How THC-infused beverage brand Cann is capitalizing on Dry January

Cannabis-infused beverage brand Cann, in fact, usually sees its sales jump every January due to more people teetotaling.

“I just got these numbers earlier today,” co-founder and CEO Jake Bullock said on this week’s Modern Retail Podcast. “So online — where we get the data the fastest — this first week of January is up 75% from where it was this week last year.”

That’s because the six-year-old company is investing in content related to Dry January — or what the company likes to call Cannuary. But Cann has also been on a big growth streak. The company is now selling its beverages in liquor stores in about 20 states. A year ago, it was only in around three states with this channel.

Bullock explained that the reason for this growth is changing legislation and more people testing out THC-infused beverages. He also spoke more broadly about the state of cannabis products in the U.S. Cann, he said, has expanded to states “that we would have never imagined we would be selling — Cann in North Carolina or Tennessee. And not only are we selling there, it’s selling really well, and consumers love these products,” he said.

Getting more people to try it out is another hurdle. While people who smoke marijuana may be comfortable with trying to drink, others might not be. That’s why expanding to liquor stores has been so crucial to Cann’s success.

“We’ve always said we sit at this intersection of sober curiosity and cannabis curiosity,” Bullock said. “And that curious customer maybe isn’t as comfortable going into a dispensary.”

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

How Cann is educating non-weed smoking customers
“We’ve always said we sit at this intersection of sober curiosity and cannabis curiosity. And that curious customer maybe isn’t as comfortable going into a dispensary. Or when they’re in there, they don’t actually feel like they know what’s going on. Like, I don’t really know how to engage with all these acronym cannabinoids and the raw flower kind of gives me the heebie jeebies. That person goes into liquor stores — they’re very comfortable in the liquor store environment. They’re very comfortable walking the aisles and inspecting packaging. And so, in that environment, we’ve had to highlight different things. The focus on our products — clean ingredients, the focus on no regrets the next day. There’s a lot of really positive things, which we’re doing now in Dry January. So liquor stores love this because they tend to have a really strong October, November, December, around the holidays and then January kind of dips.”

The future of marijuana legalization
“When we started the business six years ago, investors would ask me: Federal legalization of marijuana — when is it coming? How do you see the world? And I kind of said [that] we see the pace of change accelerating. That makes me feel comfortable that in three to five years, we’ll have some sort of federal legalization. I will tell you now: I will be surprised if that happens while I am in business. I didn’t really fully appreciate six years ago the challenging political dynamics around specifically marijuana. There’s this torrid history — the war on drugs, the failure of the war on drugs; its application in ways that are often very racist and not great from a social justice, criminal justice standpoint that you have to sort of rectify if we’re going to all of a sudden say marijuana is legal. Well, how do we deal with all the past effects of the illegality of it? Those are challenges that just aren’t presented in this new pathway. We joke a lot — but it’s sort of true — when you’re seeing the hemp industry grow, it’s growing in places you would never have expected there to be widespread marijuana adult marijuana use. These are places that probably won’t have dispensaries. They don’t really want dispensaries. And so what it’s doing is it’s giving states an option for safe access to the cannabis plant through the hemp version of it in a very specific way.”

Cann’s approach to Dry January
“We’ve tried to brand this as Cannuary, which is our version of Dry January, and it’s a fun version. So, unlike being completely sober from everything, you just don’t drink booze and instead you can drink Cann. And so, that seems to be something that resonates with folks. Like, we’re a very inclusive brand as we talk about these things. We recognize our best customers drink alcohol, and many of them drink alcohol multiple times if not every day. And so what we’re helping them do is moderate that alcohol consumption to some degree. That moderation is sort of the goal we all have… We’ve been really effective at delivering that message in January because there’s so much energy in just the world around us around Dry January. People are filming videos talking about how they’re doing it or not doing it or [that] they fell off the wagon or they’re getting back on. So it’s a great moment to have that conversation. We also see a big impact on sales. I just got these numbers earlier today. So online — where we get the data the fastest — this first week of January is up 75% from where it was this week last year.”