Many cannabis retailers are struggling with a familiar problem: Despite employing capable and knowledgeable people eager to sell top-shelf product, results aren’t registering at the sales counter.
Retailers are “los(ing) sales because they cannot translate quality into language customers trust,” said Derek Gilman, co-founder of Ganjier, a cannabis sommelier certification program.
“They have great people, but the guidance is inconsistent.”
Frustration over this last-step friction is leading some retail operators to explore advanced training for their workers. These include formal cannabis sommelier programs, like Ganjier’s
But can such training change how cannabis is sold – and boost retailer revenue in an age of price compression? Or is it a niche credential with appeal only to a small band of enthusiasts in an overall market still shaped by price, potency and speed?
What are ‘cannabis connoisseurship’ programs?
Sales figures show cannabis flower and select concentrates are still king. Steering customers towards highest margin products may be the trick.
Formal cannabis sommelier standardize how cannabis quality, aroma and terpene expression are evaluated. This provides cannabis retail staff with a shared language for explaining products across brands. Budtenders are prepared to give customers answers, and customers get them consistently.
For retailers, the appeal is all about the bottom line: whether better-trained staff can communicate consistently and move beyond THC as a quality shortcut to support higher-value products without slowing transactions or increasing labor costs.
Those ambitions clash with market realities. Price and potency still drive much of consumer behavior, not efforts to market and sell cannabis based on effects.
With margins tight and turnover high, operators must decide whether training can meaningfully improves consistency and sales performance within existing budgets and staffing models.
Inside formal cannabis sensory training
A growing number of providers offer sensory training and do so in slightly different ways.
Short-format certifications and modular coursework from groups such as the Trichome Institute and Green Flower typically focus on foundational knowledge and compliance-ready education. Think the basics, while also obeying state law.
At the more comprehensive end of that spectrum is Ganjier, which models its program on traditional sommelier training in wine and coffee.
But it’s formalized: Ganjier uses a defined “Systematic Assessment Protocol,” built around repeatable steps, that promises consistent product descriptions across evaluators, brands and batches.
This training is hands-on, with participants evaluating flower side by side, examining structure and trichomes, comparing aromas and practicing shared, criteria-based descriptions.
How cannabis connoisseurship training helps retailers
Annie Fleshman, who completed Ganjier coursework and now serves as a Ganjier product specialist and vice president of marketing at retail technology provider Flowhub, said even foundational training can bring structure to sales-floor conversations.
Operators who invest in more formalized training often describe shifts in customer behavior, including increased movement of premium SKUs and higher repeat engagement, she told MJBizDaily.
“When staff understand why product attributes matter, they’re more likely to use terpene data, cultivar notes and product details in the POS to support recommendations,” she said.
Operators that don’t see a sales lift enjoy faster ramp times for new hires and maintain consistency amid high staff turnover, she added.
Retailers see benefits beyond the sales counter.
Jennifer Richards, a senior sales manager at Ohio-based retailer Klutch Cannabis who completed the program through Kiva, said the training helped her identify market opportunities and refine forecasting, contributing to stronger sell-through and more effective educational outreach at retail accounts.
Other Kiva employees said the shared framework reduced repetitive questions and improved credibility with budtenders and buyers.
Is cannabis connoisseurship good for cultivators?
Cultivators view the rise of formal sommelier training with both interest and caution, particularly when it is positioned as a shortcut to expertise.
Ben Owens, a longtime cultivator with GrowHort in Colorado, an instructional cultivation program, characterized these programs as the overlap in a “Venn diagram” between consumer-facing knowledge and cultivation expertise.
He said they help articulate finished-flower qualities without capturing everything growers observe over a plant’s life cycle. However, he noted that foundational skills take time to develop.
“A few days of training can help someone pick up the basics, but no skill goes from nonexistent to refined that quickly,” he said.
Ganjier’s Gilman agreed that repetition is essential and said sensory calibration – learning to recognize aroma, flavor and structure consistently – is often the most challenging part of the curriculum.
Do cannabis connoisseurship programs boost marijuana retail sales?
According to Ganjier’s Gilman, retailers say the answer boils down to whether training improves consistency, basket size or staff confidence quickly enough to justify the time and labor investment.
High staff churn and operational disruption are the biggest barriers. Retailers question how to schedule coursework without pulling staff off the floor and whether investing in individual employees makes sense in high-turnover environments.
Cost compounds those concerns.
While short-format programs can cost under a few hundred dollars per participant and take only a few hours, more structured certificates often require weeks of coursework and tuition in the high hundreds to low thousands per employee.
Full sommelier-style certifications demand even greater coordination and commitment.
As a result, most retailers do not pursue full certification across entire staffs. Instead, Gilman said, operators increasingly start with managers, buyers or lead budtenders to establish a shared quality standard, then reinforce it internally.
Cannabis sales are a matter of trust
For now, cannabis sommelier programs’ structured sensory education sits between professional development and enthusiast culture.
But the long-term impact may be more keenly felt across a company’s operations rather than in individual customer conversations, Gilman believes.
Consistency becomes an operational advantage when workers across a brand or company – buyers and managers to educators and frontline staff – all use the same terms for product selection, shelf strategy and customer guidance, he said.
Here, training functions less as a credential and instead becomes part of an operator’s infrastructure that provides consistency even amid regular turnover.
In this way, buying cannabis isn’t about finding the best deal or the highest THC. It’s about a conversation at the counter that customers can trust.
MJBizDaily can be reached at editorial@mjbizdaily.com.
