According to Cova Software, the largest point-of-sale (POS) company serving cannabis retailers in North America, retail traffic was up 9.5% and sales increased 8.4% across the United States and Canada on 4/20.
So far, April 20 has been one of the biggest sales days of the year in the cannabis industry on both sides of the border, and this year is no different, despite the lingering pandemic inciting more lockdowns after surges in COVID-19 cases. Cova reports that during peak hours on 4/20, it was processing 380 cannabis transactions per minute, with a total of 180,000 transactions for the day processed over more than 1,200 retailers.
Last year, retailers were still trying to figure out how to do business in the new COVID-19 era, but several managed to have their doors open by 4/20. Even so, 4/20/20 ended up being simply a “better than average day,” according to Cova. Sales ended up being around 79% higher on 4/20 than the average daily sales in March of the same year, which isn’t a lot compared to 2019 when sales on the holiday were 240% higher than the month prior.
This year, with some regions going into lockdown again and restricting non-essential travel, sales were still somewhat hampered, however, Canadian cannabis retailers still processed 5% more transactions that day than usual and sales increased around 89% compared to the average in March 2021, despite Canadians spending 2% less than last year on their 4/20 purchases with an average basket price of $52.48.
Even though our lives still haven’t returned to normal, Canadians didn’t want to miss out on their favourite cannabis holiday, and this year shows promising results of what could come next year, once (hopefully) the pandemic has passed.