Introducing Kingpin: A Private Members' Club for Cannabis Retail

Cannabis retail is stuck in batch-and-blast discount marketing. The same playbook every dispensary uses, the same playbook that trained customers to wait for discounts instead of paying full price.

The top 5 to 10 percent of your customers don't want a coupon. They want to feel like they're inside something.

Today I'm launching Kingpin, a private digital members' club for cannabis dispensaries to offer their best customers.

What Kingpin is

Kingpin gives operators a way to treat their top customers like real customers. Not points. Not punch cards. Status.

Three core features:

The Back Room. A private member-only menu of allocated drops, limited batches, and items budtenders set aside personally for specific members. Members see what nobody else sees.

The Strain Journal. A running record of everything a member has tried. Notes, ratings, terpene profiles, cultivar lineage. Cannabis as a category to know, not just buy. The longer they're a member, the more it's worth.

Sessions. Monthly cultural drops launching in v2. Voice memos from cultivators, music pairings, stories behind the strain. Cannabis as culture, not commodity.

Who it's for

Independent and regional cannabis operators with one to thirty stores who want to serve their top customers better than a discount loyalty program can. Operators license Kingpin from Pinelands Marketing and gate it to the top 5 to 10 percent of their customer base based on annual spend.

The buyer is the dispensary owner, marketing director, or CRM lead.

Why I built this

I spent fifteen years building VIP loyalty programs in casino gaming, hospitality, and telecom. Caesars Entertainment. Vail Resorts. Comcast. The same playbook that worked for those brands works for cannabis retail.

In casino gaming, you don't give your top players a 10 percent off coupon. You give them allocated access. A host who knows their name. A back room nobody else gets to see. That's what creates retention. That's what creates LTV.

Cannabis retail has the data and the customer relationships to do this. It just hasn't had a tool built for it.

Now it does.

How it works for operators

Kingpin connects to your existing CRM (Alpine IQ, Dutchie) via API or CSV upload. You set your annual spend threshold (typically $1,500 a year). Customers who hit it get auto-invited to Kingpin. Customers who fall below roll off automatically.

Your team manages the program through a clean operator admin: add allocated drops, flag set-asides for specific members through your budtenders, write Sessions content, view reporting. Members experience the whole thing through a private branded app on their phones.

Two sides, one product. The member experience and the operator tool, talking to each other.

See the demo

I built a live demo of both sides. Walk through the member experience, toggle to the operator side, see exactly what your team would manage and what your top customers would experience. No call required.

See Kingpin live

For operators interested in licensing Kingpin for their stores, the marketing site has pricing, integration details, and a contact form. For everyone else, the demo and the guide should give you a clear picture of what the next era of cannabis loyalty looks like.

The plant deserves better marketing. Your best customers deserve more than a punch card.

That's what Kingpin is for.