Moon Flower Hemp is inviting the community to celebrate 420 Eve on Saturday with plenty of food, shopping and some friendly competitions.
Riley and Macie Queen, co-owners of Moon Flower Hemp, are the brains and brawn behind a locally owned hemp company with a storefront on Buckhannon’s Main Street. Every year, the sisters look for new ways to celebrate 420 – and this year, they decided to go all out.
“It’s the Christmas of cannabis,” Riley Queen said. “There’s actually a couple of different theories as to why 420 became the international cannabis holiday – there’s no set-in-stone reason. People have celebrated ‘420’ with this plant for a long time, and we want to carry on that tradition with what we have in this industry.”
Macie Queen said Moon Flower has been in business for seven years, and over that span of time, the 4/20 weekend is consistently their biggest of the year.
“We haven’t done anything at this scale at our storefront yet,” she said. “We’ve done big bashes online, which are always great, but we decided to really go for it this year and see how it does.”
Moon Flower has collaborated with Travis Foster to use his lot at the corner of Spring and Main Streets, adjacent to the Innovation Center, to host three food trucks and 17 different vendors on 420 Eve, or Saturday, April 19.
“We have South Texas Barbecue Company cooking up barbeque, Imposter Pizza is making brick oven pizza and Gingrollsandpancit makes Filipino food,” Macie Queen said. “We wanted to bring a unique set of people here. We started as a small business, and it’s really important to us to showcase other small businesses, so we have not only the vendors and food trucks teaming up with us, but we also have several community partners in Buckhannon that are joining us.”
Those include Jimbo’s, the Whistle Stop, Good Times Tattoo and Stone Tower Brews.
The vendors, food trucks and Moon Flower will open at 11 a.m. Saturday, while the other collaborating businesses will offer their own deals at their locations to celebrate the holiday.
“Travis loves our Moon Brews, and we definitely want to shout him out for being open to this; it means so much to us,” Riley Queen said. “We know cannabis carries a lot of stigma, and he’s really giving us an opening to break that stigma and host an event that’s completely unique to anything hosted in West Virginia, let alone Buckhannon. We’re really excited to be able to offer that and show the community this can be fun. It’s going to be people just enjoying music, shopping and eating a lot, probably.”
Live music will be on tap at Foster’s lot, with Willie Ward performing from 2-4 p.m, and Mike Oregano following in the Moon Flower shop from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
“We’re definitely going to be celebrating here,” Riley Queen said. “We’re giving away 50 swag bags at the very start to the first 50 customers who spend over $25, and then our baked goods cooler is just stocked with all kinds of really great infused things. We’re doing infused Dubai chocolate bars and a storewide sale, of course, and then product bundles and drink specials.”
There will also be two contests: a pizza-eating contest and a Moon pong tournament.
“We’re doing a pizza-eating competition here that people can sign up for online, and it’s whoever can eat the most of a large pizza in three minutes. They’re going to win a $50 Moon Flower gift card and a $50 Sam’s Pizza gift card,” Riley Queen said. “That starts at 4 p.m., and then we’re doing a Moon Brews pong tournament, so it’s like beer pong, but with Moon Brews here, and you can sign up as a team, it’s bracket style, and that starts at 1 p.m.”
Links to all the competitions may be found on the Moon Flower Facebook page. Other exclusive treats during the event include an infused Fish Bowl, Fruity Pebble bars and an array of infused candies.
