Black Friday to New Year’s 2021: A First Look at Sales Behavior in Washington’s CCRS Era

Black Friday to New Year’s 2021: A First Look at Sales Behavior in Washington’s CCRS Era

When Washington’s Cannabis Central Reporting System (CCRS) went live in December 2021, the transition marked the first statewide attempt to standardize traceability after BioTrack’s phase-out. To understand how licensees were performing during those pivotal early weeks, we analyzed nearly 12 thousand transactions covering the Black Friday–Christmas–New Year’s 2021 period.

The dataset captures point-of-sale activity reported by a handful of early CCRS adopters—primarily the Lucid retail group and Green Lady (Lacey) — and offers a snapshot of how products, pricing, and discounting behaved across inventory types.

Inventory Type	Total Revenue ($)	Units Sold
Usable Cannabis	13,905	3,846
Concentrate for Inhalation	1,910	138
Tincture	1,526	90
Solid Edible	353	18
Sample Jar	0.24	2,142
Topical Ointment	0	12
(Unspecified) NA	17,264	14,652

Flower (usable cannabis) dominated legitimate revenue, generating roughly 40 % of all recorded sales, while concentrates and tinctures together accounted for another 10 %–12 %. The large “NA” category—transactions missing inventory classification—reflects early data-entry gaps common during CCRS onboarding rather than mystery products.

Pricing and Value by Weight

Average revenue per gram paints a picture of how each category was positioned:

Inventory Type	Avg $/g	Median $/g
Concentrate for Inhalation	15.7	11.6
Tincture	15.4	11.7
Usable Cannabis	2.13	2.00
Solid Edible	0.07	0.07
Sample Jar	0.04	0.04

Concentrates and tinctures commanded an order-of-magnitude premium over flower on a per-gram basis, consistent with potency and processing costs. Edibles and sample jars functioned as low-revenue accessories in the retail basket.

Discounts and Promotional Behavior

Inventory Type	Avg Discount ($)	% of Items Discounted
Solid Edible	5.10	80 %
Tincture	4.99	68 %
Concentrate for Inhalation	4.44	65 %
Usable Cannabis	0.42	8 %
(Unspecified) NA	2.22	32 %
Sample Jar	0	0 %

Retailers used the holiday window to aggressively discount infused products—edibles, tinctures, and concentrates—while flower saw relatively little price movement. This pattern suggests an attempt to drive category trial and manage inventory before the new traceability year began.

Daily Revenue Trends

Revenue peaked on the weekends of December 10–12 and December 17–19, then slowed through Christmas week. Flower sales mirrored payday and weekend cycles, while concentrate and tincture spikes aligned with individual promotion days. The “NA” category’s persistent activity again signals reporting adjustments rather than hidden market segments.

Business Name	Total Revenue ($)	Transactions
LUCID (main license #1031)	11,931	3,548
LUCID Auburn 21+	11,151	762
GREEN LADY LACEY	5,966	1,774
LUCID Puyallup	5,912	420

A handful of Lucid-branded stores accounted for the majority of positive-revenue records, with Green Lady Lacey the only independent participant of similar scale. Combined, these four licensees generated nearly $35,000 in verified holiday revenue—modest figures reflecting the limited number of operators submitting valid CCRS files at launch.

Interpreting the Early CCRS Data

Similarities

• Category hierarchy mirrored statewide trends seen under BioTrack: flower first, concentrates and tinctures second.

• Price per gram ratios between flower and concentrates remained consistent with 2020 norms.

• Weekend-driven revenue cycles persisted across stores.

Differences

• Heavy use of discounts in processed categories, suggesting a marketing shift or data-entry experimentation.

• High proportion of missing inventory types (“NA”), revealing onboarding friction with the CCRS schema.

• Negative unit counts in some categories (returns or voids) highlight reconciliation issues unique to early CCRS reporting.

The First Movers

December 2021 had only a few license holders that fully adopted CCRS submission, including:

1. Lucid (Spokane)
2. Lucid (Auburn)
3. Lucid (Puyallup)
4. Green Lady (Lacey)

Their willingness to experiment with an untested reporting pipeline gave the Liquor and Cannabis Board its first usable dataset in the post-BioTrack and CCRS Beta testing era, laying the groundwork for broader participation throughout 2022.