From cultivation to retail, businesses are digging deep to tighten operations and increase margins as the only way to endure another grueling year in cannabis without federal support.
A common sales pitch these days centers on cost-saving systems and operational efficiency. The industry has shifted from “how fast can we grow?” to “how do we survive profitably?” There is little tolerance left for inefficiency.
A glance at the agenda for the upcoming MJ Unpacked show in Atlantic City, kicking off May 5, offers insights into the industry’s current challenges as we move through 2026. According to co-founder George Jage, the programming is shaped by input from committees across retail, brands, and cultivation, made up of operators who meet regularly to share pain points and what they are seeing on the ground.
“There’s no higher level of learning than peer-to-peer learning, and understanding the biggest pain points,” says Jage. “We take that information and design panels around the challenges and solutions operators are actually dealing with.”
Here is what I gleaned from this year’s agenda and where the industry is focusing. If the industry is going to stabilize, tight execution at every phase will matter.
The Retail Grind
Retailers across the board are grappling with inventory management and SKU rationalization, given the dizzying number of strains and products available and consumers’ constant demand for variety and newness. Without careful planning, a store can end up overstocked, leading to discounting, spoiled product, and shrinking working capital. Trying to stock everything is where money gets wasted, and seasoned buyers will weigh in at the Atlantic City show on what actually makes it to store shelves.
Hoodie Analytics will be on-site to break down the latest retail performance data, consumer behavior shifts, pricing trends, and competitive dynamics impacting markets nationwide. Where is growth accelerating? How are operators adapting to evolving market conditions? Attendees can expect to walk away with a sharper read on what the data signals for the year ahead and where emerging opportunities may lie. Leading operators and data partners will also share how analytics are driving smarter merchandising, tighter pricing, stronger customer engagement, and disciplined growth planning, with a practical roadmap for turning insights into action and getting more out of your tech stack.
Successful retail operations are also about keeping up with the times. Today’s cannabis consumers move fluidly between digital menus, delivery, storefronts, and apps, and they expect the experience to feel seamless at every touchpoint. Panelists will dig into how to build a connected model that supports the consumer experience across the full dispensary ecosystem.
The Art of the Sell
You have six seconds to stop a consumer in their tracks and get them to notice your product. Merchandising shapes someone’s experience, creates interest, and drives sales. It shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Cannabis has reinvented the retail experience, but it’s not quite there yet. Browsing products locked behind glass or displayed in empty boxes is a far cry from traditional retail, where consumers walk the aisles, interact directly with products, and toss whatever catches their eye into a cart.
MJ Unpacked Atlantic City is bringing together visual merchandising experts to discuss the evolution of the dispensary experience, covering how store design, product presentation, and category selection can shape consumer behavior, spark product discovery, and drive sales. The dispensary floor has real potential as a selling tool. It’s just a matter of using it well.
Where Science Meets the Shelf
The cultivation sessions go deep into the science driving product quality. Researchers and operators will come together to explore how emerging science can sharpen cultivation strategies and product development. There’s even a push for operators to collaborate directly with academic institutions to build a more data-driven foundation for the industry.
On the plant science side, sessions will examine how controlled-stress strategies, from drought tolerance to deliberate environmental pressure, can enhance terpene and cannabinoid expression without compromising yield. Understanding how to manipulate stress responses gives cultivators the ability to improve flavor profiles and potency.
Genetics is also getting serious attention. As commercialization scales, the risk of genetic erosion is growing, and experienced breeders are concerned about preserving diversity, stabilizing traits, and maintaining legacy cultivars while still meeting production demands. Phenotypic selection, trait heritability, and breeding for consistency across environments will all be on the table.
Rounding out the cultivation track, a session on enterprise risk management will address the wave of recalls, testing failures, and regulatory shifts operators are navigating. Panelists will share tactics for moving from reactive crisis response to proactive resilience, including whether AI can play a role in monitoring compliance and surfacing issues before they escalate.
The insights from genetics research, stress response science, and data-driven growing practices inform how brands develop and differentiate their products, and will be front and center at the panel discussions at MJ Unpacked Atlantic City.
Building National Brands
The Brand sessions zero in on growth strategy and the complicated maze of state-by-state partnerships. Panels will cover licensing as a lower-risk path to multi-state expansion, with a focus on maintaining brand consistency and compliance across different markets. Operators will also dig into disciplined growth and when to push forward and when to pull back. On the supply chain side, attendees will hear how to build scalable operations from concept to distribution while keeping costs in check. Rounding it out, a conversation on strategic partnerships will address how social equity operators can structure deals that bring in capital and distribution without giving up control.
Money, Debt, and Deals
Finding ways to tighten operations across the business is mandatory in cannabis right now, but it won’t matter without disciplined financial planning behind it. Accountants specializing in this heavily regulated industry will take the stage to offer guidance for licensed operators navigating one of the most complex tax and compliance environments in any sector.
A session on mounting maturities will examine how the current wave of restructurings, refinancings, and strategic roll-ups is triggering a new phase of deal-making. Financial and operational leaders will unpack how this capital reset is redefining ownership, attracting new investors, and reshaping the competitive landscape, and what it means for operators on both sides of the table.
For those already in distress, a separate session tackles how to protect enterprise value and stabilize operations when capital is tight. Turnaround specialists will share frameworks for managing debt, improving liquidity, restructuring costs, and making the moves needed to survive and reposition for growth.
On the planning side, a deep dive into FP&A will focus on the performance indicators that matter most for cannabis businesses and how to use them to make smarter decisions. Leaders will share best practices for keeping operators agile in an unpredictable market.
Finally, a session on M&A readiness will address why so many deals stall before serious diligence even begins. Panelists will walk through the most common data room red flags, the realities of EBITDA normalization in cannabis, and how cap table complexity and weak governance quietly kill transactions before they ever get off the ground.