
For most cannabis retailers, 4/20 is their biggest sales day of the year.
But as time has evolved, the 4/20 celebration goes beyond the actual day, with some retailers starting festivities a week or even a month prior.
The Cannabis Business Times editors caught up with several operators from dispensaries across the U.S. and Canada to gather their top strategies and advice for cashing in on the big day and their most significant lessons learned from previous years.
“4/20 is an incredibly busy day, so it’s all about streamlining your operations to minimize patient wait times and maximize their satisfaction. Discounting your whole inventory leads to the decision-making process [being] more difficult (and longer) for patients to select from hundreds of available products. Rather, creating pre-bundled items of top-selling products, as well as new SKUs you want patients to try, streamlines the sales and operation process. We can pre-package bundles the day before to save time on same-day fulfillment as well as [improve] wait times. And lastly, it leads to less dissatisfaction from patients wondering if they got the best deal on 4/20.” - COO Narith Panh
“My biggest lesson from 4/20 is to silence the noise, don’t look at what others are offering/ doing/ advertising. Don’t drive around to watch for store lines. Focus on your differentiator—why are your customers coming to your store or buying your product? Is it because you’re the cheapest out there?
“Don’t compete over price only, celebrate 4/20! Find creative ways to incorporate it.
“Collaborate, tell a story, create bundles, create unique experiences. Making every 4/20 cheaper than the last is not a sustainable approach and not a winning strategy for the long run. Let’s celebrate 4/20 tradition in fun ways. Not just the ‘price way.’” - CEO Lilach Mazor Power
“Planet 13 Las Vegas has become a must-see destination and 4/20 is a day we always make sure we’re ready for. We have also learned that 4/19 is very busy because many customers love to shop the day before and have their supplies ready in advance, so we make sure we’re staffed and ready for large influxes of customers on both 4/19 and 4/20. That means a great experience for customers with promotions and face-to-face interaction with brands. and we don’t want to over complicate the deals, so we offer brand pop-ups and discounts throughout both 4/19 and 4/20 all day long. Also, this year any cannabis purchase made in-store or online on 4/19 or 4/20 will qualify for a chance at the $5,000 grand prize. Planet 13 always wants to create an experience for the customers that they can’t get anywhere else and continue to give people a reason to visit.” - VP of Sales & Marketing David Farris
“4/20 is like the Super Bowl for cannabis consumers. For retail cannabis stores it can be one of the busiest days of the year. In 2022 for Tonik it was our biggest day of sales up to that date. 4/20 2023 will be Tonik’s second year to celebrate this occasion. We learned that many consumers are looking for a one-time-use product like pre-rolled joints to celebrate the occasion. However, this year we expect a large increase in vape pens and beverage sales during the 4/20 holiday. We will be trying to maximize this opportunity by promoting a variety of consumption methods including edibles, concentrates and flower for several days before 4/20 to provide an opportunity for consumers to check out products they may not have had a chance to try yet. We will be paying close attention to consumer behavior during this 4/20 week to learn and convert this into even greater success next year,” - Owner Anthony Horvath
“Our most important takeaway from holidays past has been understanding that 4/20 is no longer a single day–it’s a whole month–and one of the key ingredients for a successful 4/20 is making the holiday accessible.
“The ‘average’ cannabis consumer has evolved over time, and so has the holiday itself. We know that the reasons people purchase cannabis are constantly changing, but we still see the same thing every year: everyone stocks up on inventory in order to offer deals on or around 4/20 and then everyone sees a tremendous lull both before and after the holiday. While 4/20 is without a doubt one of our biggest sales days of the year–and we look forward to beating our own sales records year over year–there is an extended period of time throughout the month of April where people are looking forward to the holiday and stocking up. Not to mention, there are a lot of people who don’t actually want to physically go into a crowded dispensary on 4/20, but they do want to make the most of 4/20 deals and are happy to plan out their holiday a few weeks in advance.
“This year we have made 4/20 more accessible and fun for Jushi customers. We are playing off the origins of the holiday, which started in 1971 when five high school students in San Rafael, California, used to meet regularly after school at 4:20 PM to scout out an abandoned cannabis crop using a treasure map allegedly made by the crop’s grower. From now until the end of the month, we are conducting a campaign called the “Roll Up to 420” with a 1971 retro theme. Throughout April we are offering a wide range of staggered promos at our Beyond Hello dispensaries for Jushi-branded products as well as partner products. We have everything from in-store promos, app-only promos, online ordering promos – essentially, we wanted to create a promotion for every type of customer that exists, with accessibility across platforms. We also want to make sure that our employees can get some enjoyment from it; 4/20 is a massive undertaking in the cannabis industry and our employees are on the front lines, so we really try to find ways for them to participate in promos as well, and most importantly, have fun.” - Chief Creative Director Andreas Neumann
4FRONT VENTURES/MISSION
“DON’T COMPLICATE THE SALES! Make the deals simple for your customers to understand. Make the deals simple for your VENDORS to understand. The easier it is to understand your promotions, the more the customers will buy, and the more your vendors will be able to provide you with relevant discounts to match the deals. Brands want to be front and center on 4/20–leverage that and come to your vendors with simple partnership ideas.
“On average, we see a 50% increase in transactions on 4/20 at our Mission dispensaries across the U.S.–that means our efficiencies must be in place. Proper communication between the sales floor and inventory room is a necessity. The number of sales we see on 4/20 is only limited by the efficiencies we maintain; with proper planning and communication you can see considerably more customers!” - EVP of Operations Gabriel Mendoza
“The biggest thing that we learned from 4/20 last year was how aggressively the velocity of sales increased when compared to previous years. While we made over $575K in sales last 4/20, and it was a great day for us overall, we had areas to improve. During peak hours we saw patient lines queue up 35 to 40 minutes. There is the opportunity for us to capitalize more heavily on express pick-up and online sales to reduce wait times and length of lines. We have worked diligently to ensure that we have the staff, structures, and processes in place to meet that anticipated demand this year.
“We now pride ourselves in our ability to process an order in less than 10 minutes from online receipt. That's our standard, and that's a standard that we have achieved on average across all our 31 Florida dispensaries over the last six months. We're looking forward to going into 4/20 this year with the ability to deliver a swift and seamless retail experience for our customers.” - Director of Sales Vic Bindi
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