©2026 Incunabulum LLC. All rights reserved. mg Magazine is a registered trademark of Incunabulum LLC. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission.
Casey Duff
Casey Duff covers cannabis retail technology and business operations for mg Magazine.
Dispensaries Are Sitting on a Marketing Goldmine
Most dispensaries built loyalty programs to reward repeat shoppers. Along the way, many also built something even more valuable: a direct email audience made up of the customers most likely to spend, return, and pay attention. In an era of AI-assisted shopping and increasingly fragmented discovery, owned channels may be one of the few direct customer relationships retailers truly control.
The AI Inventory Advantage for Cannabis Retailers
Artificial intelligence may be most valuable in cannabis retail where it is least flashy: inventory management. AI-assisted tools can help dispensaries spot aging SKUs, identify stockout risks, adjust buy mixes as categories shift, forecast demand, and reduce the reactive discounting that quietly drains margin.
Is Your Dispensary Ready for the ChatGPT Shopper?
AI tools are beginning to shape cannabis shoppers’ intent before they reach a dispensary menu or walk into a store. Consumers who ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or other answer engines about formats, dosing, occasions, and local retailers may arrive already partly pre-qualified. For dispensaries, that changes the role of education. Product pages, menus, local landing pages, structured data, and budtender training all must work together so retailers can turn AI-driven curiosity into high-intent traffic.