A dispensary POS (Point of Sale) system is a specialized hardware and software solution designed for cannabis retail businesses. While it performs the basic functions of a traditional POS—processing transactions, tracking sales, and managing inventory—it also includes critical features specific to the highly regulated cannabis industry. It serves as the central hub for a dispensary’s operations, helping to manage everything from customer check-in and age verification to inventory management and compliance reporting.

Due to the unique legal and regulatory landscape of the cannabis industry, a generic retail POS system is not sufficient. A cannabis-specific POS is a necessity to maintain state compliance. This is the most crucial factor. Cannabis businesses must adhere to strict state and local regulations. A compliant POS system will have built-in features for:

• Seed-to-Sale Tracking: It integrates with state-mandated “track-and-trace” systems like Metrc or BioTrack. This ensures that every gram of cannabis is accounted for, from cultivation to the final sale, and all data is reported in real-time to the authorities.
• Purchase Limits: It automatically tracks and enforces legal purchase limits for each customer, preventing overselling.
• Age Verification: It can scan and verify customer IDs to ensure they are of legal age for medical or recreational use.
• Tax Calculation: It accurately calculates and applies the complex and often multi-layered taxes (e.g., sales tax, excise tax) specific to cannabis products.

Yes, BLAZE Retail is designed as a compliant cannabis POS system. It is specifically built to handle the operational and regulatory demands of dispensaries and delivery services. Key features that make BLAZE Retail a compliant solution include:

• State Traceability Integration: BLAZE is fully integrated with state “track-and-trace” systems such as Metrc and BioTrack, automating real-time reporting of sales and inventory data to regulatory bodies.
• Compliance Tools: It includes a suite of tools for age verification, enforcing purchase limits, and printing state-compliant labels for products and receipts.
• Robust Auditing: The system helps dispensaries perform inventory audits and reconcile data with state systems to minimize discrepancies and prevent compliance violations.
• Reporting Transparency: BLAZE Retail provides complete visibility into your compliance reporting. Its unique Compliance Task Manager logs and displays every API call made between your POS and the state’s track-and-trace system, offering a transparent, real-time view of all data transfers.
• Discrepancy Reconciliation: The Compliance Difference feature helps you maintain perfect inventory sync with the state. It automatically identifies and highlights any discrepancies between your BLAZE POS inventory and the state’s system, allowing for quick and easy reconciliation to ensure data accuracy and compliance.

Yes, BLAZE Dispensary POS is highly flexible and can be adapted to various retail environments. It seamlessly works for:

• Traditional Counter Checkout: BLAZE is perfect for the classic dispensary setup where budtenders assist customers from behind a counter. This ensures a smooth, efficient transaction process.
• Personalized Concierge Shopping: For a more customer-centric approach, BLAZE enables a mobile, concierge-style checkout. Budtenders can use tablets to walk the floor with customers, offer personalized recommendations, and build their orders on the spot. This enhances the shopping experience and streamlines the final payment and pickup process.

Yes, BLAZE is a versatile and fully compliant POS system for both medical marijuana dispensaries and adult-use recreational dispensaries. Our system is built to handle the unique compliance requirements of each market, including:

• Medical Dispensary Features: BLAZE tracks medical recommendation expiration dates and provides automated reminders to help your medical patients stay compliant and ensure a seamless renewal process.
• Adult-Use Compliance: The system is also equipped to enforce state-specific purchase limits and accurately track all sales data for compliance reporting to state trace-and-trace systems.

Yes, BLAZE Dispensary POS is an ideal solution for businesses with multiple cannabis dispensary locations. Our system is built for scalability and efficiency, offering:

• Centralized Management: Easily manage inventory, sales data, and staff across all your locations from a single, intuitive interface.
• Efficient Operations: Facilitate lightning-fast product transfers between stores and maintain consistent data across your entire operation.
• Multi-Store Online Ordering: With an integrated online storefront that can be set up in minutes, BLAZE allows you to serve customers across all your locations from one unified platform, driving sales and improving convenience.

Yes, BLAZE supports both scheduled and on-demand cannabis delivery models, providing a comprehensive delivery infrastructure tailored for the cannabis industry.

• Scheduled Delivery (“Pizza-style”): This model allows customers to choose a specific delivery window in advance. The BLAZE system supports this by allowing you to create custom delivery zones and schedules, and then uses route optimization to group orders together for maximum efficiency. This is ideal for managing high-volume deliveries and providing predictable service.
• On-Demand Delivery (“Ice-cream truck style”): This model uses drivers who are on the move with a pre-loaded inventory kit. BLAZE’s proprietary software tracks each driver’s real-time location and on-board inventory, automatically dispatching new orders to the nearest available driver. The system also optimizes routes to get the driver to the customer as quickly as possible.

BLAZE’s delivery infrastructure also includes features like compliant delivery ledgers, in-app driver tools for ID verification and digital signatures, and a dedicated dispatch panel to ensure every delivery is efficient, compliant, and well-documented.

Yes, BLAZE Cannabis POS software features a powerful and highly customizable built-in loyalty and rewards program. This system is designed to be omnichannel, meaning customer rewards and points seamlessly sync across all shopping channels.

Whether your customers shop in-store, through your online storefront, via a self-service kiosk, or on your native mobile app, their loyalty points are always up-to-date and ready to be redeemed. This seamless integration ensures a consistent and rewarding experience for your customers, no matter how they choose to engage with your brand. The program helps you boost customer retention and drive repeat business by making it easy for customers to earn and use rewards on every purchase.

Yes, BLAZE includes a powerful, built-in marketing suite called Outreach. This tool allows cannabis retailers to send highly personalized and targeted communications to their customers. You can use Outreach to send:

• Emails
• Push notifications
• SMS messages

This functionality is designed to help you engage customers by notifying them of new product arrivals, limited-time deals, upcoming events, and other personalized offers based on their purchase history and preferences. By having this marketing suite directly integrated with your POS, you can create and execute effective campaigns that boost customer loyalty and drive sales.

BLAZE has a team of data migration specialists. Their entire job is to ensure they work with you and your onboarding manager to bring your data cleanly into BLAZE, regardless of the source system. All key data sets can be migrated such as members, products and batches (to name a few). Your onboarding specialist will walk you through the entire process to ensure a successful launch.