Recently we’ve released the Higher Origins Menus tool. This is a free menu system that allows licensed cannabis sellers to promote their products to licensed buyers through a much more reliable system than the text messages and buggy Excel sheets that are the current standard. Cannabis brands, especially smaller ones from the more rural areas of the state growing outdoors, face an uphill battle in getting their products into retail. These menus are a simple first step in making that battle a bit easier- a clean and standardized menu reduces communication friction when ordering.
A Higher Origins Menu
General Menu Features
Here’s a quick rundown of what the Higher Origins menus offer:
Displays all the information that a buyer would need to know to make a buying decision.
Menus require a license number to be entered before they can be viewed.
Contains an interface through which a buyer can place an order and send a message, which alerts the seller via email and begins the negotiations.
Each menu has a unique link which is tracked for view count and recent activity. These statistics are visible on the menu dashboard and allow you to keep track of engagement on your menus.
Menu links come with a custom generated QR code, which can be used to share the menu via a smartphone scan. Put them on everything!
Each menu product listing clearly displays the compliant test results and track and trace package number of the product for sale.
Product Information on a menu product listing- everything a buyer needs!
Basic Use Tips
Some things to keep in mind when using menus to promote your products:
When a buyer places an order, the system sends you an email with the order details, and the order will be displayed in the Orders section of the platform. Orders automatically expire after 3 days.
Set yourself up to respond to orders promptly. Turn on your email notifications, make sure Higher Origins notification emails aren’t going to spam, and check your dashboard regularly. Buyers are more likely to buy from responsive sellers.
Use the best pictures you can! We recommend using a newer model smartphone’s camera with a well lit tabletop photo booth to take product pictures. A picture showing the flower or package contents in detail is key, as well as pictures showing the full packaging of the product, and potentially even beauty shots of the buds on the plants before harvest.
The order interface for placing an order from a Higher Origins menu
Strategies
A menu is only useful if you can get it in front of the right people, at the right scale, with the right products, at the right price. Here’s a few strategies to jumpstart your outreach to buyers:
Email Campaigns: Email may seem old fashioned but it’s still the most effective way to reach out to buyers, especially if you are targeting a large group of people. Every time you create a new menu, send it out to as many relevant people as you can. You can use this guide to set up a simple email list in Gmail, and this guide to make sure that you don’t accidentally share everyone’s email to everyone on the list. Collecting emails is always a bit difficult, but it can pay off to search the Contact Us pages on buyer’s websites, the State License List, or other resources. Another easy email strategy? Add your menu link to an email signature, so you can easily tack it on to the end of any relevant emails.
Social Media: Social Media, especially Instagram, is ideal for getting your menu in front of buyers. Other platforms like TikTok censor cannabis too much, while Facebook and LinkedIn don’t really have the right audience. Be careful with linking your menu directly on your Instagram profile or posts, as this may get your account restricted for sales. The best strategy is to send the menu directly to interested parties gathered through post engagement. Start conversations in comments on your target buyers posts and ask if they want to see a menu, or make a post that says something like “Like this post and we’ll DM you our menu!”
QR menus on cards: When you’re out and about or at events, people are usually busy and don’t have time to look at your menu. Give them an easy way to check it out later by turning the link to your menu into a QR code and printing it on a business card. We recommend VistaPrint as an affordable and fast option to order cards. If you go to a lot of events, it might be handy to make cards and specific menus for each event so you can keep track of which event results in the most sales traction.
Different menus for different kinds of customers: Not every customer relationship is the same, and therefore not every customer should be ordering from the exact same menu. Maybe you’re targeting buyers who focus on concentrates, so why would you send them a menu that was mostly flower? Create menus based on the categories of products to keep them relevant to the buyers you’re approaching. Likewise, some customers may be more loyal than others or cost less to distribute to, so you might want to offer them a lower price per unit. Instead of sending them the same menu as everyone else, create a lower price tier menu for them so they can see upfront that they are getting a favored rate. Try out seasonal or promotional menus as well! Share these to customers and make it clear that the pricing and products on them are available only for a limited time- urgency is one of the greatest motivators for purchase. Another benefit of multiple menus is that you can use the views/engagement analytics to compare which ones are getting the most attention, allowing you to dial in your sales strategy for what works best.
Basic analytics for menu views- more coming soon!
What Menus CAN’T Do
A menu with good information, good pictures, and a good built in ordering system is a good tool, but it’s NOT an entire business model. Here’s a few things to consider about the greater business environment that menus exist within:
One menu doesn’t equal a relationship: Securing a client is a lot like dating, it takes effort, repeated connection, and understanding each other’s values and needs. You wouldn’t just hand someone a list of what you have to offer and then expect them to date you, so you can’t expect sharing a menu to result in an immediate ongoing stream of sales. Call them, pop into their store, get to know the budtenders, hit them up on Instagram. Email them the menu, AND print some out and give them to the budtenders, AND give them business cards with the QR code on it. Compare your products to the ones they have for sale, ask about their budgets and what moves and what doesn’t. Look for an opportunity in their business model. For example, do they have a popular strain on their shelf that you also grow? Compare yours to theirs, set them up with a sample, make the pitch- can you beat the price or quality of their current supplier? A good menu is just one tool in your toolbox that will make communication easier and make you stand out from people without one, but that’s all it is- the relationship is the key.
There are a lot of headwinds against easy sales: Especially if you are a small farm outdoor brand, the general opinion of buyers is at best one of ignorance and at worst one of rejection. The massive flooding of low-quality outdoor from megafarms has made low quality and low price the unfortunate standard, while urban-based indoor with its shorter supply chain and faster harvest cycle generally takes the top shelf spot. Furthermore, the state-mandated distribution supply chain often results in outdoor pounds from smaller farms being bought later in the year at desperation prices, stored for long periods in poor conditions, then brought to market at the same level of boof quality as megafarm commodity weed.
Understand your market: Before you start selling at a larger scale, you have to understand what your target market looks like. What county are you going to sell in? How much product do the retailers there buy? How much are your distro costs to sell in that market? How often do retailers there place orders? How much weed do you have to sell? How much cash do you have to market yourself to these stores? Answering all of these questions will help you to determine your goals: how much product, to how many retailers, for how much, how often, and where. Once you have these numbers understood, you can begin to refine your target market- if it costs twice as much to distro in LA County as it does Santa Cruz county, but you can sell more product in LA, is that worth it? Is it better to sell a higher volume at lower prices, or a lower volume at higher prices? Always refine your strategy and look for savings when you can. As shaky as their data is, it helps to use the California Cannabis Data Dashboard to get a loose understanding of the volume and preferences of different markets.
Considerations for the Bulk/Wholesale Market: While selling to wholesalers is often the least preferred option to make any money, sometimes it’s the option you have to take. When wholesaling, if at all possible, seek out buyers who have their own retail brand, or who can tell you which retailers they supply. A distro who is closely connected to their downstream retail partners or who puts their name on products on retail shelves is much more committed to quickly getting product manufactured and shipped out. This means that your product has a better chance of being consumed faster when it’s fresh, and that the distro has their name on the line if they let your product go bad. Likewise, a distro with an established sales channel and a known brand is more likely to get paid, so they are more likely to pay you. Finally, if they don’t pay you, they have a public face which you can call out to put pressure on them to pay you, rather than a faceless broker-only distro. Menus can help here too. Wholesale buyers have often been in this game for a long time, and are very used to getting bad data, unreliable info about the product they are buying, and sorting through dozens of potential sellers. If you have a clear menu that gives them everything they need to know and you respond promptly, you might be able to negotiate a slightly higher price with them just on the basis of convenience, and secure future business as well.
This menu tool is just one of the features that we’ve built or are building to help smaller farms get to market more easily. We’re continuing to expand our marketplace, connections with buyers and farms, and sales tools, and would love to have you onboard! You can sign up here and start using our menus today! Higher Origins is free for farms, with only a small usage fee charged on sales facilitated using the marketplace. We’re always open to feedback or collaboration- this platform is built for the needs of the industry, so tell us what you need! Self branding or working closely with a brand that has a fair pricing model are the only lucrative options left to small farms these days, so we are focusing on making those as accessible as possible.
Keep calling those buyers, and don’t forget to empty the dehumidifier!
-The Higher Origins Team
