Enhancing Dispensary Efficiency with Smart Technology and Data

Imagine you're the manager of a dispensary on an average Wednesday, expecting a quiet day with a few customers and your team of budtenders. Out of a sudden, your typical, sleepy Wednesday is flipped upside down when 16 of your vendors tell you that they will all be doing product drop-offs today. 

Let’s explore why this is inefficient and could be avoided with smart technology and intelligent data. 

Inefficient Staffing

The sudden flood of deliveries creates staffing chaos, as you are required to pull employees off the showroom floor to help get the inventory unpacked, input into the POS system, sorted, and put on the shelves. 

This takes your sales staff away from the customers who are there to make purchases, leading to longer wait times and overall dissatisfaction amongst your in-store customers. In the highly competitive cannabis industry where there are dispensaries on almost every block in states like Oregon and Colorado, this can be a costly mistake. 

Additionally, the lack of planning means asking your employees to complete critical tasks that they’ve never been trained to do. This can make them feel unsupported, improperly compensated, and like they’re being spread thin – All of which are factors that contribute to high cannabis retail employee turnover rates.

Inefficient Inventory Management

Having a deep and accurate understanding of your business’ inventory at all times is critical to success, and it all starts with having proper supply chain systems and processes in place. 

Asking untrained employees to take on inventory roles, compounded with the speed and velocity required to get through high volumes of product, leads to unnecessary inventory errors. This in turn leads to bad data and inaccurate inventory reporting, making it difficult to know what is on your shelves, what is in your store, what has been ordered, and what is on its way. 

If not quickly resolved, inventory issues snowball to create an inaccurate image of your store’s inventory, which leads to critical dispensary problems such as expired products being kept on shelves, unnecessary amounts of inventory, and, untimely, stockouts. 

Inefficient Partner Management

When retailers are inundated with an overwhelming amount of deliveries in one day, they typically tackle them based on their delivery times; unpacking the products that are delivered first, irrespective of customer demand or current product inventory.

This can lead to later deliveries staying unattended for days or weeks. The worst case scenario being when a box doesn’t get unpacked until the next delivery arrives and everyone is surprised to find that the original delivery still hasn’t made it to the showroom floor. An unfortunate, but not infrequent occurrence.

These inventory inefficiencies can put significant unintended stress on retailer-brand relationships. 

Inefficient Logistics & Unsustainable Practices

It’s worth considering how many of these deliveries came from the same area and could have been added to the same truck. By combining all of the deliveries, brands have a more effective way of getting their products to retailers, while sharing the supply chain costs, and reducing unnecessary emissions.

Similarly, reducing the number of deliveries streamlines the intake process, minimizing administrative tasks associated with processing multiple invoices and compliance checks.

Future State

Now, imagine you’re a retailer and you’re able to map out your inventory so efficiently that you have complete transparency and control over your inventory management. You are finally able to make smart decisions on everything from inventory management to staffing needs, while reducing unnecessary supply chain costs and harmful emissions. 

In this future state, there aren’t just less days with 16 unexpected deliveries, but there are fewer deliveries overall because of intelligent and sustainable practices that save money for everyone along the supply chain; from the brand, to the retailer, to the end-consumer. 

The good news is that the future is here with technology that puts the power of supply chain management back into the hands of the business leaders, and reduces the ambiguity that comes with operating in a market with a blind supply chain. 

The 240 Logistics Difference

Our goal at 240 Logistics is to bring standard logistics practices and processes to the cannabis industry, while equipping retailers and brands with the data and insights they need to make data-driven decisions for their business. 

Our latest offering, Centralized Buying, seeks to leverage bulk pricing for retailers, while facilitating direct partnerships with cannabis brands to secure high-quality products. With this system, we purchase all of the products up front from the brand, and bring it back to our warehouse to unpack and load it into the POS system. From there we coordinate with your team to schedule a delivery time that works best for you. Once the product arrives at your store, it is ready to be placed on the shelves. 

This streamlined process not only saves you time and effort, but drives efficiencies in your supply chain by consolidating orders and lowering prices through bulk ordering. By coordinating delivery and preparing products for immediate sale, we enable you to focus entirely on business growth while benefiting from increased working capital upfront.

Ready to get started? Reach out to us today 240logistics.com/contact.