How Greatest Hits reduced shrinkage with integrated payments

About Greatest Hits

Greatest Hits is a cannabis dispensary based in Massachusetts that mixes the inherent harmony between cannabis and music. Regularly featuring in-store DJs and food trucks, the shop looks as much like a high-end entertainment venue as a cannabis store.

While some retailers focus exclusively on growth, Lucas Baier, VP of Retail Sales at Greatest Hits, told us their top priority is “providing an excellent customer experience that ultimately leads to that expansion.”

Customers at Greatest Hits choose their cannabis buying experience depending on their shopping needs. They can order ahead and pick up at an express window, order from self-serve kiosks, or enjoy a guided shopping experience with a budtender.

At the center of these transactions, Greatest Hits enables shoppers to pay with debit cards, a convenient option that many of their customers prefer over cash.

Greatest Hits has experience with many cannabis payments solutions, including those that are integrated and not integrated with their point of sale. While similar in concept, these solutions drove significantly different results.

Cannabis payments are essential

Cannabis shoppers want to purchase products the same way they buy their groceries or morning coffee. This means offering additional payment options beyond cash.

Lucas noticed that “it would really shrink our average cart size when customers were limited to cash.”

This is a common data point across cannabis retail markets. On average, non-cash dispensary transactions are 30% higher than cash transactions.

Lucas and the rest of the Greatest Hits team knew card payments were a necessity at their location, but not all solutions are created equal.

The risks of non-integrated payments

While cashless payments have the potential to unlock significant revenue increases, using a partner that is not integrated with your point of sale system comes with risks. Especially when you're locked into a long term contract with your provider.

Greatest Hits noted that their non-integrated card solution was costing them money due to manual entry errors and workflow mistakes.

Non-integrated payments introduce time-outs and additional steps that require budtenders to do mental math and enter numbers into the system twice, meaning there is a high risk for human error and longer check out times.

Assuming a 1% error rate, non-integrated payments would cost Greatest Hits over $30,000 in retail shrinkage per year.

The solution: Integrated Flowhub payments

Lucas, like many cannabis industry veterans, has experienced countless problems when dealing with payments.

Once Greatest Hits was up and running on Flowhub’s integrated payment solution, they saw manual errors, redundancies, and general checkout inefficiencies disappear.

Flowhub Pay allows Greatest Hits to seamlessly integrate their card payments with their point of sale, meaning every transaction automatically syncs with their POS at checkout.

Lucas has seen the cannabis industry evolve from cash-only to up to 70% of his transactions coming from debit payments. Currently, 40% of Greatest Hits’ total transactions are done with Flowhub Pay.

With those payments, the average cart size (amount spent in a single transaction) is 31% higher than cash!

Greatest Hits’ customer experience has also been improved with Flowhub Pay. Lucas told us their average transaction times are lower because, “when payments are fully integrated, they’re less likely to time out.”

This means customers simply tap their card, totals and change calculations are auto-populated, and the transaction is completed in seconds. The new process has been a crucial time saver for Greatest Hits, which processes over 300 transactions per day.

Thank you to the Greatest Hits team! It’s been a pleasure to see you break boundaries in the cannabis industry and create a fantastic experience for your customers.