Imagine living in a relatively small town that, despite its wholesome vibes, has a handful of dispensaries all within a 10-mile radius. You’ve become a regular at one of the shops close to your home, but one night you didn’t plan ahead of time and realize that you’re out of materials after that shop has closed. Thankfully, another dispensary is still open and you zoom over there to see what they have available. Lo and behold, your favorite budtender from your usual joint is behind the counter, telling you that she just changed jobs!
While it’s incredibly common for people to jump from company to company within the same industry, it has to make you wonder if doing this in the cannabis world is concerning. After all, shops are pretty similar and store managers are basically hiring the competition, right?
Trade Secrets
If you work in a fast food establishment and then quit to go work across the street, there’s a good chance that you won’t be selling the exact same type of food. Fountain drinks and fries aside, no one is really worried that you’re sharing the famous fried chicken recipe with anyone at your new pizza job.
While this same logic can be applied to a range of retail type of establishments, can the same thought process be used for budtenders and cannabis dispensaries? What if one shop has specific marketing strategies that they employ and those secrets go right along with the employee to the competitor’s ears?
Industry Standards
When you break it down, selling weed isn’t overly complex, but there are very specific regulations that must be followed no matter where you work. Compliance is king in the cannabis world, so making sure you run the appropriate reports and sell product according to your state’s limits will be required at any shop.
The thing that really sets dispensaries apart isn’t the way they ring up a sale, but rather the customer service they provide and the awesome product selection available. If a hot selling edible does well at shop A when that budtender moves to shop B, don’t you think they’ll recommend that they start stocking it there?
The Bottom Line
If you’re not a dispensary owner, you might be wondering why you should care about what we call “rotating budtenders.” Yet as a cannabis consumer, your money speaks volumes in terms of purchasing power. If you are loyal to a specific budtender in your area, will you follow them no matter where they work? Or, is overall shop loyalty more important beyond the faces you see every time you visit?
Take some time to think about your own priorities when it comes to buying weed and just for fun, keep your eyes peeled to see if the shops in your town start to slowly mirror each other. If they suddenly offer the same types of products, advertise in the same manner, and are even open during the exact same hours, you might attribute those changes to a rotating budtender or two.
But hey, as long as you can still get high, does it matter?