Louisiana will regulate delta-8 THC in food products as the state health department has started reviewing manufacturers’ and distributors’ plans, registering products, and issuing permits, according to a Law360 report.
Manufacturers and distributors seeking permits must submit floor plans of their facilities, plans for processing and recalls, and proofs of the labels that they plan to use on their products, according to Law360. They will also have to undergo an initial “preoperational” inspection in order to receive the permits.
Permit fees are based on the businesses’ annual sales and can cost up to $1,375, Law360 reported.
It will take the Louisiana Department of Health 10 days to issue a permit to allow a facility to manufacture and distribute consumable hemp, according to Law360.
The manufacture and distribution of products containing over 0.3% delta-9 THC or over 1% of total THC, as well as inhalable and dietary supplement products, are prohibited under the Department of Health’s guidance.
Hervé Expands Into California With Launch of Signature Macarons
The cannabis-infused dessert will be available at select retailers and online delivery.
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 2, 2021 – PRESS RELEASE – Hervé, maker of luxury French–inspired and cannabis-infused desserts, announced the launch of its signature macarons in California, the world's largest cannabis market. The announcement marks Hervé's first expansion outside of Nevada. Since launching in Nevada in February 2020, Hervé has created a novel category of edibles for the discerning cannabis consumer. Hervé's macarons have outsold all premium edibles in the market and, due to the quality, have commanded retail prices on average two to three times higher than competing products.
California launch flavors include raspberry, chocolate, salted caramel and celebration birthday cake. The macarons will be sold in a box containing three macarons with each macaron containing 10 milligrams of premium THC cannabis distillate, with a total of 30 mg per box. MSRP will be $20 per box plus applicable taxes. Consumers can purchase all four flavors of macarons at select retailers, including Atrium and Medicine Woman in LA, California Street Cannabis in San Francisco, One Plant in Goleta and Antioch and Planet 13 in Santa Ana, with more than 60 additional California dispensaries coming online in the coming months.
Hervé macarons will also be available for delivery direct to home throughout California at shop.herve.fr beginning Oct. 21.
"We couldn't be more excited to launch in California and are thrilled with consumer demand even ahead of our official product launch," said Cheyne Nadeau, vice president of marketing for Hervé. "We always felt that California represented exactly the type of knowledgeable consumer that would appreciate the care and quality that go into our Hervé products, and we are thrilled with all the excitement around our launch.”
Edibles have been increasing in popularity in California, with sales growing over 5% in Q1 of 2021 (from Q4 of 2020) and growing over 20% in Q1 of 2021 year over year. California also has the second largest edibles market share after Michigan.
In addition to its signature Macarons, Hervé plans to launch Le Mirage, a line of sublingual cannabis hard candies that come in a unique state-of-the-art refillable storage and dispensing system, in California later this year.
Urupong | Adobe Stock
Social Media and the Cannabis Industry: Tips and Lessons Learned
Ball Family Farms shares what it is doing differently after having its Instagram page shut down, while marketing agency Cannabis Creative Group outlines social media best practices for the industry.
Ball Family Farms, one of the first social equity cannabis licensees in Los Angeles, relied heavily on social media, particularly Instagram, to launch its business and promote new products before its page was shut down two months ago, wiping away the 120,000 followers the company had worked so hard to build.
Their story—and their frustration—is familiar in the cannabis industry, where businesses have long fought “shadow bans” on Facebook (when the platform omits cannabis-related pages and hashtags from users’ search results) and posts that are flagged and taken down for less-than-clear reasons.
While it can be difficult for cannabis businesses to navigate social media, Ball says it is well worth the effort.
“We can use the website some but that’s not as effective when it comes to being culturally in the space,” he says. “Everyone’s on Instagram. Everyone’s on TikTok. So, that’s where we tend to promote and create brand awareness.”
Dan Serard, director of business development for Cannabis Creative Group (CCG), a cannabis-specific marketing agency, agrees.
“It’s an amazing platform to showcase their products and really highlight their business across the board,” he says.
So, what’s a cannabis marketer to do?
Lessons Learned
As Ball Family Farms works to get its original Instagram account back up and running, it has started a second account to continue reaching its customers.
“We’ve kind of started from square one,” says Frankie Segal, a branding and marketing manager for JNF Creatives, the brand management agency that runs the day-to-day operations of Ball Family Farms’ social media pages.
The company’s backup Instagram account has amassed roughly 1,200 followers so far, and Segal is actively working to get Ball Family Farms’ original account reinstated, although it has been slow-going.
Overall, the company uses its Instagram page to promote new product launches, Segal says. “That’s our way to introduce the new strains and reach our customer base. It’s also a way for us to be able to connect directly with our customers to see which strains they want to see, which ones are their favorite, and that helps us develop ongoing strategies for whatever other products we’re going to come out with.”
Segal notes that Ball Family Farms would never sell its products directly through Instagram, and she says she is unsure why the company’s account was shut down in the first place.
“We’re not doing anything illegal,” she says. “We were basically just promoting that our product is legally available at these dispensaries.”
Nevertheless, over the past year, Ball Family Farms’ original Instagram account has had several posts flagged as violating the platform’s community guidelines. Segal says she isn’t even sure if the posts are being flagged by Instagram users or by the platform’s algorithm.
Roughly two months ago, Ball Family Farms received a message from Instagram that its account had been deactivated for violating community guidelines, and Segal and her team set to work appealing the decision.
“They keep telling us it’s going to get back up this weekend, next week,” she says. “We just keep getting the date pushed back. We’re waiting for it to go back live but in the meantime, we’re building up our back-up account.”
Ball says the situation has been particularly frustrating because the company is currently in the process of launching two new strains, and without a robust following on its new Instagram account, Ball Family Farms is having a difficult time sharing the news with its customers.
“I run into people and they’re like, ‘What happened to your Instagram? I was trying to see what’s going on with you guys and it’s not there,’” Ball says. “Not everybody really knows that there’s a back-up page and there’s really no way for us to scream that from a mountaintop. When you start a new page, you’ve only got 1,000 eyes on it as opposed to 30,000.”
Ball Family Farms has started relying more on its email list for marketing efforts, Segal says, but those contacts are generally customers who already have an established relationship with the brand.
“We put in a lot of work to build up that account and it’s been really amazing to see it grow, so to see it taken down for a reason that’s not even valid is frustrating,” she says.
But due to the setback, the Ball Family Farms team has learned what worked well for them in the past, as well as some valuable lessons that will help realign the company’s social media strategy going forward.
Segal says it is important for cannabis businesses to share content that tells the brand’s story and shows what sets it apart. For Ball Family Farms, this means that the company’s social media content focuses on Ball’s background as one of the first social equity licensees in Los Angeles.
Also important is the creativity behind the posts, Ball adds. “I take a lot of pride in doing a lot of high-quality, visual things on our page, whether that’s taking a clip from a movie scene that we’ve named one of the strains after or creating original interactive … content. We have a lot of stuff that we had planned on doing—skits with me and some of the staff members, … going out and creating that live content instead of just posting pictures of weed all day.”
“We got an amazing response from our audience when we were creating that kind of content,” Segal says. “People were really engaging with it before we got our account shut down, so we’re going to push forward with that.”
The company also plans to continue its work with influencers, especially during new product launches. For example, to celebrate 4/20, Ball Family Farms did an Instagram campaign where a group of influencers passed a blunt around virtually, from screen to screen.
In the future, though, Ball says the company will include more disclaimers on its page that remind users that Ball Family Farms does not sell its products through Instagram.
“If you are promoting cannabis, always put that there’s nothing for sale,” he says. “It’s something we didn’t do enough of with all of our posts. … Be over-communicative about how you’re not selling anything. It may be redundant. It may look like, ‘Why are they always saying this?’ It may take away from the integrity of the content, but you have to do it if you want to keep your page up.”
Segal notes that the company will also be more conscious of the wording and verbiage it uses in its posts.
“We can’t control everything, but at least having an idea of what sort of things will 99.9% get flagged, that’ll definitely help you,” she says.
Best Practices
As a marketing professional in the cannabis space, Serard has some idea about what sort of content will get flagged, and in fact, CCG maintains a list of cannabis-related hashtags to avoid on Instagram.
“You’ve got to be careful about how you play the game, essentially, for each different platform,” he says.
CCG helps its clients with content creation and boosting engagement on social media. The team also has a few recommendations on how to avoid being shadow banned, which include not engaging with spam activity that Serard describes as masked unfollowing or following, using third-party apps to grow an account’s following, or paying for followers.
Instead, companies need to consider who their audience is when setting their social media goals.
“Let’s say, we work with a dispensary in Amherst, Mass.,” Serard says. “If their goal is to have a social media following of a million people, well, there’s not a million people in a 50-mile radius of Amherst. So, they’re going to end up paying for followers, they’re going to do a mass following, and all of those followers or a good amount of them aren’t actually going to engage with their dispensary.”
Cannabis companies should instead focus on quality over quantity when it comes to followers, Serard says, and CCG’s goal as an agency is to help its clients connect with engaged followers who are actually going to interact with their businesses.
Since most platforms prohibit cannabis companies from placing paid advertisements, Serard says it’s important for businesses in the space to build an organic reach to their target audiences.
“It’s a follower strategy and it is very time-consuming,” he says. “There has to be a well thought out follower strategy to build that audience, where you’re looking at events that might be happening in the area … [or] you’re looking at other dispensaries who are following other dispensaries.”
To stay within the platforms’ guidelines, cannabis businesses should avoid selling language, such as posting about specific discounts or pricing on specific products, Serard adds.
Instead, he says companies should focus on content that promotes their business as a whole.
“What’s different about your business as compared to others in your area?” he says. “How are you working with the community? Do you have any sustainability practices? Really focus on that part of your businesses versus ‘we sell cannabis.’ … It’s the education piece that’s going to be more sustainable for your page than if you’re trying to promote product sales.”
If a cannabis company’s account—or one of the account’s specific posts—gets flagged despite the business’s best efforts, Serard says the company should follow the steps outlined by the platform to appeal the decision.
“There’s a checklist that says my Instagram account was deactivated, and you have to appeal your case and submit it for review,” he says. “You’re kind of at the discretion of Instagram, but there’s an automatic appeal section on Instagram that will help you do that.”
Serard recommends that business owners speak to someone with experience in getting social media accounts reinstated to make the most of what could be one opportunity to get your page back online.
“Instagram or Facebook, they’re so big that they’ll give you a one-shot opportunity, if you will, and you don’t want to keep appealing and keep appealing [because] essentially, that’s going to get flagged in the system that you’re contacting them every day,” he says. “But if you are working with someone who has been through that and who has worked with someone to get their Instagram page up or Facebook page up, they have a better shot at it."
Adobe Stock
How Dispensaries Can Leverage Local Delivery Times
Due to homebound users, safety, dependability, and convenience, cannabis delivery will likely continue to prosper long-term.
Cannabis delivery sales are a growing share of the cannabis market, a trend that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated during 2020.
Due to homebound users, safety, dependability, and convenience, cannabis delivery will likely continue to prosper long-term. And with ticket sizes trending 2x higher than in-store dispensary order sizes, it's unquestionably a significant revenue opportunity for retailers looking to start a dispensary delivery service.
With many key players in the cannabis industry turning to delivery for the multiple upsides, competition has never been higher. Businesses that are either hoping to expand, improve, or simply build out a delivery service need answers to plan efficient routes, meet consumer needs, promote their services, and provide a superior customer experience.
So where do we look for these answers? In the data, of course. Understanding cannabis delivery data is essential to providing a best-in-class delivery experience, reaching new markets, and growing your business.
In this article, we’ll be looking into cannabis delivery data in the top-selling cannabis state in the US, California.
So what are delivery times that dispensaries can expect to accommodate?
Here, we’ll take a look at delivery time averages. A delivery data sample from the Bay Area shows that typical delivery times at higher customer-retained businesses are, on average, 30-75 minutes depending on geography, with a delivery time spread between drivers at about 50%. This spread is consistent even if a delivery service has an overall average delivery time that is low as compared to one that is higher, as the spread doesn't cover certain delivery services being over exposed to longer distances here.
Another factor to consider is the relationship between orders per hour and delivery times. Across our whole sample, the average driver completes 2.5 orders per hour (13 orders in a 10 hour shift), which spreads between 1.5 and 3.6 orders per hour. This would mean that longer times can result in less revenue, but we also looked at corresponding ticket sizes to see if fewer orders always means less revenue, or if ticket sizes can make up for fewer orders.
The graph below covers delivery across CA counties. We’re excluding pre-orders here to see direct correlation between fulfilled orders and in-person delivery.
Happy Cabbage Analytics
We find that currently there’s not enough substantive evidence to conclude that those who live in more remote locations generate larger orders. In counties with quieter cannabis markets like Shasta, Sutter, and Yuba, delivery times can average around 120-160 minutes, but those counties don’t see larger ticket sizes than their counterparts with delivery time averages around 45-90 minutes.
With ticket sizes across the sample averaging at about $84.31, Fresno is one outlier to keep an eye on. Their $148.18 order average and 69 minute average delivery time further skews any potential correlation between ticket size and delivery time.
Does delivery time affect overall consumer retention?
Of course, cannabis delivery times vary greatly dependent on multiple factors- size of delivery zones, available dispensaries in given markets, traffic, order size, numbers of orders to fulfill, delivery model (ice cream truck model versus pizza model), etc.
Looking at dispensary customer retention rates here is interesting because customer order frequency and latency indicate whether a consumer is “used to” a specific order time. Customer retention is a good measure for ensuring that customers are consistently making purchases, and not heading over to competition. What distinguishes a retained customer from a non-retained customer is the former makes an order at least every 90 days.
When it comes to retaining delivery customers, simply getting it to the customer faster doesn’t necessarily mean they will be higher retained. On average, most customers in the Bay Area receive their cannabis 1-2 hours after placing an order.
What we find is that customers who get their deliveries faster (in less than an hour) actually don’t necessarily repeat purchases as often as customers who get delivery after an hour long wait time. They order at a lower overall frequency (orders per year) and have a lower retention rate.
How could this possibly be? It’s important to note the role of geography in customer retention.
Customers in more densely populated areas who may be experiencing faster delivery times could have more options to choose from. With more options, customers are more likely to shop around for the best deals, fastest delivery, lowest service fees, etc. Compared across the Bay Area, less densely populated areas have longer delivery times (as expected).
Happy Cabbage Analytics
San Francisco County
Happy Cabbage Analytics
Los Angeles County
But those same less-densely populated areas are shaded lighter when looking at retention, meaning they actually retain more customers than more densely populated areas, implying the causal factor might not be delivery times, but availability of cannabis options.
So back to our question- does delivery time correspond to customer retention? Not exactly. But customers do tend to make more annual purchases to cannabis businesses who deliver orders between 30 and 75 minutes.
Happy Cabbage Analytics
One thing is for sure: delivery services give cannabis businesses the power to more directly access and serve customers. With the right technology stack, cannabis businesses can send customers more custom promotional messages, track delivery logistics more closely, and measure ROI with more certainty
Happy Cabbage Analyticsprovides data analytics and insights solutions for cannabis retailers. Learn more about their latest platform for delivery businesses, Sirius.
C5Media | Adobe Stock
Mississippi Governor Wants Medical Cannabis Limits Before Calling Special Session on Legislation
Gov. Tate Reeves is calling for rules to specify how much cannabis a patient can purchase.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves wants lawmakers to include limits on how much cannabis a patient can purchase in their medical cannabis legalization proposal before he will call a special session on the legislation.
"The key piece is how much marijuana any one individual can get," Reeves told WAPT. "Really, the one key piece that is left [is] with respect to how much marijuana can any one individual get at any one point in time and what is the THC content of that marijuana?"
Lawmakers reached a deal on medical cannabis legislation in September before revising some aspects of the proposal last month to allow larger cultivation facilities and restructure the excise tax on medical cannabis products, among other changes.
The latest version of the bill allows patients to purchase a maximum of 4 ounces of medical cannabis per month, WAPT reported. That’s an ounce less than the maximum amount that was outlined in the voter-approved ballot initiative, according to the news outlet.
It is unclear when Reeves might call a special session on medical cannabis, and Mississippi’s regular legislative session starts in just under 60 days, according to WAPT.
Legislative Map
Cannabis Business Times’ interactive legislative map is another tool to help cultivators quickly navigate state cannabis laws and find news relevant to their markets. View More