How to Prepare Your Marijuana Dispensary for the 4/20 Rush

The biggest cannabis holiday of the year is upon us and marijuana dispensaries across the country are preparing for a busy week of business. Meeting demand of customers who are anxious to celebrate 4/20 takes careful consideration and a marijuana dispensary must execute in various areas to be successful.

Order Enough Inventory

Making sure that you marijuana dispensary has enough inventory to cover the high volume of clientele is imperative to maximizing profits. The general rule of thumb is to order about twice the amount of inventory that would be sold on a typical busy day. Shopping trends indicate that customers will purchase up to 80% more than usual and are more prone to be persuaded by upselling related products.

In addition to all of the cannabis products, it is imperative that your dispensary also order a large quantity of accessories that have high profit margins. Selling rolling papers, blunt wraps, lighters, and glass pipes ensures that your customers will leave with everything they need. It might also be worth staying in contact with your distributor to have emergency inventory on standby if you see you stock start to dwindle.

Setting Up Discounts and Promotions

While offering discounts and sales promotions might attract business, it’s important that you can execute these deals without holding up the line. Any and all 4/20 discounts should be pre-set the night before to ensure that budtenders aren’t fumbling to find how to apply them at checkout. This is easily done when using a smart dispensary point of sale software that automatically apply these discounts with one or two clicks.

Planning out your promotions for April 20th is just as important as you want to encourage your clientele to come during the hours that might typically be slow. Spacing out the rush of customers will make the crowds more manageable for your staff and reduce transaction times. Using the analytics generated from your point of sale from previous 4/20 sales you’ll be able to know when to activate these discounts.

Send Out Marketing Campaigns

Notifying your existing clientele of how they can save on 4/20 is an integral part of getting them into your store. Coordinating your email/SMS marketing campaigns will raise awareness and help spread the word about your dispensary deals. Before sending out any mass emails it’s paramount that all the links are working, copy contains correct information, and imagery is up-to-date.

Some of the premium point of sale systems include built-in marketing tools that make it easy to send email/sms campaigns. Make sure that you test the campaign before sending to troubleshoot any potential problems that could arise. Actively engaging your audience through social media on 4/20 is just as important. Posting images of your dispensary staff and promotional displays will give your followers FOMO.

Dispensary Staffing for 4/20

Scheduling enough employees on 4/20 is critical to handling the high volume of customers. Assembling a solid team of dispensary staff can make the difference between a good day at the shop and an unforgettable experience for your staff, your clientele, and your business. Delegating who is responsible for what and having a couple standby workers will give your team the support they need during a record day.

Asking your staff to promote the 4/20 specials is another great way to attract new business. Budtenders and staff understand the power of influencer marketing and want to feel like they contributed to a successful day of sales. Before opening your dispensary doors, make sure they feel confident with their duties and know how to enable offline mode on the point of sale in case of a wifi outage.

Maintaining Compliance

State regulators understand the significance of 4/20 and the impact it can have on legal cannabis industry. They just want to make sure that every business is operating under the same rules so maintaining compliance is a top priority. Notify that your staff that enforcing age limits, purchase limits, and on-site consumption is mandatory. You never know when regulators could send in a secret shopper to test you marijuana dispensary for compliance.

Reporting all of your inventory and sales numbers to the track-and-trace system is one part of 4/20 that should fairly easy. If your dispensary uses a cannabis compliant POS system then these numbers will be automatically submitted in real time. IndicaOnline streamlines reporting and compliance with intuitive software that is customizable for your cannabis business.