How much product should a dispensary carry on hand?

Dispensary
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I am just about to open my doors as a brand new dispensary. I feel like I have spent a ton of money on product, but when I look at the shelves it seems kinda bare. Distributors are willing to come just about every week, so I don’t need much more than a weeks worth of product. However being opening weekend, the flow should be greater than normal.

I live in a small county. 50,000 people before you hit a county with another dispensary. I am the only game in town for about 1 hour of driving.

How much product do other dispensaries go through?

Is it wise to be overstocked going into a grand opening weekend, or better to fly through all my product and not over extend? My cash flow for this project is nearing an end. I need to see what kind of money can be made before more money gets dumped in. However, there is always more money in the wings.

Opening weekend tips? Must have products?

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I would alert your distributors that you may need more product on short notice due to your opening weekend. Work this out in advance, so you can both have action plans in place if needed.

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Great advice and guidance, @AJGirard!

Years ago, when the doors to our dispensaries opened, we crushed it on our opening weekend and literally had a line out the door. Sales waned after the hype wore down. Just have a contingency plan for your contingency plans!

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Good morning at my dispensary in Sacramento CA we sell through probably 3 pounds a day total in flowers but we have been open for almost 10 years. The demographics in city i’m in are 30-35 dispensaries per the city of 500,000 people. Opening weekend’s have to do with a-lot of factors so its kinda hard to say. Some factors like advertising and local black market have a huge correlation with the bottom line and how busy you will be along with the types and brands of products. We push our sales by aggressively marketing especially within social media. Hope a little bit of that helps at least.

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This is really helpful guys. I am doing my inventory now and will post up some numbers.

#1 I for sure have my distributors notified for a re up. I have been exchanging info with as many vendors as I can hoping a few will come through in emergency situations. Most have said they are very willing.

#2 3 pounds a day… eek. Let me do inventory…

@mattallen1977 Thank you very much! If you do the math, and say 32.5 dispensaries per 500k people. That works out to the metric placed to configure prop 64. They say about 1 dispensary per 16k people, and your math comes out to 15,384 people per dispensary. Here at the moment, I have 1 dispensary per 50,000 people. However those people are a much older demographic, and much more conservative.

Thanks again everybody, keep them coming.

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We started slowly and had a horrible first weekend and 6 months, but when we started we knew very little about marketing, and social media wasn’t was it is today. We were still in quazi limbo status being that Bush was leaving office and supposedly Obama was open to our cause. (Kinda turned out be the incorrect thing as Obama’s administration had the most dispensary raids.)
I DO WISH YOU A MOST SUCCESSFUL AND BLESSED GRAND OPENING WEEKEND and expect you will do so.
Much Love

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So here is a brief overview of what I have. Please let me know where I stand.

Flower: 18 varieties not including pre rolls
7.7 lbs in 1/8ths
100 grams in single grams
350 1g pre rolls, 5 strains

Cartridges: 4 brands (Rebel Grown, HoneyVape, Himalayan and Legion of bloom)
68 1g
281 .5g

Concentrates: 4 brands (Empress extracts, Key, Apex and Rebel Grown)
30 .5g Live resin
74 1g Live resin
65g wax

Edible: Kiva and Korova
40 100mg gummies
60 100 mg chocolate bars
40 100 mg terra bites
100 100mg cookies

Tinture: one brand
18 total

82 batteries for the pens.

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You can’t have a Plan A without a Plan B, or C or D, or E. :wink: Words of wisdom from my father.

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  • How big of a showroom do you have? In a small establishment this could be more than enough display-wise but with a larger showroom it seems like you’d be starting off with less than you would need.

  • While it’s possible you may squeak by from a purely quantitative perspective, I’d imagine the store would start to appear pretty sparse fairly quickly on your first day and so you either need to be comfortable with the aesthetics being less than desirable or find a workaround either through coordinating backup supply as mentioned previously, or developing some point of sale marketing plans to keep your display looking as appealing as possible, even through low supply and/or high demand periods.

  • Another thing to consider along the aesthetic lines is when a customer walks in how many distinct product displays, brands, and strains/flavors are they seeing and how will that change throughout the weekend with no resupply?

  • If you’re cash strapped now and you just can’t buy more product and aren’t worried about any potential negative feedback from customers due to running out of product then staying the course might be the right choice.

  • Ultimately as you said you’re the only game in town so while you certainly don’t want to miss out on revenue, it’s unlikely to hurt you in the long term if you run out opening weekend as long as you have a plan to woo those affected customers and of course then get your inventory management on point once you see what actual demand looks like.

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Just read your bio @Pacifico, thank you for your service and response to my thread.

My shop is only 550 sq ft. Very small but has a very nice flow. Should be able to handle 10 people at a time in the retail area.

Good idea about getting a plan together to “appear” more stocked than I am in an event of a sell out. Thank you.

To appear more stocked, I chose to get low amounts of lots of varieties. So over the weekend you are right, the visual amount of product might dwindle.

To everybody:
I kind of figured I was right on the edge, and I felt light. I have been working on getting more product, I plan to have at least one more pound, and more topical/trans-dermal patches/tinctures.

When looking at my product list, is there something that jumps out as low? No idea what the demand will be on the carts and dabable concentrates. I have a fair amount of carts, but I know those will go quick. Dabable concentrates in an older demographic may not sell quite as fast, but I know I am low there also.

Thanks everybody!

P.S. Funny story. I always tend to over prepare. When I went to the emerald cup I didn’t want to run short on material. So I brought EVERYTHING I had that was ready and packaged. I brought at least 5 lbs of concentrates all gramed up, along with over 50 lbs. I think I sold .5 lbs of concentrates and 5 lbs of herb. LOL. Was more than prepared.

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Jeff,

I would do what I call a soft opening and not hold your grand opening the first week. Start out slow and work out all of the glitches. Then in about 2 months, have your grand opening. You will be in better shape and hopefully have found out all of the issues that you never thought of.

When I owned restaurants this is exactly want we did it. Now your grand opening will be a success and not a weekend full of problems.

Trust me you are going to have problems your first few days, weeks etc… have the grand opening after you have all of the kinks worked out.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Larry
420 Friendly Insurance

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I think the soft opening is the answer. We got denied by the local paper, and the local website from advertising. So I guess we have no choice but to have a soft opening. Then have the Grand Opeining in a couple weeks, or a month. I love it.

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