Matt Borish - Boosting Cannabis Retail Sales and Profits by 400%+

all right welcome to shelf help Today we're speaking with Matt Borish VP of marketing at Union Chill Cannabis Company cannabis retail operator with locations in New York and New Jersey some of the most exciting markets in the in the country right now Matt started his career in finance wealth management then I had a long stint as a recording artist and actor before he ultimately kind of finding his way to leading marketing and again to the hottest markets in cannabis so really cool background excited to get into it yeah Matt first yeah the first question I had was just like you know you definitely had quite a interesting journey into the cannabis space ultimately ending up as kind of the top dog at at a leading East Coast operator um yeah give me the highlights and how you ended up where you are today yeah so definitely uh and first off thanks thanks for having me on really appreciate it yeah but so I was I definitely have a unique background I was a professional actor when I was younger as a child like from ages 9 to 13 and then ended up going I kind of I was able to remain in school during that time which is pretty unusual but past that point definitely would not have been able to to remain in school and kind of wanted to yeah just just finish out you know high school and and college like a normal kid so yeah ended up going to university of Richmond in Virginia I majored in finance there mostly'cause that's what you know all of my friends seem to be doing right but yeah when I graduated there I moved out to Los Angeles and moved out there to pursue a career in in music actually ended up working for a publishing company while starting to kind of write my own stuff and ended up signing with them and yeah so lived out there doing that for about three years that didn't quite pay the bills so yeah moved back to the Philly area and and took a a job in finance and yeah did that for about 7 8 years was in a couple of different cities but ended up back on the Philly area on the East Coast I'm in the town where I live in now which is New Hope in in Bucks County and I was kind of feeling pretty burnt out with finance at that point was definitely looking at you know other options I have Crohn's disease too so cannabis has been you know hugely hugely hugely helpful for that I would say like life changing not that I didn't like cannabis before that but definitely so yeah you know definitely realize like the the amount of medical potential it has and and how much it helps people and would always go into dispensaries with my wife and would say like god I wish I could just like work in a dispensary and yeah ended up meeting the founder of Union Chill her name was Laurie Mchugh um and she told me she was opening up you know one of the the first cannabis dispensaries Rec Cannabis Dispensaries in New Jersey so was fortunate to kind of get a role on on her team and yeah it's been a crazy journey she she unfortunately she actually passed away pretty suddenly in a car accident about three months after we opened so that was definitely a shock and yeah a lot of us had to you know kind of step up and and continue to carry out her vision so right yeah it's been a quite the ride and um very happy with with where I ended up exciting journey that's for sure yeah uh as I was just saying right before we kind of hit record this next week is kind of like the the Super Bowl for the cannabis space the people that are more in like what's just like give them the background what's what is happening next week in cannabis yeah so next week is we call it Green Wednesday um and it's actually surpassed 4 20 I think as the biggest cannabis sales day of the year I think it started just because retailers were were noticing like wow on the day before Thanksgiving which you know a big day for for alcohol too everyone's coming to the dispensary so yeah people started offering you know huge sales and it's kind of become a tradition across the countries yeah that whole week including you know Black Friday and Small Business Saturday Cyber Monday like that's that's kind of the busiest week of the year for us in cannabis yeah if you're a cannabis customer definitely go on Green Wednesday cause they have the deals of the year I think what I read at your new at your New Jersey location over a you know roughly like two year period you helped the boost revenue by like almost 400% gross profits by more than that I think it was like close boosted the monthly customers by similar numbers or like some of the keys to really new foot traffic to your locations these days and yeah kind of what are the big buckets you allocate the majority of resources to to in order to maximize that number yeah so definitely it's it's Union Chill we've had we've had a ton of success and I'd like to take credit for for at least some of that but yeah so but definitely you know our customers and everybody else too but I would say in terms of marketing I approach marketing like from a finance background kind of very skeptically I would say I think as a lot of finance people look at marketing so started out really really focused on attribution and really focused on revenue generating marketing so we were doing a lot of stuff that I think at the time was was definitely cutting edge at least in the New Jersey cannabis market focusing pretty heavily on programmatic display ads Google ads meta ads just finding the right partners that that were able to to execute on those was definitely a big thing and we also when I first joined we were with an agency and then we moved to another agency and and and kind of what I found was even the ones in the cannabis space like every market is totally different and because we were so early on in the New Jersey market like what had worked for their clients you know maybe in other markets didn't necessarily apply to New Jersey so kinda took things in house started you know managing and and selecting marketing vendors directly and yeah that was that was definitely a huge a huge part of the success like cut cost by you know almost a third just on the management side keeping the budget the same and next the marketing attributable returns I would say the digital side is a big piece the other thing I would say though is from the start like we really wanted to be a part of the community give back to the community be involved as much as we could and that has certainly paid us back you know over and over again so we sponsor a lot of local events there's a lot of we're we're kind of in a big arts community so he's a lot of musicals other types of theater art shows we have feature a lot of artists in our in our dispensary and then we partner with a lot of other local businesses so yeah I would say those are kind of the big buckets and then you know you always have email text push notifications loyalty program all of that stuff is definitely really really important yeah like change it all over the past few years as an example you're dedicating you know 30% of your marketing budget you know 30% of community stuff and now it's the same or is those kind of buckets change at all yeah so they've definitely there hasn't been a huge huge shift but the channels within those buckets have definitely had to you know change and evolve as things change so on the digital side we ended up finding a a really really solid partner for for meta ads and you know sometimes you find a new vendor and that can really change things about where you wanna shift your budget to we also started doing like co brand programs on the on the programmatic side where the brands will actually pay for the cost of the entire campaign it'll when people see the ad click on it takes them right to that brand's product page on our menu and yeah that that had a huge effect on growth as well yeah that's kind of what I would say on the digital side another thing is with with Google Ads we've run into a lot of count shutdowns things like that that's definitely a little bit of a lower priority for us now until we can find you know a vendor that can consistently execute there which as long as Google's policies don't change I think it's gonna be difficult yeah but yeah so those are a couple examples another try to think of some other another thing we started doing just to you know we always have to satisfy the the 21+ requirement partnerships with a lot of local brewers distilleries bars where we we can put our coasters in in the bars and you know they'll usually say bring bring this coaster in for you know 20% off your first order and that's actually in terms of like ROAS by channel it it costs us not much to to make 10,000 coasters and um we typically see tens and tens of thousands of dollars just from coasters that cost a few a few hundred dollars so yeah that's definitely been they're always like it's fun to find new things that you you know don't think this will be like a game changer and it turns out like wow this is this is like one of the best performing things we have yeah totally yeah that totally reminds me when uh in San Francisco we um when we were building a company in California bars that were like and then we would like ask we would like integrate some like and that worked that worked really well I would like to try that sounds like a great idea if that's a yeah it worked pretty well alright yeah where do the um platforms kind of play into your strategy that's like weed maps main ones come to mind yeah um so as far as like the I heart Jane thing we run both of our stores on Dutchy POS and ecom um so I don't know if anything's changed on on Jane side but I I thought it was mostly limited to brands and then retailers that are using Jane but certainly have heard really good things about that that actually their program but as far as like Weedmaps Leafly we found that definitely as far as like advertising on the platforms and again it totally depends on what market you're in um what part of the country you're in but for us it's definitely our budget is usually better spent on other forms of advertising I do think it is worthwhile you know we always maintain listings on both sites that's that's great for SEO and you know just to have some some extra backlinks out there for your websites yeah definitely drives a little bit of traffic but yeah in terms of ad spend um you know we tested that a lot and didn't didn't find a ton of value yeah that makes sense like a kind of a text email campaign kind of combo maybe some like retargeting what's what have you found is the most yeah so we think from a retention standpoint yeah definitely I would say we we primarily use email with text there have been a lot of developments including like the ten DLC registration which is actually kind of started working now but initially that was that was a little tough yeah but push notifications are another great way we try and get as many people as we can to download our app as many people as we can in the loyalty program we we definitely offer I think one of the more generous ones out there for customers and they they really appreciate that and then retargeting in terms of digital ads is is is a big big piece for us and I think that's helped with our retention a lot but beyond that just I think we we really try to pass on the as we've grown we get you know much better pricing from our brand partners and we really do pass a lot of that on to the consumer that makes total sense on it's kind of a similar track um I think it's kind of related to retention um the agency that I I run we work at a good number of MSO's and some of the stuff we help out with is in kind of like the and it seems like we found everyone is a little bit different but it's a really important so that's that's definitely a big a big big piece of my job and and something that especially in the New Jersey market for for New York they finally are just I think as of this week finally allowing retailers to to offer discounts which they didn't since we've been open but yeah New Jersey it's a big big big piece of the business we typically offer you know fresh promotions weekly I usually actually do it like by weekly we'll have you know Monday through Wednesday promos and then Thursday through Sunday promos we do have days of the week that are recurring every week like right wisdom Wednesday is a big one for us anyone over 55 gets 20% off on Wednesdays we use a lot of like senior magazines to to advertise that and people clip out the coupons and and come in with them and that's yes we every every day for the most part except for Thursday and Friday we have um you know our weekly promos and how we decide on what to discount in addition to that is definitely based we we've been able to improve our margin a lot from when when we opened we were gross margin um you know we were running at like 40 to 45% now we're 55 to 60% and and um so part of that is is um you know our purchasing power has increased but very very conscious of margin uh anytime we run promos so we like to keep things you know above 50% if we can at least get Keystone pricing on things and yeah I think we're we've been fortunate in that we we generally have enough stuff to to be able to do that with that we can kind of consistently sorry which they definitely also appreciate and then the the last piece of that is expiring products so pretty early on we realized that that was becoming a big issue um and definitely like purchasing strategy has helped with that but we also set up a system where 60 days out from expiration um it goes to a certain level of discount then 45 then 30 then 15 and five and we usually don't don't end up with um you know any expired inventory at this point yeah yeah and then uh brand splits um if brands are offering split promos um that's the other big thing that we look at that helps with margin too like a delicate I don't know you want to drive business but also like where you're not kind of a conditioning consumer can kind of wait for promos and discounts so they only come in when there are discounts is that make sense yeah absolutely so that that's definitely another big focus we I think that's another reason why we're constantly switching around the promos I you know if you have something that that's at 30% off all the time then it's not really a discount that's that's the actual price for the customer totally so yeah it's definitely important really important for us to to be conscious of that um you know and and and switch things around so yeah that's kind of how we we get around that yeah that totally makes sense yeah market compression we're starting to see a little bit in New Jersey and you know in any mature market that's yeah that'll happen eventually so trying to hold that off for as long as possible yeah it's definitely a delicate balance what are kind of the the core tools that are in your tech stack yeah so for us we've been on Dutchy POS and ECOM since the beginning in New York actually we opened under with the Dutchy marketing and loyalty which is a new product of theirs they're still they're still developing things but we're able to you know work with Dutchy a lot and actually give them feedback on on features and stuff and they're pretty quick to to implement new things so that's that's definitely been an advantage up there for the New Jersey store we use we've used a couple different providers started out with Happy Cabbage for text and email had um I had a lot of delivery rate issues early on which I I think has at this point has been fixed but then we switched to claviyo for email and Happy Cabbage for SMS that got to be kind of too much managing both of those wanted it under one place so we moved to Happy Cabbage and then Happy Cabbage actually recently there's been a lot of consolidation they actually got bought by Alpine IQ our loyalty program and our app is under spring bigs now we're we're in New Jersey everything is under a spring big yeah that makes it easier I guess yeah for sure but they're definitely it can be worthwhile you know to to have multiple systems you know different people are good at different things and there's definitely still a lot of that for us you know good old Microsoft Excel is right the launch plan for the New York location for a newly opening canvas retailer yeah so I think and I've I've certainly Learned a lot since opening New York as well but I would say some things that that remain consistent are in the beginning like people don't know who you are yet it's it's focusing on those you know like things like programmatic display ads and everything like that that kind of comes later once people know who you are so definitely a ton of a ton of brand awareness stuff I think PR is really important early on just getting mentioned as often as as possible and then again like partnering with other businesses that's a great way to to kind of get the word out about your store so yeah I would say in the very beginning like PR brand awareness stuff is is absolutely key and when when you're both before you're opening and then when you do open I think as you kind of start to establish yourself that's when and I'm not saying we don't do any of the performance marketing stuff in the beginning but really you have to feed that top of funnel stuff to for the bottom of funnel stuff to perform really well so yeah I'd I'd say that that starts the shift um you know after your first month or two um definitely lean more heavily into strategic partnerships all the performance marketing stuff and yeah we're about about five months in at this point in New York and yeah still still kind of the other big thing I've Learned with that is I think this is true for any business in any industry like every market is totally different um you know you can't apply the same marketing strategy you can you can try it and I think it was certainly worthwhile trying all the stuff that worked well for us in New Jersey but I think you'll quickly find that like yeah you have a your customer demo is gonna be completely different potentially and and yeah the market that you're in is gonna dictate a lot of what works well and and what doesn't so for anything I think it's you know a lot of cautious trial and error is a really great way to kind of see what works and what doesn't you know each state is its own little market as more and more operators come online it gets more competitive so yeah I'm kind of curious as you're building out the pro forma how did you kind of take some of those variables into account yeah um so I I did the pro forma for New York and I basically used the the kind of the template that we had from New Jersey to do that but it was really it started by looking at your total addressable market your segment of that addressable market and then kind of refining from there so really I think a good starting point is what are the prices currently in the market what are people paying and then you look at population and there are a lot of great you know data data tools we use like bdsa um headset hoodie analytics that that can kind of give you a an idea before you're opening in a market what percent of the population is actually consuming how frequently are people buying and then I think from there it's a lot easier to kind of start building out the the modeling but I do think that as we've seen in state over state over state over state like eventually there's gonna be price compression so I think typically at least in my in my experience in New Jersey and New York we're definitely starting to see some of that in New Jersey but not as rapidly kind of as we had expected and then in New York I think it's still kind of early stages but we are we are seeing you know the more the more competitors you have in a space the more brands and the more retailers people are gonna compete on price and that's gonna drive the price down yeah definitely and a really important thing to keep in mind from a sales standpoint what is your kind of product mix look like as of as of late meaning percentage of sales that are flower vape edibles and is that drastically different between New York and and New Jersey so in New Jersey it's it's remained pretty consistent I mean flour is usually the biggest uh the biggest bucket yeah but I will say that like vapes for for our store has finally overtaken flower in New Jersey as our biggest category wow so that's been interesting to see I think concentrates can take a long time I would say for any store that's opening up like don't do half your stuff as concentrates like um cause it takes a while especially in a new market for people to realize that's where things are headed so yeah I I would say flower and vapes are generally pretty close usually with flower being a little higher than vapes pre rolls actually I would say the next biggest piece are are edibles and pre rolls again it kind of depends on the market that you're in or actually like the area that you're in in terms of customer preferences and then yeah we we try and put a an emphasis on you know merch and accessory sales as well we we think like you know if there are all these smoke shops that are able to stock like all this amazing glass and all these cool devices and tools we're a cannabis shop why why why would we not you know the same stuff so yeah yeah obviously things have changed more recently politically but historically been sold a lot of places and I think it's been getting a lot of attention so I'm curious just because people can buy those other places have have you seen that trickle into your dispensary roll true of like beverages sales increased and or at least have requests for them peaked over the past yeah honestly year or so yep yeah that's a great question and so in in New Jersey there really aren't any actual canned beverages on the market yet which is surprising we've been expecting kind of since we opened like alright it's gonna be soon it's gonna be soon but still kind of no one has stepped into that space I think a reason for that at least in New Jersey is because you know you can get them anywhere for the most part sure right I know laws have recently changed around that and we'll we'll see what happens over the next 12 months but in New York that's a a huge huge part of our edible category okay beverages are allowed there they're not like the the hemp derived ones although I think people are starting to realize like there's not a big difference but yeah so that's definitely a big big percentage of our sales in in New Jersey uh New York in on the edible side I think like as far as it like trickling down at the dispensary level at least in New Jersey I do think the more people that that get to try the plant in any form and you know find it helpful for different things like a lot of them are gonna you know wanna explore beyond just the beverages so I think it's it's actually been helpful for us in a lot of ways in in New Jersey yeah are infused pre rolls like one of the fastest growing categories in both markets for you guys yeah definitely I think you know a lot of cannabis consumers especially first time cannabis consumers or in the younger demo they they sort by THC um when they when they get to the menu so having those infused pre rolls on our menu like that they're the first things that a lot of people are seeing yeah there's been there's been huge growth in that in New Jersey since we've opened and continuing to see growth and then it's been a big big part of the market in for us in New York since we've opened yeah yeah what's your consumer look like that's responsible for the bulk of your sales and if it's different between New Jersey and New York definitely curious about that piece too yeah so in in New Jersey our dispensary is is definitely in a little bit of a more affluent area our clientele is uh significantly the average age is significantly higher than it is in in Corning New York so yeah and that that informs a lot of our marketing as well knowing that you know our our biggest customer base is is seniors we we cater a lot of stuff around that and then in New York it's definitely much much much of a younger demographic we still try to get you know as many people of every background as we can in the store but definitely have the marketing has been more focused on that that younger demographic yeah in New York yeah are buying yeah but I am like always shocked by the amount of just flower that that seniors buy and a lot of times concentrates um and and vapes too I think they're you know they like to try different things and and see what works best for them but definitely initially I think edibles are are a really easy you know kind of more familiar way um for for people to try the plant yeah but one thing I think that we put a big emphasis on is start low go slow with the edibles um there are I've I've been in a couple different other shops where you know a senior comes in and they're like yeah try these these are you know 40 to 50 milligram edibles and I'm like oh my god like now we so we we try and um start people on as low a dose as possible just so they don't have cause if you have that first experience and it's it's horrible you feel overwhelmed and anxious like you're not gonna you're not gonna Wanna do it again you might be missing out on a lot of the benefits over the years or has it remained pretty consistent in terms of the customer demographic yeah the customer demographic has has remained pretty consistent in New Jersey for us which yeah is kind of unexpected we've definitely had a lot of competition open up but again I I just think we're we're so involved in the community really doing a lot of things like food drives we've we've raised over 3,000 pounds of food for local food banks yeah we've had a really really loyal customer base and um yeah you know we're really grateful for that in New York since we've opened there's been within an hour and a half radius we now have uh 18 competitors when we even five months ago when we opened I think it was 14 competitors and then you look you know a year before that when we were hopefully gonna be opening it was like two competitors so yeah yeah both both markets I are growing really really fast from a a retail perspective that's awesome that's great this question is really getting into the weeds do you guys try to optimize the business at all from like a 2 80 e standpoint that's another reason we you know put a lot of emphasis on devices and merch and accessories for the that two 80 reason beyond that though it's been like the last couple years it's been like alright it's it's about to happen it's finally gonna happen and uh so we're still hopeful that'll happen soon yep we're all very hopeful any like or just general trends in cannabis or maybe just CPG beyond that uh you've been kind of tracking lately or things that have got you particularly excited yeah I mean I I think this isn't just true for the cannabis industry for everyone I mean everything that's going on with AI is is exciting and scary and so that's that's something we've been watching pretty closely and you know having to start incorporating some of that into my day to day work and the systems we use so that's that's probably the biggest one but as far as like things I'm excited about in cannabis in New York they're doing a ton of really cool stuff on the edible side that's my favorite category and yeah you know up there we have like chocolate covered waffle cones we have freeze pops just kind of like any edible you can think of so the more I that's what that that's a something that really excites me for sure just seeing all these really cool edible products that that are starting to enter the market frozen pizzas and everything so they've had that for a long time but on the East Coast it's definitely exciting to see for sure totally yeah well yeah Matt this has been awesome you have a lot of great insights what's the um what's the best place for people to kind of fall along with everything you're you're working on and then best place for people to follow along with the union chill as well yeah um so me you can find me on LinkedIn under Matt Borish you can find me on Instagram under at matt carry music still have some stuff on Apple Music Spotify and everything so feel free to check that out and then as far as Union Chill our website for New Jersey is w w w dot union chill Co c o and then our New York website is Union Chill NY dot com but you can follow our New Jersey location on Instagram that's at Union Chill NJ and New York is at underscore NY union Chill so perfect yeah the website is a great place to start for both yeah we'll call us out in the notes for sure cool yeah mad awesome this is awesome appreciate the time yeah really appreciate you having me on this has been a lot of fun yeah for sure alright just kind of give me a bit of the definitely an interesting it's a good time to shop if you're consistently driving new customers as like budget allocation to some of those big buckets we started sponsoring um trivia nights at like close proximity to that dispensaries cannabis related questions on the retention side Team X typical is kind of like consistently offer pretty fresh promos with people it seems like there's kind of dance to a certain extent where like a well rounded launch plan look like beverages seemed to be like top types of products that the seniors are I would say edibles to start yeah definitely particular brands in the cannabis space I remember a decade ago getting the like a thing that everyone's talking about