Focus Article
You Aren’t Making a Profit Because Your Ordering Process is Jacked
Over the last several years, we have spent a lot of time studying how cannabis retailers make purchasing decisions. Not just which products they buy, or how much they buy, but the entire sequence of events that begins once a buyer decides inventory needs to be ordered. That sequence matters more than most operators realize. […]
Hemp Beverage Expo 2026: Get in the Room Where the THC Beverage Industry Is Being Built
The Hemp Beverage Expo (HBE) heads into its second show this June in Austin, Texas, and the energy is full speed ahead — even with November 12th looming over the industry. With policy updates shifting rapidly and operators scrambling to brainstorm contingency plans, getting in the room with businesses and advocates from across the beverage […]
What the Wholesale Numbers Tell Us About Where Cannabis Markets Are Headed
LeafLink’s Wholesale Cannabis Pricing Guide, drawing on over 400,000 SKUs and billions of dollars in transaction data across 18 U.S. markets throughout 2025, paints a picture of the wholesale cannabis pricing continuing its downward march as markets mature and supply expands — with each market and product category telling a slightly different story. The Big […]
The Post-280E Opportunity: Turning Cannabis Risk Into an Asset
The April 2026 Department of Justice rescheduling order landed with the weight of a decade of advocacy behind it. For an industry that has watched every other legal sector deduct its rent, payroll, and marketing costs while cannabis operators paid taxes on money they never made, the optimism is more than justified. It is earned. […]
Pre-Roll Packaging in 2026
Pre-rolls generated $4 billion in sales in 2025 and are projected to grow faster than any other top cannabis category, at a 10% compound annual growth rate, according to BDSA retail tracking data. Infused formats now account for 43% of the segment, and the category has grown by 271% since 2020. That kind of volume […]
Dispensaries Are Winning on Google and Disappearing on ChatGPT
SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index analyzed more than 350,000 business locations across 2,751 brands and found a gap every dispensary operator should take seriously. ChatGPT recommends 1.2% of those locations. Perplexity recommends 7.4%. Gemini reaches 11%. Google’s local 3-pack surfaces 35.9% of the same locations. That is not a small gap. It is a different […]
5 Air Quality Mistakes That Are Costing Cannabis Growers
Cannabis cultivation is, at its core, a controlled environment business, and air quality remains one of the most consistently underestimated variables in the operation. Contaminated batches, worker health complaints, and odor violations affecting neighboring communities can all be traced back to air-handling decisions made early in facility design or overlooked during scale-up. Mandatory testing gets […]
Your Banking Problem Is a Margin Problem
Most cannabis operators have a banking problem. For many, that means limited access to financial services, forcing the business to operate largely in cash and be unable to use the standard banking rails every other industry takes for granted. The banking conversation in this industry almost always stops at access. Can the business get an […]
Why Understanding True Manufacturing Costs Is Essential for Cannabis Business Survival
The U.S. cannabis industry generated more than $30 billion in regulated sales in 2025, yet profitability has become harder to predict. According to a recent national index report by Cannabis Benchmarks, wholesale pricing remains volatile, recently fluctuating between approximately $987 and $1,007 per pound. In an environment where pricing moves faster than cost structures adapt, […]
Inconsistent Messaging Is a Compliance Risk. Full Stop.
Picture the moment a cannabis company’s compliance team gets copied on an email from a banking partner’s risk officer. The subject line says “Questions re: public materials.” Attached is a spreadsheet. On one side, language from the company’s Florida medical dispensary website. On the other, language from the California recreational site, the New Jersey acquisition […]