By Sergio Ribeiro, Owner — Frosted Nug, Red Bank
Here’s a sentence nobody was writing fifteen years ago: your mother might have a stash.
Not a panicked one. Not a hidden-behind-the-Christmas-decorations one. A regular, grown-up, sitting-in-a-drawer-next-to-the-good-pen one. Maybe a sleek vape. Maybe a tin of low-dose chocolates she breaks into on a Sunday night. Maybe — and this is the one that really tells you the world has flipped — a couple of pre-rolls she bought herself, walked out of a dispensary with, drove home with, and didn’t think twice about.
I run a dispensary in Red Bank. I see this every week now. And before Mother’s Day rolls around, I want to talk about it — because if you’re still defaulting to the scarf, you might be missing what mom is actually into.
It isn’t the bouquet on the counter. It’s the other kind of flower.
The Numbers Are Telling On Mom
Cannabis used to be a guy thing. For decades the industry’s data looked like a frat house — men did the buying, men did the consuming, women got treated like an afterthought by every brand making ads. Then legalization rolled out state by state, the stigma cracked, and the spreadsheets flipped.
The women showed up. Then the moms showed up. Then the moms brought their friends.
By 2020, women were the fastest-growing group of new cannabis consumers in the country, with year-over-year sales climbing 43%. A 2023 Harris Poll found that more than a third — 37% — of American women over 21 said they consume cannabis. Out of every three women in line at the grocery store, the post office, your kid’s soccer game, one of them is probably a customer. Maybe two. Maybe more, depending on the soccer game.
Mother’s Day itself has quietly become one of the more notable cannabis sales weekends on the calendar. Not 4/20 territory, but a real, measurable bump that’s been climbing year over year. The industry that spent its first decade selling almost exclusively to dudes finally clocked that a huge slice of its customer base is the woman who packed your lunches.
There’s a line that’s been kicking around the cannabis world for a few years that I love. It came out of a survey of cannabis-using moms, and one respondent put it perfectly: “Mom juice is so 2017.”
Mom juice, of course, being wine. The chardonnay-fueled, Live-Laugh-Love joke that ran the suburbs for a decade. In that same survey, 21% of cannabis-using moms said they’d stopped drinking entirely in favor of THC. Stopped. Not cut back. Stopped.
That’s not a trend. That’s a generational shift, and I’m watching it happen on my floor in real time.
Why The Swap, And Why Now
The moms who come into my shop don’t give vague answers when I ask why they made the swap. A 2.5-milligram gummy at 8 p.m. doesn’t leave them foggy at 6 a.m. the way two glasses of wine do. They sleep. Actually sleep. The kind of sleep moms talk about the way some people talk about vacation.
And let me be clear about something the headlines miss: the moms walking into my shop are not lighting up half-ounce joints and disappearing into the couch. They’re microdosing. Low-dose edibles. Sleep-formulated tinctures. Vapes that fit in a bag without announcing themselves. They’re treating cannabis the way someone might treat a glass of really nice red — a deliberate choice at the end of a long day, not a way to get obliterated.
Ten years ago, half of what’s on my shelf today didn’t exist. The whole market has matured around the person who wants a controlled, low-dose experience — and that person, more often than not, turns out to be a mom.
The Gift That’s Becoming Normal
For most of history, gifting cannabis to your mother was an absolutely insane thing to do. So nobody did it. You bought the candle. You bought the spa gift card. You bought the scarf.
But cannabis has been creeping into mainstream gifting the same way wine did in the ’80s and craft beer did in the 2000s. Started as an eyebrow-raise. Became a wink. Now it’s just a thing you can do — a small, considered gesture from one adult to another.
Quick note on how this works in New Jersey: cannabis has to be purchased by the consumer themselves, in person, with ID. You can’t ring up a pre-roll for someone else and slip it in a gift bag. Sounds like a wrinkle, but in practice I think it’s opened up something better.
It’s turned cannabis into an experience you do with mom, not for her.
You bring her in. You tell our budtender — and any of mine will pick this up immediately — we’re new to this, what would you put in her hand first? What happens next is the part nobody who hasn’t done it understands. A good budtender doesn’t sell. A good budtender asks. How do you sleep. What kind of evening are you trying to have. Have you ever had cannabis before. They listen, they narrow it down, they put one specific thing in her hand in a dose that makes sense.
Mom walks out with one item, maybe two. Selected for her. With a person she can come back to next time. That’s a Mother’s Day she’s going to remember a lot longer than the scarf.
Why I’m Telling You This
I’m a few paragraphs deep into a blog talking up my own shop, and I want to be straight about that. Of course I want you to come in. But I’m not writing this to sell you a gummy. The conversation around moms and cannabis has shifted faster than most people realize, and a lot of well-meaning kids are still defaulting to the scarf and missing a chance to actually surprise their mother.
The shop I built is small on purpose. Curated on purpose. We don’t carry everything that exists — we carry what we’d hand to our own moms. Anything that earns shelf space at Frosted Nug got a serious editorial pass first. The budtenders are the heart of it. They ask better questions than most doctors and they tell you, gently and without ego, when something on the shelf isn’t right for you. That’s not a sales pitch. That’s the room we run.
We’re a Shore shop. Born here, built here, staying here. And I’ve watched moms walk in nervous and walk out a little lighter — not because of the product, but because they got treated like a grown-up making a grown-up choice in a place that knew what it was doing.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom
Whatever this Sunday looks like for the mom in your life — flowers in a vase, brunch she didn’t have to cook, or a slow walk down Broad Street that ends with her asking one of my budtenders a question she’s been sitting on for two years — give her the good stuff. The thoughtful stuff. The kind of gift that says I see you as a whole person, not just my mom.
And if she’s curious, bring her in. We’ll take care of her.
She raised you. She can handle herself.
— Sergio
About Frosted Nug
Frosted Nug is a curated cannabis dispensary in the heart of Red Bank, New Jersey, owned and operated by Sergio Ribeiro. We carry hand-selected flower, edibles, concentrates, vapes, and pre-rolls from brands we trust — and we built the shop around budtenders who actually know what they’re talking about. Whether you’re a regular, a first-timer, or somewhere in between, you’ll get a real conversation and a real recommendation. We also deliver throughout the Jersey Shore, so the good stuff comes to you when you can’t come to us.
Stop in, say hi, ask questions. That’s what we’re here for.
Frosted Nug is a licensed New Jersey cannabis retailer. Products are for adults 21 and older. Please consume responsibly and keep all cannabis products out of the reach of children and pets. Do not drive or operate machinery under the influence. Cannabis has not been evaluated by the FDA for the diagnosis, treatment, or cure of any medical condition. If you’re pregnant, nursing, or taking medication, consult your doctor before use.
