Retail
Advice & Tips
5 Ways to Increase Dispensary Profits 💸
5 tips to make your profits go up and through the roof.
5 tips to make your profits go up and through the roof.
In today's episode, we're gonna look at five tips that dispensary owners can use today, to make your profits go up and through the roof.
The growth and sustainability of a cannabis dispensary depends on a delicate balance of revenue vs. expenses. Turning a healthy profit can be difficult with all of the costs in launch and scaling a cannabis business.
1 - Increase dispensary profits with smart ordering
2 - Learn how to use the data
3 - Invest in good people
4 - Make dispensary marketing a team sport.
5 - Cut back on admin costs.
Tom Mulhern: Before we jump into the show, Maria, I just wanna welcome everyone here. And remind you to subscribe to our shows in your favorite podcast app, to get the latest episodes of our show every week, we're interviewing different thought leaders in the cannabis industry, giving you these bonus episodes with tips and tricks to help you be more effective in your job.
And so don't forget to subscribe to Cast today. , Maria, what do you think the most important factor is in a dispensary? Having a thriving business?
Maria McCligott: I'm definitely gonna think that we're gonna wanna keep those shelves stocked.
Tom Mulhern: I gotta have the good product. That's one thing that's really important. For sure. Another thing is probably having the right people in place. If you don't have the right people in place, how can you have a thriving dispensary?
Maria McCligott: Definitely staff can make or break you.
Tom Mulhern: Yeah, absolutely. But really the most important thing to help your dispensary grow is profit. And so that's what we're gonna talk about today is how to increase your profit as a dispensary.
Maria McCligott: The cannabis industry market value will be almost 83 billion by 2025. So opening a cannabis dispensary. That's gonna be profitable.
Tom Mulhern: But it definitely comes with challenges, right? There's high application and licensing fees, especially if you're a franchise and you've got the difficulty of running a team of people and there's financial reporting and strict regulations based on the different locations that your dispensary's in.
So getting that profit. Can be hard because there's all of these, challenges that stand in the way.
Maria McCligott: There's definitely a lot of hurdles that you'd have to climb over.
Tom Mulhern: So in today's episode, we're gonna look at five tips that dispensary owners can use today to make your profits go up and through the roof. So let's jump right into it.
Maria McCligott: So I think a dispensary just needs to be smart when they're ordering. So thinking about ordering products from suppliers that are going to actually turn a profit. They're gonna want to do this in a few different ways. You can connect with your bud tenderers and ask them about what are customers actually wanting to buy.
You don't wanna be ordering things that nobody actually wants.
Tom Mulhern: And the bud tenderers, they're working directly with those customers. So they know what people are wanting to buy.
Maria McCligott: Smart. Ordering can also be done by building relationships with your suppliers. Maybe you're gonna be able to negotiate some deals with them, or they'll let you know when new product comes out. Of course, you're always gonna be wanting to research as much as you can learn as much as you can about your product.
And then you'll make sure that you're ordering quality cannabis, and you're gonna wanna make sure that it also has a good profit margin.
So optimizing all of your purchase processes by utilizing free delivery and price discounts as well.
Tom Mulhern: You know, Inventory management also is a part of that smart ordering, knowing how many products you have on hand it's essential. Like you need to meet the customer's needs without having a bunch of dead stock. So in the end, really that sales versus expenses will be a driving factor in increasing your profits. And way to do that is our second tip, which is using the data that you have coming into your, cannabis dispensary. There's so much data that you're able to really take hold of if you integrate technology solutions to help streamline the processes you're doing and provide data insights into your business operations.
Maria McCligott: Kaya Push can actually create AI generated smart schedules based on your sale forecast. Something like that can save you an average of 3% on labor, which in the long run is huge. And it'll also help ensure you've got enough people on the floor to increase your sales, but not too many to cut into your labor costs.
Tom Mulhern: It's those insights that really can make a dispensary owner make the data backed decisions they need to make to run their business effectively.
Maria McCligott: Bringing us to our next point, which is number three, invest in good people. You're gonna wanna find great people that you can invest in and help them learn and grow and succeed and sell good bud tenders. They play a significant role in the success of the dispensary. So they're gonna be the ones selling your products.
They're gonna be building relationships with the customers and generating that buzz. Honestly, just bringing people into the store.
Tom Mulhern: There's lots of different ideas that we wanna share about how they can invest in bud tenders. I don't know what bud tender wouldn't like this idea, but providing product samples as an appreciation for a job well done, maybe you have a top sales earn gets some product.
It also works because then your bud tenderers are trying different products in becoming real experts in those products that they're selling.
Maria McCligott: Definitely. You gotta try before you buy right.
Tom Mulhern: I don't know about you, but I've gone to cannabis retail stores where there's like wizards who know everything about every terpene and THC level and you can use those bud tenders to really train other people in your store.
There's also tons of great resources for online training for your bud tenderers to just really invest in them and help them grow in their career.
Maria McCligott: Another thing you could do is you could always provide them with rewards and recognition for your top selling bud tenders. I know you mentioned samples, but it could be other things too. If you're a really big dispensery, you could be giving away vacations or gift cards or whatever you can afford even a pizza party.
Tom Mulhern: Who doesn't love a pizza party. Let's be honest, Maria, everybody loves a pizza party and it really does raise the morale of bud tenders by doing those small, meaningful gestures. And I think probably the last thing is really allowing for that two-way communication between your staff and your management team.
To get feedback and insights and it makes them feel like they're a part of the team instead of just an employee. So investing in that talent will ultimately pay off for your dispensary because it provides those skills and those incentives that really get employees to give their very best every moment.
Maria McCligott: And of course you always wanna involve your team and all of the decision making processes, which kind of comes in with the smart ordering, again, just asking them their feedback because they're the ones out there working every day.
Tom Mulhern: Number four is really thinking through your dispensary marketing plan. And this can be a collaborative effort that you do with your team with your bud tenderers, with your staff. And there's tons of actually pretty free ways that you can do marketing that is really impactful and engaging.
Some of these include social media collaborations with more established cannabis brands to help build awareness and increase traffic to your online store or your in person store.
Maria McCligott: Social media can be a great way to showcase your products. Bring in traffic, it lets you interact face to face with your customers right online, which is awesome. It helps you build relationships and everything, and you might have help right in house. Your staff can jump onto Instagram or TikTok and help you create some content.
Tom Mulhern: I know I follow a couple different dispensaries their TikTok channels, and there's some really good ones out there. Another idea that you could do, Maria is get your team involved. In the local community, there's a huge stigma with cannabis in local communities, especially if you live in a smaller town and by volunteering for, a pancake breakfast or reading at the local library, it's a great way to of drop that stigma, really get involved and do something good in the community.
I tell you this if you, if a cannabis dispensary does something like that, it'll get written up positively in the newspaper. So get involved in the local community and really help.
Maria McCligott: Of course, your bud tenderers can do marketing outside of social media as well.
Give them free swag. Like maybe you've got some dispensary t-shirts or hats that they can wear. Maybe you're running a competition and they can promote it and share the brand to all their friends.
Tom Mulhern: Marketing can really help increase a dispensary's brand awareness, draw more customers, and that will inevitably drive up the dispensary's profit.
Maria McCligott: All right. And last but not least, we have number five, which is cutting down on your admin costs. Some admin costs that dispensaries might run into are their payroll management, their compliance insurance. They're gonna be organizing work schedules, inventory, handling, and control all these things cost money.
So owners can navigate these costs with the support of technology.
Tom Mulhern: Using a cannabis specific workplace management system. It can save you up to 40 hours per week. That's a full time person allowing a dispensary owner to create, schedules and. Payroll and, get alerts when there needs to be adjustments to the clock. All of that can be done automatically in a system that is designed for that workplace management even doing holiday calculations and taxes and all of that seems I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
I can imagine a dispensary owner would be, and that saves you that time, that 40 hours per week.
Maria McCligott: using a software like Kaya Push that's, specifically designed for the cannabis. And it's gonna be an all in one solution. So new business owners, it's gonna be your new best bud.
Tom Mulhern: So just to recap, Maria, the growth and sustainability of a cannabis dispensary really depends on making a profit and those five things. Your dispensary can do today will make a huge difference in balancing the revenue versus expenses.
Maria McCligott: You always want your income to be more than the cost incurred and it seems obvious, but there's so many costs in the cannabis industry, all these things that might come up. So you're gonna wanna do everything you can to just get those profits up.
Tom Mulhern: Maria, thanks so much for sharing these tips. make sure to go check out kayacast.fm, to find more episodes, more interviews, more tips, and tricks, and to subscribe and listen to the Kaya Cast every week.
