In September the two biggest buyers in American cannabis went shopping. Curaleaf pressed a US$272 million hostile offer for Aurora Cannabis and spent the month fighting Aurora's board before the Alberta Securities Commission. Vireo Growth, which ran roughly 170 dispensaries across ten states at midyear, told the market it is building toward about 270 across fifteen.
Not one dollar of that bought a single New Jersey dispensary.
That gap is the most useful thing an owner here can understand. Six kinds of buyer look at New Jersey cannabis businesses. Five are not coming for your store. The sixth is, and his arithmetic sets your price. What follows is the roll call as I see it from Union. The transactions are sourced; the italic line closing each section is the first question that buyer asks.
1. The multi-state operator
Curaleaf's pursuit of Aurora shows clearly what an MSO is buying in 2026. The offer is 0.3463 Curaleaf shares plus US$0.75 cash per Aurora share, a maximum near US$5, against a 30-day volume-weighted average of US$2.75. The combined company would span 17 countries, more than US$1.5 billion in trailing revenue and roughly US$350 million in adjusted EBITDA. It runs to December 1.
That is a company buying a continent of supply, not a corner of Bergen County. When an MSO does buy one New Jersey door, the door is enormous: TerrAscend paid US$9 million in September for Aunt Mary's in Flemington, a store doing more than US$10 million annualized.
"Call me when it does eight figures."
2. The public roll-up
Vireo Growth is running the most aggressive consolidation in the sector, and it is worth watching because it will not bid on you. Second quarter revenue came in at US$209.3 million against US$48.1 million a year earlier, with US$122.7 million of cash and a US$65 million asset-based revolver behind it. It bought Schwazze at roughly four times pro forma EBITDA and got 45 dispensaries. It is merging with Planet 13 for 36 more. It agreed to take up to 25 Cannabist locations, New Jersey included, for up to US$35 million.
Chief executive John Mazarakis described the Planet 13 deal as expanding a "scaled operating platform across attractive limited-license markets." Read that as an operator. Your single store is not a platform, and integrating it costs a roll-up the attention of integrating forty.
"How many locations?"
3. The distressed specialist
A third group shops the court docket, not the listing board. In March, Holistic Industries took seven Cannabist facilities in Ohio out of a court-supervised process for US$47 million, and Parma Holdco took the Delaware operations for US$16.5 million cash. KEY Investment Partners bought BellRock Brands out of receivership. A seven-store California portfolio went to auction in June with an opening bid of US$1 million.
New Jersey has its own version running now; I walked the mechanics in the piece on Article 9 and receivership sales. For a seller: this buyer is not competing with you, he is waiting for you.
"What is the lien position?"
4. The operator crossing a state line
Here the roll call turns toward you. New York has roughly 610 licensed dispensaries and US$3.3 billion in sales since launch; Pennsylvania still has no adult-use retail and is unlikely to before late 2027. For an operator in either state, New Jersey is a limited-license market that cannot be entered by applying, only by buying.
This buyer is serious and slow, because what he is buying is a regulatory position. Under N.J.A.C. 17:30-9.3 a licensee generally cannot move more than fifty percent of its ownership until at least two years after it commences operations, background checks reach every holder of five percent or more, and a majority transfer carries a $20,000 fee. Whether your business clears that is a question for your cannabis attorney.
"Can the license actually move?"
5. The retail operator from outside cannabis
Liquor retailers, convenience chains and restaurant groups are the most rational buyers in the market, because they underwrite a dispensary the way they underwrite any store: rent, labor, turns, traffic. Larger consumer capital is moving in behind them, and British American Tobacco's US$10 million equity stake in Charlotte's Web this spring says that category is no longer on the sidelines.
He will ask about your lease before your license, and he is right to.
"What is my occupancy cost per square foot?"
6. The private buyer and the family office
This is the buyer who closes on one New Jersey store, and almost everything on the open market here is priced for him. The open board carries four New Jersey retail opportunities between $400,000 in Butler and $2.25 million in West Milford, plus a 1,778 square foot Bergen County position at $1.5 million with a 24-month entitlement runway.
He writes a personal or fund check, because institutional lenders still will not touch this, which is why so many New Jersey deals carry seller paper. He is also the only buyer here who reads your add-backs line by line.
"What does the owner actually take home?"
Five questions that sort a real buyer from a tourist, in the order I ask them:
- Which of the six are you, and what have you closed in the last twelve months? A buyer who cannot name a closed transaction has never been through a CRC review.
- Where is the money today? Committed fund, balance sheet, or a raise that begins after we sign are three different closing probabilities.
- Have you been through a change-of-ownership approval in New Jersey, and under which entity? The Commission has already vetted some buyers, and that is worth real time.
- Are you buying the entity or trying to buy assets out of it? In New Jersey that answer is usually decided by the license, not by preference.
- Who signs, and does that signature need a board, a committee or a shareholder vote? Every approval layer is a month.
What the roll call does to your number
Public operators trade around a median of roughly 5.3 times enterprise value to 2026 EBITDA, while dispensary-level private transactions land in a three to six times band; Vireo paid about four for a 45-store platform. If buyers one through three are not bidding on your store, their headlines are not your comparables. Yours sit in that three-to-six band, applied to an EBITDA federal tax treatment has already thinned, and how those pieces stack is in the valuation walkthrough. What your own tax position does to the number is a conversation for your CPA.
The roll call cuts both ways. The consolidators are busy buying each other, so they are not bidding against your eventual buyer either, and a well-run store with clean books and a manager who is not you is scarce inventory in a market where two-thirds of municipalities still say no.
Last week I ran the prices different buyers paid per door, from nothing to nine million. This is the other half of that question, and the more important half: before you argue about the multiple, find out who is across the table. An owner who knows he is selling to buyer number six stops waiting for a call from number one, and starts building the three things number six pays for: clean books, a transferable license position and a business that runs without him.
If you want to see what is trading in New Jersey right now, the current listings are here, and my read on how an MSO and a private buyer price the same store differently is in this earlier piece.