Our Story - Doctor Norms - Craft Cannabis and Hemp Products

The Dr. Norm’s story

Dr. Norm’s was founded in 2017 by the brother-sister team of Jeff Koz and Roberta Wilson to honor their Dad, the real Dr. Norm and their mom Audrey - a pharmacist by profession, but a prolific baker by passion.

“Our dad, Norman Koz, was an M.D. in Los Angeles for over 30 years. He gave very personalized, old school care to his patients, something you don’t see too often these days. And our mom made these “legendary” chocolate chip cookies that were known far and wide. Her cookies became her personal way of spreading joy to almost everyone she knew! If you happened to meet her and try one of her cookies, she’d send you off with a plateful of your own! She was a great inspiration to our family and to our community.”

AUDREY’S LEGACY

Unfortunately, Audrey passed away quite suddenly over 10 years ago. Roberta decided to continue Audrey’s legacy of spreading joy though cookies, and started a traditional cookie company in her honor. Audrey’s cookies, as it was known, started as a small online business, but within a few years, grew into a successful operation with products carried by Whole Foods, Sprouts, Stater Brothers, Costco and many others!

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

True Story. When meeting with Jeff going over some branding ideas for Audrey’s Cookies, Roberta uttered the prescient words, “We should do weed cookies”! In her mind, she was 100% kidding. But, Jeff took her idea quite seriously and convinced Roberta to give this a shot! It made sense. Proposition 64 was on the upcoming California ballot to legalize cannabis, so the timing was perfect! It was from this casual conversation that the idea for Dr. Norm’s was born.

“Since we named our traditional company after our mom, it just felt right to name the cannabis company after our dad. Afterall, as a beloved medical doctor, he represented trust, caring and making his patients feel like family – all things that we wanted our brand to represent. So the name Dr. Norm’s stuck and our journey began!”

THE AMAZING CANNABIS PLANT

The irony was not lost on us – that we were the children of western medical healthcare professionals. Who knew that we’d be providing plant medicine to patients of our own all these years later! As we began our adventure, we soon discovered the amazing, healing properties that the cannabis plant provided to so many. This became our inspiration as Dr. Norm’s began to evolve. We strived to help people with their health and well-being as well as bring a bit of fun and happiness to their lives. Our parents’ legacy of healing, caring for others and spreading joy though delicious treats became the cornerstones of our brand – and have guided us in all that we do.”

“As we began, two things became an immediate priority to us…taste and accurate dosage.”

TASTE

When we began to try many of the cannabis edibles available at that time, we couldn’t believe it – every product tasted like WEED! We were shocked by this fact. After all, we made delicious cookies and thought our cannabis cookies should taste delicious as well. We discovered cannabis distillate early on in our R&D. And this, combined with our family recipes and premium ingredients, helped us reach our goal; you couldn’t taste the weed in our cookies! Our brand soon became known for this – in fact, we were the first in the California market to use distillate exclusively in all of our products. It cost a fortune in those days, but our commitment was to superior taste, so the expense was well worth it.

THE DOSING STIGMA

The other thing we noticed was that there was no such thing as consistent and accurate dosage in the edibles available at the time. This was a shocker to us as well! After all, everyone knows proper dosages of medicines and even alcoholic beverages. But, cannabis edibles developed a reputation that was akin to a game of Russian Roulette. The consumer never knew exactly what was going to happen! It was for this reason that cannabis edibles developed the stigma which is still present to this day. How much THC would the patient receive after taking a bite of a 200mg cookie, or a 500mg brownie or even a 1,000mg product? Nobody knew!

THE LIGHTBULB

This made no sense to us! So we came up with an idea that eventually became the law in California. One cookie, one dose. Each of our bite-sized cookies would contain the same, consistent dose. We varied the potencies to accommodate different consumer tolerances, but the result was always the same. The patient would confidently know what they were getting, and that they’d have the same experience EVERY time! We became passionate advocates for accurate and consistent dosing, and trademarked the phrase, KNOW YOUR DOSE! Our desire was to meet this stigma head on. By creating precisely dosed products and encouraging consumer education and awareness, we could really make an impact on the confusing cannabis edibles space.

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

It’s important to us that we provide options for those with dietary restrictions. So, we offer a host of vegan and gluten-free options across our product lines. Most customers can’t even tell that they’re eating a gluten-free or vegan product – they’re that good!

It is also important that we provide our customers with options for the various cannabis strains. We offer hybrid, sativa and indica effects-based products that utilize natural plant extracts to enhance the specific strain attributes. You can learn more about Something for Everyone here.

Thanks for reading our story. It has great meaning to us that we have our family’s legacy of compassionate healthcare to inspire us…and besides, our folks are watching from above! They’d want us to always do the right thing… so we do.