Ready to revolutionize your pre-roll game?
Discover the five reasons most pre-rolls are subpar and learn how to take your pre-roll production to the next level in our latest blog: “State of the Pre-Roll.”
The Current State of the
Pre-Roll Joint
The pre-roll joint. A mainstay of the cannabis landscape that supplies both potency and convenience but wears a reputation for inconsistent quality, canoeing, and clogging issues.
Despite the commodity status woes, the pre-roll product category has clawed market share from the flower market segment and established itself as a serious market contender. According to data collected by Headset, pre-rolls generated $406 million in sales and held a 7.9% market share in 2018. By 2022, these numbers had skyrocketed to $1.5 billion in sales and a 12.7% market share.
With the emergence of innovative commercial joint rolling machines, the industry has the opportunity to turn around the reputation of this legacy product that is seeing a surge in popularity.
Pre-Rolls: The Hotdog of the Cannabis World
Hot dogs and pre-rolls have a lot more common than most people think. Let’s look at how pre-rolls compare to the average all-American mystery sausage:
They’re both the black sheep of their respective industries
They’re both shrouded in secrecy, filled with God-knows-what, and churned out without much thought for taste or quality
They’re both mass-produced to meet the demand for a quick and cheap option but often result in sacrificing quality
Uneven Burns
Ah, the devilish curse of the uneven burn. The bane of every smoker’s existence and the scourge of pre-roll cone joints everywhere. From the first hit, it feels like you’ve stepped into a swirling vortex of disappointment. That perfect cone joint you purchased has transformed into a distorted mess, burning down one side and leaving the other untouched. It’s like a scene from a horror movie.
Poor appearances aside, an uneven burn is a serious problem that impacts the quality of the smoking experience. Unevenly burning joints create hot spots, making the smoke harsh and unpleasant.
Clogging Issues:
The Battle Against Congestion
Ah, the devilish curse of the uneven burn. The bane of every smoker’s existence and the scourge of pre-roll cone joints everywhere. From the first hit, it feels like you’ve stepped into a swirling vortex of disappointment. That perfect cone joint you purchased has transformed into a distorted mess, burning down one side and leaving the other untouched. It’s like a scene from a horror movie.
Poor appearances aside, an uneven burn is a serious problem that impacts the quality of the smoking experience. Unevenly burning joints create hot spots, making the smoke harsh and unpleasant.
Poor Quality Flower
Often the flower used in pre-roll joints is crafted from the leftover trim and the delicate, powder-like bud and kief leftover from filling larger quantity containers. The result can be a smoking experience that makes you not mind if you forget the joint in the back of your drawer.
Margins and Lack of Effort
Pre-rolls have become a quick fix to offset margins, being relegated to its current market status for quick revenue hits. A lack of effort in creating pre-roll joints affects the customer experience and the bottom line. Our belief at RollPros is: Keep the quality high, and healthy margins will follow.
3 Reasons Commercial Joint Rolling Machines Can Improve Your Pre-Rolls
Before the emergence of commercial pre-roll machines, the segment was ripe for disruption. The arduous and inconsistent process of hand-filling cones has left many a staff member with sore fingers and cursing the knock box.
With the introduction of commercial joint rolling machines, the pre-roll process has seen reduced labor costs and the ability to churn out hundreds (even thousands) of joints per hour, depending on the method, freeing up employees for more important tasks. Now, let’s delve into why investing in commercial pre-roll machines can help turn trash pre-rolls into a treasured revenue stream on your menu.
1
Customization and Performance
Commercial joint rolling machines on the market today have seen a tremendous rise in engineering prowess, giving access to a new standard for customization, innovation, and performance in the pre-roll category. For example, the Blackbird by RollPros mimics a hand-roll joint by employing a radial compaction method instead of a gravity or volumetric filling process. This results in a more evenly packed joint that avoids an inconsistent burn.
2
Efficiency and Scalability
Verne Harnish, the author of Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t, states that the key to scaling up a business is to do three things:
1. Reduce by 80% the time it takes the top team to manage the business (operational activities)
2. Refocus the senior squad on market-facing activities
3. Realign everyone else on the same page doing the work that drives
Let’s face it, hand-preparing pre-roll joints is a tedious time-suck. Optimizing people, processes, and tools can help boost profitability and increase the cash flow rate. The truth is that investing in an automated joint rolling machine, one that can crank out hundreds or thousands of joints an hour, could be vital in scaling faster.
3
Lower Cost of Production
The dollars add up quickly when you factor in the cost savings by reducing the amount of human power spent on filling pre-rolls. With typical pre-roll production costs clocking in at greater than 15 cents, lowering costs to as low as 3 cents per joint can mean thousands of dollars difference in profit at the end of the year.
Which automated joint-rolling machine is the right fit for your business?
Folks, it’s time to face the music. Despite fancy marketing and industry hype, not all pre-roll machines are created equal. We may be biased, but after thousands of hours of R&D, and more than 16 million pre-rolls produced, we’ve got nearly a silver bullet in the RollPros Blackbird. Here’s why:
Producers hold the reins on ingredients and the final product. The Blackbird allows for the use of raw materials for a lower cost of production at $0.03 per pre-roll. Here’s the kicker – it keeps your flower’s moist and sticky buds intact, unlike the dry and dusty filler clocking in at 6 percent moisture (it’s like a desert in there) found in other pre-rolls on the market. The Blackbird keeps moisture levels at an ideal 8-12 percent to help the best aspects of your flower come through in the joint flavor.
Blackbird rolls joints with the precision of a seasoned rolling vet, but with the intelligence of a computer to dial in the perfect pressure. This not only means you can control the draw rate and burn rate, but also preserve your flower’s precious active ingredients like flavonoids, cannabinoids, and terpenes that often get lost or degraded in other methods.
Seriously, it takes up the size of a worktable. It takes up less space than other commercial pre-roll machines without sacrificing quality or the end-user experience.
The Blackbird uses radial compaction instead of gravity and volumetric filling methods seen in other automatic joint-rolling machines.
- Total Production Control:
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Producers hold the reins on ingredients and the final product. The Blackbird allows for the use of raw materials for a lower cost of production at $0.03 per pre-roll. Here’s the kicker – it keeps your flower’s moist and sticky buds intact, unlike the dry and dusty filler clocking in at 6 percent moisture (it’s like a desert in there) found in other pre-rolls on the market. The Blackbird keeps moisture levels at an ideal 8-12 percent to help the best aspects of your flower come through in the joint flavor.
- Mimics Hand-Rolls Perfectly:
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Blackbird rolls joints with the precision of a seasoned rolling vet, but with the intelligence of a computer to dial in the perfect pressure. This not only means you can control the draw rate and burn rate, but also preserve your flower’s precious active ingredients like flavonoids, cannabinoids, and terpenes that often get lost or degraded in other methods.
- Take Up Less Space:
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Seriously, it takes up the size of a worktable. It takes up less space than other commercial pre-roll machines without sacrificing quality or the end-user experience.
- Ditches Inconsistent Filling Practices:
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The Blackbird uses radial compaction instead of gravity and volumetric filling methods seen in other automatic joint-rolling machines.
Note: We are just scratching the surface of what separates the Blackbird from the crowd.
Commercial joint rolling machines are the future, plain and simple.
Commercial joint rolling machines are the future, plain and simple. Depending on the product and method of machine you choose, you can offer better consistency, better smoking experiences, efficiency, and scalability. Want to find out how to take your pre-roll operation to the next level with an automated joint rolling machines that produce hand-roll quality every time? Click here to schedule a virtual demo with one of our in-house experts.
