Choosing whether or not to cure cannabis is a complex business decision.
As commercial farms develop their own workflow and processes they have to decide how to juggle the ever-competing elements of time vs quality. Curing is definitely going to cost you some time, and if you do it well, it will certainly increase your quality.
However curing is not a required step in your processing workflow so you have to decide if all the extra work is the right thing for your business.
My new course, The Drying and Curing Masterclass is nearing completion. The course will be a 10 week deep dive approximately as challenging as a standard college level course. Before you sign up for all that, I think it’s important to consider just how the creation of a cured product fits in with your business model.
In this article I’ll take a look at the “Big Picture” of how curing affects your business.
Before you invest your time and energy to learn every detail about curing, I think it’s important to say that it may not always be appropriate for your farm to do it, simply from a business perspective.
You have to weigh the pro’s and con’s to see how this decision fits in with the direction you want your business to go.
The big questions are…
- Will curing actually bring in more money?
- Will curing create greater bag appeal that elevates my product?
- Will dispensaries/consumers prefer cured flower enough to pay more?
- Can you charge enough more for cured products to offset the extra labor and associated expense that goes into the curing process?
Oddly enough, the answers to these questions often depend on geography.
Where you live determines who your clients are and how much disposable income they have available.
Cured cannabis is an elevated quality product and it absolutely must be packaged and promoted in a manner that creates a “connoisseur” image. Without this elevated perception of quality, consumers have no reason to spend more on this type of product and the act of spending all this time and energy making it becomes pointless.
In the same way aged Tequila sells for more than fresh alcohol straight out of the still, and 20 year old Scotch can be 200x as expensive as the same product at two years old, your expertly cured cannabis can sell for much more than the uncured version.
It may be true that people can’t always actually tell the difference between the connoisseur product and the regular, but that doesn’t stop them from buying it, and here’s why.
All products sell according to the social economic status pyramid concept. According to this theory, people purchase things in a price bracket that is roughly equal to where they see themselves as being in the general society around them. Those that see themselves as being in a little higher social and economic status will almost invariably choose the mid price products. Those that see themselves as “high class” will only look at the choices on the top shelf, and those that see themselves as being in the working class will typically shop towards the bottom price bracket – except for special occasions.
The vast majority of all customers make up the bottom half of the pyramid and according to this theory, most of them will shop for the lower priced products most of the time. These lower price sales account for the vast majority of all product sales.
This phenomenon has less to do with the quality of the product and everything to do with how people see themselves in the world.
Most sales are made in the bottom of the pyramid because this is where most people are. There are far fewer rich people so they purchase far fewer products from the top of the pyramid. However, the higher prices at the top mean you may only have to sell 1 high priced product to get as much income as 10 sales from the bottom of the pyramid. If you are a small farm, creating higher quality can work in your favor because you simply can’t compete on a quantity basis.
Many of the most successful companies produce a diversity of products so they can target the different price points from lowest to highest.
If you choose to create cured cannabis, you are making a product that fits into the highest quality bracket, and it will sell – IF you can manage to create the right packaging and promotion, and IF you live in an area where people can afford it.
Depending on where you live, there will almost always be a significant part of the population that will pay more money for any product that creates the perception of being… Art! and if you can successfully create this impression, you can often pull customers up from that bottom area of the pyramid.
This is where Cured cannabis flower can really start to shine, but the true value of curing is not well known among average people like it is in the Whiskey and Wine world, so convincing customers to spend more might also require some educational aspects in your advertising campaign.
Curing is not for everyone, and it is absolutely NOT required that you do it to have a successful cannabis business. Curing takes extra work, extra time, extra space and extra marketing. Without all that it will rarely be worthwhile.
So before you decide to invest a lot on setting up a curing space and doing all this extra work, you have to start out by looking at your end game. If you have no place to sell a premium product, or no time to create the marketing hype, then spending all the time and energy to cure your product is not going to benefit you. In that case, you might do better to simply produce a good quality product in a large quantity and if you focus on that you’ll do very well.
There are three scenarios when it becomes worthwhile to cure your product.
- In a highly competitive market where you might be having trouble getting your standard grade product to move because clients have so many choices and the quality across the board is generally as good as yours. Offering a cured product can definitely increase customer demand and keep your product flowing out the door even if it costs you a little more to produce it that way.
- If you are a relatively small farm, then building up a quality hype can be a great way to maximize the profits from a small crop. As I mentioned before, you will certainly make fewer sales to the top of the pyramid, but you make a higher profit for each one of them.
- Another time you can benefit is when you live in a geographic area that happens to contain a significant proportion of very affluent people. As I mentioned before, people tend to purchase things that fit the price level that is roughly equal to what they perceive to be their social status. So if you live in Beverly Hills, you don’t want to sell a $2 joint. They want a cute little package produced by a real graphic designer, filled with one or two absolutely supremely crafted joints wrapped in 24 karat gold wrapper, and they won’t buy it unless you put an outrageous price on it. Cured flower is the same, you’ll have to do it well and package it in a way that screams… Classy!
The question is… Is that your customer?
Before you decide whether to produce a premium cured product, think about how many people in your area fit into each of the different zones of the customer pyramid and set aside your own personal desire to smoke a premium product long enough to take an objective look at who your customers are and what they want to purchase.
If the answer is yes – you do want to produce a premium cured product, and if you really have the time and motivation to make it the best it can be, then you might want to consider the firs course we’ve produced here in this school….