The Craft Curation Model: Independent Small-Batch Cultivators Reshape New Jersey's Cannabis Market

New Jersey's legal cannabis market crossed $1 billion in annual sales in 2024, with monthly revenue regularly topping $90 million, establishing it as one of the largest cannabis economies on the East Coast. Yet the brands winning the most shelf space are not necessarily the ones winning the most loyalty. Multi-state operators (MSOs) such as Curaleaf (搜索)搜索该词条, Rythm (搜索)搜索该公司, Ascend (搜索)搜索该词条 and Verano (搜索)搜索该词条 still dominate the top of the sales charts, with the ten best-selling brands in the state accounting for more than 30% of units sold, according to cannabis market tracker Lit Alerts (搜索)搜索该词条. Beneath that MSO dominance, however, a countertrend some in the industry now call the "craft correction" has taken hold: independent, small-batch cultivators are gaining ground, and a handful of dispensaries are building entire brands around curating them.

What Is the Craft Curation Model?

The craft curation model describes a dispensary run less like a big-box retailer and more like an independent record store or a specialty wine shop, where the buyer's relationships and palate are the product. Dave "Big Dave" Valese, HoneyProjects (搜索)搜索该词条' Chief Visionary Officer, has spent nearly three decades as a cultivator rooted in the Northeast's cannabis heritage and built HoneyGrove's and HoneyStash's shelves around small-batch, independent growers.

"There's a misconception that bigger is better, but almost 30 years has taught me the opposite," Valese said. "The magic is in small-batch growers who know their genetics and care about every plant." Curating for HoneyProjects (搜索)搜索该词条, he explained, was never about chasing the cheapest pound — it is a search for cultivators "pouring their passion in."

That search has become a relationship business. "We build deep relationships with these mom-and-pops," Valese said, crediting those relationships for why growers choose to work with HoneyProjects (搜索)搜索该词条. Most small cultivators, he noted, "can't market the way big companies do," so the dispensary becomes their amplifier — "giving them opportunities and a platform."

Valese also frames curation as a bet on an entirely different value system, one that pulls the industry's conversation away from THC percentage and toward qualities that are harder to fake: "terpenes, balanced effects, the full experience." That, he said, is "what customers can taste, and what keeps them coming back."

More Than Good Ethics — A Business Strategy

Jeffrey Miller, HoneyProjects (搜索)搜索该词条' CEO, came to cannabis by way of documentary filmmaking and is a Peabody Award winner for his work on King Corn. "People assume doing the right thing and doing good business are in conflict," Miller said. "What we're proving at HoneyProjects is the opposite." Choosing small-batch, local cultivators, he argued, gives the company "a story customers actually connect to: the grower's craft, the community behind it, the care in every batch." In a market where "everyone's selling similar product," that story becomes the company's real point of differentiation.

Miller described trust as something built one transaction at a time, not one campaign at a time. "Trust has to be built one relationship at a time, and curation is how we cultivate that with every customer who walks in," he said. The goal is not a single big sale — it is "a brand that lasts, not just a store people walk into once."

The View From the Grow Room

A curation strategy only works if the growers on the other end can deliver. In South Jersey, family-owned Neptune's Garden (搜索)搜索该词条 — a New Jersey-licensed cultivator that grows in fresh soil every cycle and feeds its plants with house-brewed compost teas instead of synthetic nutrients — is one of the small operations HoneyProjects (搜索)搜索该词条 has built shelf space around.

Will Perry, Neptune's Garden (搜索)搜索该词条's Director of Cultivation and co-founder, has spent 14 years in the industry, starting in a converted warehouse near Los Angeles' Skid Row before eventually helping run what is now a multi-million-dollar, state-of-the-art facility in New Jersey. His growing philosophy has remained consistent: high-quality organic inputs, soil-grown plants, compost teas, and meticulous post-harvest curing, drying and hand-trimming.

"I've lived on both sides of this industry, and after working with Honey Projects I can say confidently that regulated cannabis doesn't have to lose its soul," Perry said, pointing to "the sense of community and the vibe" at HoneyGrove and HoneyStash as proof. A retail partner willing to prioritize quality over quantity, he said, lets growers like Neptune's Garden (搜索)搜索该词条 "focus on what we do best, instead of worrying about compromising on our inputs just to make a profit." The stakes, in his view, extend beyond any single company's bottom line: "The small-batch, quality-first approach is vital to New Jersey's cannabis scene — without it this magical plant will become just another corporate commodity."

Neptune's Garden (搜索)搜索该词条 co-founder Chris Horning traced the partnership back to a single, memorable first impression of Valese. "He bluntly said he would tell growers if their weed wasn't good enough for his shelves as soon as he looked at it," Horning recalled. "I laughed, then quickly realized he meant it." That refusal to compromise, Horning said, is "what immediately drew us in."

Craft Cultivators Need a Storyteller

At Jerzey Grown (搜索)搜索该词条, another small New Jersey cultivator in the HoneyProjects (搜索)搜索该词条 fold, co-founder Jarred described a team with roots in the state's legacy market and hands-on experience at licensed facilities ranging from large indoor operations in Michigan to no-till organic outdoor farms in Northern California. "We only put something in a Jerzey Grown jar if we're genuinely proud of it," he said — a standard he credits to running a farm small enough to give "every plant, mother, and genetic line the attention it deserves," including running the operation's own pheno hunts and breeding projects.

HoneyProjects (搜索)搜索该词条, Jarred said, was "one of the first teams we connected with after opening," and the fit was immediate: a shared vision for "what great New Jersey flower should be," paired with a retail partner able to translate that into a story consumers can follow. "An educated consumer is our best customer," he said, crediting HoneyProjects with "telling the story behind our flower rather than simply putting products on a shelf."

That division of labor, Jarred argued, is the real value of the curation model from a grower's side of the table. "For a craft cultivator, having a partner like HoneyProjects (搜索)搜索该词条 allows us to focus on what we love, growing exceptional flower," he said.

Why New Jersey Is Built for This Bet

The craft curation model is not just a branding choice — Miller argued it is suited to New Jersey's particular market structure. In a recent interview with MYCannabis, he laid out three advantages New Jersey holds over neighboring cannabis markets. Its population density is simply good for retail. Its scarce, expensive real estate acts as a natural check on over-licensing, unlike states such as Oklahoma, Michigan or Massachusetts, where cheap, sprawling square footage invited a flood of underprepared operators and "a race to the bottom." And New Jersey benefits from being what Miller calls cannabis's "sleeper" market: sitting in the shadow of New York keeps outside expectations low, but that same proximity has quietly produced sophisticated, low-ego growers and producers. It is "the opposite of the California situation," he told MYCannabis, "where everyone expects greatness and there's a ton of posturing."

Miller was equally candid about the state's weaknesses. Consumer education remains a real hurdle — he told MYCannabis it took years for buyers to understand something as fundamental as live rosin, and that gap still pushes purchasing decisions toward THC percentage and price over actual quality. He also pointed to the market's early, MSO-heavy years — when roughly a dozen multi-state operators and only two independent producers controlled adult-use supply — as having trained consumers to expect "low quality, high prices" from legal cannabis, expectations he said pushed some buyers back toward the unregulated market. His fix: better education, higher standards, and more independent operators who genuinely care about the product and the community they serve.

That correction looks to be underway. Independent, "legacy-to-legal" cultivators are gaining visibility across the state even as MSO-backed brands continue to hold most of the top sales slots — evidence that curation-first operators are carving out real market share rather than a niche.

Education Drives Premium Category Growth

The emphasis on education extends beyond flower to premium categories such as concentrates. At Baked by the River (搜索)搜索该词条 in New Jersey, concentrates now account for 5% of sales, roughly double the category's share a year ago. "Our current concentrate sales make up 5% of our current sales, up from 2.5% in 2025," said owner and CEO Jesse Marie Villars. "In 2026, we're excited to see new manufactures coming to market with top shelf concentrates... So the variety of small batch craft rosin in our fridge has increased, at the same time we have a growing customer base for the products, both of which contribute to the doubling of concentrate sales percentage in 2026."

Villars said product selection alone does not explain the increase — the biggest difference has been education. "A very common question is how to use the concentrate," she said. "There are customers who don't know how to take a dab, and sometimes customers are embarrassed to ask. Some folks may be concerned about having to get a whole set up and torch, and may not know there are other ways to vape, smoke or even bake your concentrate into edibles. You need to make the conversation approachable, meet people where they're at, and build that trust."

Those conversations usually begin with budtenders, making staff education one of the most overlooked competitive advantages in cannabis retail. "Budtender education significantly influences concentrate sales," Villars said. "In order to introduce new and curious customers to this form factor, your sales staff need to be able to talk to customers about how to use the concentrates, demystify the experience, and make it approachable."

Rick Bashkoff, CEO of Lit Alerts (搜索)搜索该词条, sees the data as evidence that emerging markets are simply following the same maturation curve observed across the country. "It's just a natural maturation of the state-by-state cannabis market structure," Bashkoff said. "The manufacturing capacity and consumer education on newer product categories starts on day one in each new market. New Jersey and New York are still very much in their early phases so this type of category movement is quite typical." He expects New York and New Jersey to "pick up 1-3% market share over the next 12-24 months as more connoisseur users transition from the illicit market to the legal market."

A Local Economic Story

The curation model's effects extend past the dispensary counter and into town hall. In Gloucester Township, home to HoneyGrove's Clementon location, Mayor David R. Mayer has framed the company's approach to sourcing as an economic development story as much as a cannabis one. "Small businesses are the backbone of our Township, and it's encouraging to see companies that are committed to working with independent cultivators and giving smaller, locally focused businesses the opportunity to succeed," Mayer said. Local government, he added, is glad to "welcome innovation and responsible business practices that strengthen our local economy while providing residents with quality products and services."

The craft curation model ultimately comes down to a fairly simple wager: that in a maturing, increasingly commoditized cannabis market, the operators who win are not necessarily the ones with the most cultivation canopy — they are the ones customers trust to have already done the vetting. For growers like Neptune's Garden (搜索)搜索该词条 and Jerzey Grown (搜索)搜索该词条, that means a retail partner willing to champion small-batch flower instead of squeezing them on price. For a dispensary group like HoneyProjects (搜索)搜索该词条, it means a brand story that competitors with much bigger balance sheets cannot simply buy their way into. As Valese put it, that is precisely the point: "It's how you build something a mass producer can never copy."