Super Bowl 50 brought a whole new meaning to the phrase, "this bud's for you.”
Green Rush, the largest cannabis delivery platform in California, says Super Bowl weekend was the most lucrative in the company's history. So big, it was better than the 4/20 marijuana holiday celebrated in April.
Jude Widmann, director of operations at Green Rush, said the company experienced a 310% spike in cannabis delivery orders during the Super Bowl 50 weekend. “Super Bowl 50 was our highest grossing weekend to date, eclipsing New Year's Eve,” said Widmann. Making sure there is marijuana at a party is becoming as mainstream as beer and wine. Widmann said, “We expect to see cannabis and cannabis deliveries in particular to continue to become a more routine, normalized element of all holiday celebrations in the future.”
Blum, a dispensary that operates in Oakland, Calif., experienced a similar boost to its sales for the football event. The Friday before the game sales jumped 29% over average in January and then the Saturday before the game they increased 13% above average. However, on game day sales dropped 8%. Salwa Ibrahim, executive director at Blum said, “The Super Bowl weekend is a time for people to have fun and as cannabis becomes more mainstream and an acceptable replacement to alcohol, we're seeing sales increase on what were typically 'drinking' holidays.”
Chris Francy, a partner at CalCann Holdings, which owns a dispensary in California, said the company had its highest sales weekend in the company's history. “The transition of cannabis into mainstream culture is more apparent than ever, given that the Super Bowl led us to having our best day of sales yet.” The company is in a joint venture with comedienne Roseanne Barr for an upcoming dispensary to open in Santa Ana.
As dispensaries learn to adapt to becoming part of a party planners menu, they must begin to plan ahead. “Situations like what Green Rush faced during the Super Bowl weekend are precisely why we advise our clients to complete stress testing above and beyond normally expected traffic,” said Mike Bologna, chief executive officer of Green Lion Partners. His company provides tech consulting. “Many tech companies fail to realize that a surge in transactions often requires more than just robust software. Rather, they also need to anticipate these situations and prepare additional personnel to ensure that the quality of their service is not negatively impacted.
