Written By Kristine Freeman

It’s a bright, clear day, the kind where you’re called to be outside in nature feeling the warm embrace of the sun. You pull up to an impressive storefront decorated with ribboned panels of wood and live succulents in hues of green and purple. The glint of gold and glass though the window along with the leafy smell in the air is a hint of what’s to come. You cautiously take a step into an open lobby; to your right is a desk and to your left a flowing fountain. In front of you stretches a wonderland of glass tables, counters, and shelves filled with an overwhelming number of products of every kind. The person behind the desk greets you and asks for your ID. It’s your first time visiting a cannabis dispensary.

You’re directed to a nearby employee; her smiling face and friendly greeting put your nerves at ease. After exchanging names, she asks whether you’ve shopped for cannabis before and, when you tell her you haven’t, not to worry because she is a budtender. When you ask her to repeat herself, she adds that others might go by cannabis consultant or even sales associate, but either way, she is here to be your guide. 

This experience is one that thousands of people experience around the world, everyday. Budtenders are synonymous with cannabis dispensaries. They greet you, check you in, help you find the products you want, and check you out. They provide answers, suggestions, education, reviews, advice, and almost always - moral support. Even with self-service stations appearing in some retail stores, budtenders are still necessary to complete the transaction and provide that human interaction that is so vital to the proliferation of cannabis culture. 

If you are new to cannabis, the budtender is arguably even more important. There’s an unimaginable number of new products constantly entering the market, and cannabis knowledge itself is continuously evolving. Figuring out what you need, what you should stay away from, what cannabinoid does what, how to use a concentrate (and so.much.more.) can be overwhelming. On top of demystifying all of those things for you, budtenders must represent their retail store and its campaigns, perform sales associate duties, and advocate for the cannabis plant itself. 

Not everyone that visits a dispensary is already convinced about the healing properties of cannabis. Even when they are, they don’t always know what they are looking for.

You tell your newfound canna-guide that you are looking for a product to help with your anxiety, but you have no idea where to start. Your friend recommended that you try cannabis, but you once ate an edible and had a bad time. She says you’re in the right place, and begins to explain that while cannabis does help many people reduce anxiousness and stress, it’s important to know that consuming too much at once can also increase anxiety… 

Similar to the trope about a bartender being akin to a therapist, a budtender is expected to speak to the consumer (or patient) about the reason for their visit, often health- and wellness-related, and help them find an appropriate product. Can budtending really be considered a simple customer service or sales associate position when the outcome might have a pivotal impact on someone’s mind, body, and soul? In fact, budtenders are vital to the overall success of the B2B and B2C cannabis industry. 

According to a recent report from MJBiz, US cannabis sales are expected to surpass $33.5 billion dollars in 2023. Even when taking into account the proportion of online and delivery sales, that’s a lot of people shopping at dispensaries. With more than ten different cannabis product categories (that break down into many, many subcategories), compacted with an ever-increasing amount of products, the service that budtenders provide is helpful to cannabis novices and experts alike. I personally love to ask my ‘tender what they’re currently smoking.

And yet, for how obviously important they are, the position of a budtender is not always given the respect it deserves. In 2022, Headset reported that around 55% of budtenders left their jobs within the first year, in both the US and Canada. There could be many reasons for this, but one that is often expressed is lack of effective training and onboarding. An appearance of undervalue and underinvestment can leave a budtender feeling as if they’re not important to the business. Low pay combined with a lack of a path to climb within the company can leave you feeling like you’re in a career that essentially has a dead end.

Your knowledgeable budtender suggests a tincture that she believes is perfect for what you seek and leaves to grab it from the back. You examine a few products displayed on the counter; appealing packaging, but you wonder what “broad spectrum cannabis” means on one label and “full spectrum cannabis” on another. A different budtender walks up and you ask. He appears a little nervous, mentions he’s new, and excuses himself to go find out the answer to your question. 

It must be said that not only can an experience at a dispensary positively impact your whole viewpoint about cannabis, but it can also leave a lasting negative impression. Think about the last time someone told you about a bad experience they had at a restaurant, and then ended the story by saying they would never return. Or when someone told you about the time they ate an edible, got too high, and forever decided that edibles (or everything cannabis, gasp!) are not for them.

This common occurrence is actually due to something psychologists call the peak-end rule. It is a cognitive bias (thought pattern) in which our brains judge our experiences based on the highest, most intense point (the peak), whether good or bad, and the way that it ends (the end, of course). When dealing with a highly observed and judged industry still in its infancy, which hasn’t fully won over the right to exist in the eyes of many, this is too important to overlook. 

Someone who is already hesitant about cannabis may never be willing to give it another chance if they remember their first dispensary visit as a bad experience. Likewise, someone who purchases a product that is too potent, too weak, the wrong category, or otherwise not what they needed may have their whole view of cannabis colored by what they remember as negative. 

The nuances of cannabinoids, dosing, and tolerance are equally as important; someone who doesn’t know or hasn’t been fully trained may not know to explain certain things. If you don’t know that cannabis is not a one size fits all and that it may well take multiple tries to figure out your ideal dose or product, and the first product you try doesn’t do what you expected, you might just consider it a failure instead of simply your first step. 

The original budtender returns with a product and an educational pamphlet. She gives you a brief overview on how to use a tincture, introduces the dispensary’s loyalty program, and asks if you have any more questions. You mention full and broad spectrum cannabis…

I actually began my career in cannabis as a budtender, nearly a decade ago. I still remember my first day on the job, anxiously running vocabulary through my head (“a ‘quad’ is 7grams, ‘35cap’ means $35 for an 1/8th, which is 3.5grams), stunned by the glass jar-laden shelves stuffed with frosty, sticky nugs to be manually weighed out by me. I still think of the 15 hour days (this was Prop 215 times y’all), the windex (if you know, you know), and the constant stream of patients with unlimited reasons for their medication, some who visited daily (even more than once per day). 

What I will always treasure is the conversations, the things I learned andI taught, and the sense of community that brought us all together. (Not to mention, potential doom, for the day, from code enforcement). Budtending is not quite the same as it used to be, but the idea is still there. To be a budtender, you still need compassion, cannabis knowledge, conversational customer service abilities, critical thinking skills, and at least a little bit of curiosity People are still coming to you for advice about a product to address a wide range of things that affect entire parts of their lives. 

So what can we do to make sure that we’re respecting our budtenders, and ideally elevate the way that this position is viewed? For retailers, providing thorough onboarding and training, including more than how to use a register is important. Functional cannabis and compliance education, knowledge on the brands and types of products you carry, and tips on how to navigate touchy conversations about health and people’s lifestyles are so useful. Ongoing educational programs where budtenders can grow their cannabis knowledge and stay up-to-date on the current legal landscape will only add value to your store. 

Company culture is another area that is not often mentioned. Each brand has its own mission, values and overall vibe, and the strongest brands are personified in every interaction with every employee. Giving budtenders a feeling of ownership for their position, goals to reach, and a path to grow their careers helps everyone involved. Value budtenders for what they are - to start, the people on the frontline of the cannabis industry, and fountains of unlimited consumer knowledge.

For consumers, remember that budtenders are there to help you. Just by being at work, they are advocating for the plant you are shopping for. Listen to them, have a conversation about cannabis with an open mind, let them know what you thought of the last product you tried… you might even teach each other something (and don’t forget a tip, Leafly reports that the average pay for budtending may be around $14/hour). 

And for budtenders, don’t forget that you are the guide. Treat your position with respect. You have an incredible power to impact someone’s view of cannabis and potentially their day-to-day life. You are in the trenches advocating for this magical plant, so don’t forget to keep learning, keep that compassion, and magnify your voice, because you are helping to shape the future of cannabis.  

As your dispensary visit wraps up, you thank your budtender, assuring her that you’ll come back and will leave a review online. You gaze around the fragrant, green, shiny, extraordinary dispensary, excited to get home and start the first step of your cannabis journey. As you walk back to your car, you wonder if that other budtender ever found out the answer to your question…

For an industry that has had to live in the shadows for so long, we cling to our human interactions, passing our canna-knowledge through anecdotal stories, community events, product suggestions; we share our oral histories. We believe that cannabis can change the world, and in many cases, budtenders are how we get our cannabis. You do the math.