Nightjar Cannabis: How Three Women Built Bloomfield's Most Talked-About Craft Dispensary
On a walkable stretch of Bloomfield Avenue in Essex County, New Jersey, Nightjar Cannabis has opened the kind of adult-use dispensary that the state's 2021 legalization law was supposed to produce — independently owned, locally staffed, and shaped by founders who came up through the legal cannabis industry rather than inheriting it. This is a working guide to the store at 549 Bloomfield Avenue: what it is, how it got here, what it carries, and why its specific ownership story matters for how New Jersey's recreational market evolves.
The Basics: Address, Hours, Contact
Nightjar Cannabis is located at 549 Bloomfield Avenue, Bloomfield, NJ 07003, a short walk from Bloomfield Center, roughly two miles east of Montclair Center, and minutes from NJ Transit's Bloomfield station on the Montclair-Boonton Line. The shop's phone number is (973) 707-2915, and the current operating hours are Monday through Saturday from 9 AM to 9 PM and Sunday from 11 AM to 7 PM. Sales are restricted to adult-use customers 21 and older with valid government-issued ID.
Who Founded Nightjar
Nightjar was founded by Francesca DeRogatis, Katie Covett, and Amanda Rositano, three women with deep backgrounds in the regulated cannabis dispensary industry who decided the New Jersey adult-use opportunity was worth building a company around. The founding team deliberately structured Nightjar as an independent women- and minority-owned retailer in a market that has otherwise consolidated around large multi-state operators (MSOs). That structural choice — ownership and operations that sit outside the MSO consolidation pattern — is the animating premise of the brand.
Nightjar staff are almost entirely Essex County locals. At last public count, the shop employed roughly 25 people from around the county, a hiring pattern the founders have consistently framed as a local-economy investment rather than a branding talking point. Visitors regularly note that the staff's knowledge of New Jersey cultivators, cannabis retail operations, and legal cannabis product categories is unusually deep for a first-year adult-use shop.
The Social-Equity Context
To understand Nightjar, you have to understand the structure of New Jersey's cannabis program. Adult-use cannabis sales launched in April 2022 under rules issued by the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission (CRC), the state agency responsible for licensing, enforcement, and social-equity policy. The first wave of licenses went overwhelmingly to the incumbent medical dispensaries — a short list of vertically integrated, multi-state companies that had been operating in New Jersey's medical program since before legalization.
Independent and social-equity applicants had to navigate a second licensing track, which is where Nightjar fits. Nightjar received a state social-equity capital grant from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority's cannabis equity grant program — one of a limited number of grants awarded to women-, minority-, and impact-zone-connected cannabis entrepreneurs. The grant program is explicitly designed to counterbalance the industry's inherited inequities, with priority for founders from communities historically harmed by the War on Drugs.
What Nightjar Sells
The menu skews toward craft and independent New Jersey cultivators alongside the larger licensed brands, with a rotating selection that moves quickly. Broad categories include whole flower (eighths, quarters, halves, ounces), pre-rolls (singles, multi-packs, infused), vape cartridges and disposables, concentrates and extracts, edibles (gummies, chocolates, low-dose and micro-dose formats, drinks), tinctures, capsules, topicals, and accessories.
All product is sold in compliant child-resistant packaging with batch-level lab data attached. Nightjar's buyers lean heavily on product diversity — a conscious choice to leave shelf space for smaller licensed cultivators that New Jersey's cannabis market has struggled to make room for.
How to Buy at Nightjar
Nightjar offers walk-in retail during store hours and online order-ahead pickup through the shop's website (nightjarcannabis.com). Pickup orders are typically ready within 20–30 minutes during normal business hours. Payment is cash or debit through a compliant cashless ATM system; like all U.S. dispensaries, Nightjar cannot accept credit cards due to federal banking restrictions around federally scheduled cannabis.
New Jersey law regulates cannabis home delivery tightly and separately from retail. Check Nightjar's website for current delivery availability and coverage zones, which evolve with licensing and operational capacity.
Why Nightjar Matters to Bloomfield
For Bloomfield — a densely populated, transit-linked Essex County community of about 50,000 — Nightjar is a clear signal that the legal cannabis industry here can look different from the industrial, warehouse-feeling dispensary chains that dominate much of American legal cannabis. The shop is walkable. Its staff live in the community. Its buyers support smaller New Jersey licensed producers. Its ownership is local. And its founding story is tied directly to the state's explicit effort to diversify cannabis ownership after decades in which drug prohibition enforcement fell disproportionately on the same communities now being asked to opt into the legal market.
Whether that model scales is an open question. But for anyone interested in what social-equity adult-use cannabis is supposed to look like in practice — a store you can walk to, where the people who built it are in the room, and where the menu reflects the producers who wouldn't otherwise get shelf space — Nightjar at 549 Bloomfield Ave is one of the most concrete answers New Jersey has so far.
Sponsored Coverage Note: Nightjar Cannabis is the presenting sponsor of The Bloomfield Cannabis Journal. Our editorial coverage — including this guide — is written independently by the Journal's editors. Read our full sponsor page for hours, menu, and directions.