’t know how it is in every other state, but in New Jersey, if you’re going to do anything in the town with cannabis, it’s learning the ropes of lobbying for yourself. Where do you go? What do you do? How do you speak up for yourself at these town councils? How do you even begin to educate and having that kind of representation there because people are making decisions in your local town that you may not even be aware of when it comes to cannabis and you’ll be the last one to know if there’s a specific ordinance or something. I think it’s supporting them and even after they get past all of these barriers of entry. I mean, forget about the town fees and when you got to do a traffic study and it’s like you need your legal, you need a land.

I think it’s overall supporting that small business minority and women in having that network. I know women in cannabis and women grow is really big, but having those local chapters really reach out and not just accept membership fees but really make a difference and help people have conversations. Don’t just throw all the big terms out, lay it out how it really is. This is difficult. It, it’s not a road for if you want to make some fast money real quick, they you’d be better off doing something else. It takes a lot of resilience and you need to have that support network. And having that support network to help women and minorities is huge. Even after you open, because you’re facing competitors that have been out there, they’re making 80,000 a day while you’re still making a thousand. And it’s continuously trying to find those resources to succeed. So it’s like before middle and after. You just need that help, that network, the trusted network of who can help you. I think that’s important.

TG Branfalt:

So finally, what advice would each of you have for entrepreneurs who are considering maybe opening a retail dispensary?

Laura Trujillo:

Go ahead, Amanda.

Amanda Terpstra:

So much advice. No, I think it is

Laura Trujillo:

Green nugget. Give ’em a green nugget.

Amanda Terpstra:

Well, I think most important it’s choosing your teammates. I think that you have to choosing your team wisely, and that’s not just your business partner, but it’s everyone you surround yourself with, whether that be your attorney, your accountant, your insurance agent, your vendors. You’re going to find people that you just prefer to work with. And that’s no offense to anybody else, it’s just you got to find your tribe, but it’s also don’t give up on any roadblock. You’re going to hit a lot of roadblocks, you’re going to hear a lot of nos, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get it done. It’s just not the right point or time. So I think that’s probably it.

Laura Trujillo:

I think for me it is a green nugget that was told to us failure plan is planning to fail, be resilient, and you got to believe, you got to believe in yourself. You got to believe in your dream. You got to believe when you have $2,000 left in the bank and you got to close on this building and you have no idea how you’re going to get $600,000. And Amanda did a 3:00 AM chat on LinkedIn and found us an investor and we closed within 20 days on our building. You got to believe in the miracles or I always say we found a jet, and this is a testament to our story, is when there was that big hurricane in Puerto Rico and nobody could get any Aiden and my family’s from Puerto Rico and I called him in and I was like, yo, you got a jet? I know you could fly a plane.

Amanda Terpstra:

Another classic Laura,

Laura Trujillo:

Another classic thing. But within 24 to 48 hours, somehow she knew an American Airlines pilot and we were able to get 600 pounds of food within 72 hours of the storm hitting, creating the lifeline for my family in the surrounding communities to be able to have some water or some food until they started to operate again. I mean, you really got to believe be a goldfish and just never give up man. Never give up. If it’s what you want to do and this is your destiny, find your tribe. Get the people that believe in that vision like you do, and just keep going until you get it because you only get one life man. And you might as well do it with your best buds because at the end of the day, what’s life without your best bud?

TG Branfalt:

Dude, you guys are super incredible. The story is incredible. Congratulations on your success, having the best buds and keeping that dream alive despite many of the sort of roadblocks that you mentioned and that you overcame. It’s a really incredible story. Where can people find out more about you and more about BestBuds?

Laura Trujillo:

You can have the website, BestBudsNJ.com. Follow us on social media

TG Branfalt:

Until they shut it down

Laura Trujillo:

Best. Yeah, before they shut it down, we’re on LinkedIn under Best buzz, we have Facebook under Best Buzz. You can follow our Twitter handle Best buds nj. You can follow our Instagram handle Best buds, nj, of course, all our social media is on our website and our menu and just continue to follow our story, follow up on our newsletters, and if you’re in the Woodbury area or in that south area, we deliver too. So we come to you now. There’s something exciting thing for a small business to have is a cannabis delivery and something that you never thought you would see in this lifetime. But yeah, go to our website best buds nj.com.

TG Branfalt:

That is Laura Trujillo, COO, and Amanda Terpstra, CEO. They’re the co-founders of BestBuds, a woman and Hispanic owned dispensary based in Woodbury, New Jersey. Thank you so much for coming on the show and once again, congratulations. This has been a really, really awesome conversation. Thank you so much.

Laura Trujillo:

Thank you so much, Tim. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.

TG Branfalt:

You can find more episodes of the entrepreneur.com podcast and the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcast. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.