 Like the old expression, you’re only as strong as the weakest link, an effective team in the cannabis industry is essential to smooth and profitable operations.
One of those essential roles in getting your marijuana from seed to sale, is the budtender. The budtender is the final step in getting product into customers hands, and a successful budtender can make all the difference in how much money a customer spends, and what they spend it on. Budtenders can steer customers towards or away from products or brands, they can upsell for a higher purchase total, and their personality alone can often influence a customer’s likelihood to buy or leave emptyhanded. Because of all this, the budtender is truly one of the most critical roles in the industry, and yet, often one of the hardest employees to retain. A study on budtenders, from the 2022 Budtenders Association Industry Report found that 77% of all customers said they rely on the budtender to help make purchasing decisions. Cannabis analytics firm, “Headset” released data on a new report focused on retail workers in the cannabis industry. Headset studied workers in both Canada and the United States over the last year, and found similar results for both countries. They found that nearly 25% of new hire budtenders stay less than one month on the job. They also found that 55% of all budtenders stay in a job less than a year. So for a role that is so critical to getting those sales dollars… the budtender role is one that perhaps needs a deeper look at for employee retention. Another part of these studies showed that better performing budtenders were less likely to leave the job. Whereas the poor performing budtenders left more often. This makes some sense, as it feels good to do good at a job, and vice versa. A higher performing budtender may be making more money on tips or commission, too, which is another reason to stay at a job. So for a cannabis retailer, spending some time overlooking your budtenders trends would be time well spent. Look into the reasons why your employees have left, and what you can do to alleviate those reasons, so your able to retain your budtending staff. In an industry driven by sales, the budtenders are on the front line. And happy employees influence happy customers, and better sales. Comments are closed.
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