Cannabis Dispensary Best Practices To Protect Profits

Published Mar 7, 2023 04:22 p.m. ET

Updated9 months ago4 min read

Ensuring shop revenue doesn’t walk out the back door

Harmony Between Cannabis Sales and Operations

In order to protect the profits of your cannabis retail business you’ll need to follow airtight inventory controls and real-time record-keeping SOPs. Beyond peace of mind for you and your team, having well-documented, transparent policies will lower shrinkage and costs. This might not be the sexiest aspect of your business but these cannabis dispensary best practices will provide the structure that will allow for revenue to flow in without walking out the back door.

Cannabis Retail Best Practices

When thinking about cannabis retail best practices to protect profits there are some background points to make. First, cannabis retailers face tremendous pressure to compete with both illicit markets and legal shops. In order to stay afloat every ounce of your team’s energy will be focused on growing sales and creating a superior customer experience. There’s little time for breaks, much less to worry if the hard-won revenue you’ve earned is leaking from unsustainable operations and inventory practices. Second, owners are at the mercy of constantly evolving regulatory requirements in order to stay compliant. Without keeping records up-to-date and accurate with standard operating procedures (SOPs), you run the risk of losing your license. The rub of all this is that your cannabis retail stores will require a level of operational organization and back-office management that is watertight if your business is to thrive.

Cannabis Inventory Management and Control SOPs

In any brick-and-mortar retail store, the inventory management system is crucial to the success of that business. In cannabis dispensaries, with hundreds of potential product SKUs with strict compliance regulations, these systems are even more important. Here are three ways you can build and sustain bulletproof inventory SOPs to help you keep more of the money you bring in every month.

Cannabis POS Data Integrated with Physical Inventory

In real-time you need to be able to reconcile what’s in the POS system with what’s in the product displays and vaults. The best way to catch an error or oversight is to correct and record the details as soon as it happens. This will save you time, money, and headaches trying to figure out what went wrong after the fact. Employee accountability is in the details.

With a trained staff and under the supervision of your management team, regular in-house audits should be an integral part of your back-office practices. This involves doing a physical count and verification of all inventory independently of the POS system, therefore, decreasing the opportunity for any nefarious behavior. Find an inventory system that focuses on true numbers and immediate results. If you don’t have a system like this, check out Count Canna R.A.D.I.O.

External Audits with Count Canna

It may not be every week but you will want to employ outside inventory auditors to verify what your in-house audits are showing. Depending on the size and number of locations this should be done at a cadence that makes sense for your business. The benefit of hiring unbiased inventory professionals is the peace of mind of the ownership team that everything matches down to the single pre-roll.

The Profit-Protecting Powers of Organization

Keeping your cannabis shop organized like a swiss watch will show a positive correlation with keeping more of your profits. Ensuring that you can make real-time decisions based on real-time data available to your team will help you keep more of your hard-earned cash. Here are three ways that being super organized can protect the profits of your cannabis dispensary.

Digital Cannabis Logbooks

Whether we are talking about incident reports, employee files, or waste, paper is yesterday’s news. Yet digitized record keeping is only part of the play here. In addition, you’ll want to engage a partner that can support you in having all this information at your fingertips. Real-time updating and digital backups will guard your time for the things that matter most: Selling great cannabis and providing your customers with an incredible shopping experience.

Cannabis Operations Checklists and To-do Lists

The human brain can only contain so much information and we all have limited RAM when there are multiple things happening in a busy retail environment. Being able to communicate with team members and, more importantly, being able to help them track tasks and processes helps everyone to pull on the same oar, so to speak. The more streamlined and standardized your team’s daily activities are, the more relaxed and focused they can be on serving customers and keeping the shop in ship shape.

Online Cannabis Producer Hot Sheets

Before any product makes it to the shelf and a sale can be made, the product needs to make it to the store. The only way for it to make it to the store is if it gets to be seen by the retailers looking for it. The logistics involved to make real-time connections between reps and retailers are not only daunting but very time-consuming, costly, and often overwhelming, sometimes with little or no results. The key is to find the platform that creates the connections that matter and keeps the conversation going.

The Producers Platform offers an exclusive platform for brand reps to feature their product(s). The ability to share time-sensitive marketing, promos, new products, LTOs, and more, directly with retailers in real-time from anywhere, turns “missed connections” into much-needed sales and ongoing brand recognition. Retailers view by listing and category and can reach out to area reps, instantly. There is no need for endless Google searches, being upset over missing the product rep when they came by, or keeping track of physical “hot sheets” and info cards they happened to leave behind. Get connected and stay connected.