Dispensaries are the consumer-facing side of legal cannabis businesses. They sell various cannabis products such as edibles, vape cartridges and concentrates – not to mention providing services like curbside pickup or online ordering.
Standard Operating Procedures, or SOPs, are essential tools in creating efficiency, maintaining compliance and mitigating risks in dispensaries. As the backbone of their operation, SOPs should always be adhered to for maximum compliance and must remain unchanged over time.
Potency
Potency refers to the strength or power of something; in relation to cannabis products it often refers to their intensity in terms of effects; for instance a stronger strain may produce more intense effects than its weaker counterpart.
An order ahead system for dispensaries allows you to keep an accurate track of inventory and meet customer demand with enough product. This prevents running out of products, leading to revenue losses. A dispensary order ahead system also helps identify par levels so you can place orders for more products before running out!
Implementing a potency tax would require states to set science-based restrictions. Establishing concentration ranges can be challenging without sufficient evidence on how different potencies affect health, and collecting taxes remains unclear.
Pre-pack
Pre-pack sales are an efficient means of helping distressed companies survive by selling off their assets to third parties before entering administration, then being implemented almost instantly upon the appointment of administrators. Pre-pack sales may help salvage them while simultaneously minimising any potential value losses from prolonged administration processes.
Unsecured creditors typically remain unaware of the pre-pack process until after it has concluded, leading them to feel misled or question whether this was indeed the best path for the company. Therefore, under SIP 16, IPs are required to provide extensive information to creditors upon completion of a pre-pack sale in order to balance competing interests fairly and provide confidence that this transaction was fair and appropriate.
Deli-style
Deli-style dispensaries use an affordable dispensary workflow wherein budtenders bring jars of flower directly to customers or patients and allow them to select their ideal strains from among available selections. This method offers customers the chance to try multiple cultivars for less, as compared to prerolls or eighths purchased at once.
Deli-style purchasing has its own set of challenges in regulated markets where cannabis must be sold in opaque, childproof packaging with labeling requirements. Deli style checkout adds another step and requires more staff work; furthermore it may cause moisture loss, spillage and additional data entry time issues.
Back of House (BOH) refers to the area within a dispensary where inventory is managed, stored and transferred – typically including non-public areas such as storage closets or rooms tucked behind counters; offices; secure cash storage; or vaults for handling cash transactions.
Restricted access area
Establishing a dispensary with restricted access areas is essential to protecting the security of your business. This will ensure that only authorized personnel enter the building, reducing theft or loss of inventory, while helping track people vs. products flow.
Dispensary facilities must install strong locks and barriers at their entrances to restrict unwelcomed entries, provide emergency buttons in the event of theft, record all visitors to their facility and make it available upon request to state boards of pharmacy for review – this list must include their name, contact information, purpose of their visit as well as how often they come back.
Retail dispensary
Establishing a dispensary can be an immense task, with retail shops typically costing an average of $775,000 to launch. Furthermore, this industry is highly-regulated; thus business owners must comply with city, county, state, and federal laws or risk fines or closure of their facility.
Create SOPs (standard operating procedures) for dispensary employees is integral to maintaining compliance. This should include hiring, training, onboarding, reviewing and promoting employees as well as employee retention measures such as medical insurance plans, 401ks or stock options.
Finding funding is another essential element of opening a dispensary. Merchant cash advances, invoice factoring, purchase order financing and equity crowdfunding all provide alternative funding solutions that may help your dispensary take off quickly and successfully.