Improving Cannabis Operations Using Consumer Feedback

Most cultivation directors optimize for "fire." The best ones optimize for revenue. Most cannabis operations have a toxic divide: growers who think retail "doesn't understand quality" and retail teams who think cultivation "doesn't understand business." The facility I toured last week eliminated that gap completely. Here's how: 1. Cultivation tours for the retail team. Not once a year. Regularly. The retail team walks through flower rooms during maintenance windows, sees the 9-week process, understands why you can't just "switch strains" on demand. They watch 10 people spend a full day on a single room's defoliation. Suddenly, "can we get more of that strain?" becomes "I understand you need 15 weeks minimum." 2. The grower goes to the retail stores. Not to check product. To ask one question: "What do you guys hate that we send you?" And here's the key—they're probably aligned. The grower hates growing it too. But nobody was talking. 3. Weekly cultivation calls with everyone at the table. CEO, CFO, retail controller, cultivation director, data team. All present. Every Tuesday. Why? Because by the time flower hits the shelf, cultivation has already: - Planted 60 moms for the next cycle - Committed 3 tables to rotation - Locked in 15 weeks of labor and resources 4. The retail controller is the only non-cultivation person who can request new genetics. Not marketing. Not the CEO's "guy who knows good weed." The person who sees daily sales data and knows what moves. If she wants a new strain they have in their library, it's 15 weeks minimum to production. If it's from seed? 41 weeks. That's nearly a full year from decision to revenue. 5. The brutal truth they live by: "I could love a genetic. It could be my favorite. The guys could kill it. We could look at it as the best. But if it's not selling, I'm not doing a service to anybody by constantly pushing it." Revenue matters. Not grower ego. Not "but it's so fire." How this actually works: → They pull product at 60 days even if it's selling (brand integrity > short-term margin) → They track finished goods output, not just harvest pounds → They plant with a 6-month forward view based on retail feedback → Tuesday/Thursday drop schedule keeps customers coming back for new strains The philosophy that changed everything: "We don't want to have that culture where it's us vs. them. Our job is to make what we do more visible, educate them better, and be flexible." When cultivation understands retail's challenges and retail understands cultivation's constraints, you stop fighting about problems and start solving them together. Does your cultivation team know what's collecting dust on your shelves? Or are they growing in a vacuum, finding out 15 weeks too late?

Here’s what I learned working behind the dispensary counter for a day in Connecticut: First, to add some context… adult use has seen a slow roll-out in CT. Total AU sales from January-April this year totaled just over $68M. There’s lower customer volume and basket size. Average margins. If you were to just look at the dashboard of data, from an executive position it’d be easy to direct the team to push forward in things like generalized marketing and better training for budtenders to add-on products and boost basket sizes. When I actually made the trip from Midwest Minnesota to the East Coast and spoke to customers and staff, I learned an entirely different story. People on the ground were complaining about pricing, saying products were too expensive relative to the traditional market and adjacent states (Massachusetts and quasi-legal NY). So we made a pivot to focus the menu on lower-priced items, pushed messaging on these products, and tried to raise visit frequency. And it worked. 21% increase in sales. Gross margins increased 12 percentage points. At LeafLine in MN (now Rise) and later at Harvest Care in WV (Country Grown Cannabis), I’ve also taken the time to spend days harvesting, trimming, or packaging. Some of my favorite questions to ask the team are: - Out of everything you have to do, what’s the biggest pain?  - What would make this go easier / smoother? ^ From those answers, we were able to optimize packaging/curing and increase the speed of product launches by 30%. The best, real feedback you get is when you’re actually on the ground, talking to people on the front lines, asking questions about the real friction before jumping to conclusions based on limited data. There’s a term for this in lean manufacturing called “gemba” or “going to the gemba.” The word stems from Japanese (and was popularized by Toyota), and simply means going to the “real place” or “the place where things happen” to make discoveries in pursuit of continuous improvement. I’ll post a link in the comments that provides a good framework if you’re curious about trying it out. #cannabis #cannabisindustry #lean #leanmanufacturing #gemba

Becoming a More Innovative Cannabis Company “Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.” Seth Godin 💡 The cannabis industry has a nagging problem: companies talk a big game about being innovative but rarely connect that innovation to what real consumers want. Too many operators chase gimmicks - new strains, celebrity partnerships, fancy packaging - without truly understanding consumer needs and wants. ☠️ The result:  wasted investment, dashed expectations, bloated inventories, and retail shelves overflowing with me-too products. 🏆 If cannabis firms want to grow, let alone survive, they need to become consumer-driven innovators, not product-driven dabblers. Here are 3 ways I help marketers deliver true innovation: 1️⃣ Know the Consumer, Not the Category Most cannabis “innovation” is inward looking. Marketers will introduce what they like, copy competitors, or launch new formats based on Reddit posts. That’s not insight, it’s imitation. 🔬 Consumer insight is not about guessing what the next hot product will be. It is about decoding buyer pain points and unmet needs that transcend THC levels or pack sizes. 🤔 Real consumer insight comes from analyzing behavioural data , not anecdotes or online chatter. For example, heavy flower users and casual pre roll buyers have fundamentally different habits, budgets, and expectations. Yet most firms treat them as interchangeable. 🛠️ Companies should invest in buyer journey analytics, basket analysis, ethnography and usage segmentation to decode who is buying what, when, and why. 2️⃣ Mine the Retail Feedback Loop Consumer-driven innovation starts where the consumer actually buys: the store. Yet cannabis producers rarely leverage front-line staff insight. Take Budtenders.  They are the in-store bellwether. Budtenders know which products fly off shelves, what customers really want, and why some SKUs gather dust. Unfortunately, many LPs treat them and other staff as an afterthought. 🎶 You want to establish structured feedback loops such as quarterly retailer councils, digital suggestion boards, and fast-turnaround test markets. Reward store-level data sharing with exclusive SKUs or promotional support. 3️⃣ Simplify Your Portfolio Innovation does not mean adding more SKUs. In fact, having too many SKUs reduces brand clarity, baffles consumers, and inflates costs. Borrow a page from disciplined operators: cull aggressively, then double down on scalable winners. 💪 A leaner portfolio will free up capital for true innovation rather than wasting resources keeping zombie SKUs alive. Until cannabis executives start thinking like world class CPG players - understanding needs, operationalizing insight, and pruning clutter - innovation will remain a slogan, not a strategy. Let’s chat. I will help you leverage innovation to outflank competition, build capability and drive profits. #management #cannabisindustry #cannabis #innovation #products