Pre-rolls made up 30.2% of every item sold across US cannabis retail last month. They brought in just 11.6% of the money.

That is the sharpest gap between unit share and dollar share of any category in the HighRewards receipt network in June, and it says a lot about how shoppers actually use dispensaries. This month we zoom out from a single state and look at the national category mix, drawn from receipts across our tracked retail chains.

Two categories, two thirds of the basket

Flower and pre-rolls together accounted for 62.9% of all items purchased in June. Flower narrowly leads on volume at 32.7% of items, with pre-rolls close behind at 30.2%. Vapes took 15.5%, edibles 10.5% and concentrates 8.0%, with beverages, tinctures, topicals and accessories splitting the remainder.

The dollar picture looks completely different. Flower captured 51.9% of product spend, more than half the market on roughly a third of the items. Vapes over-index too, converting 15.5% of items into 19.4% of spend. Pre-rolls flip the other way: nearly a third of the volume, barely a ninth of the money. Edibles show the same pattern in miniature, with 10.5% of items producing 5.9% of spend.

The pre-roll paradox

The gap is simple price maths. The average pre-roll purchase rings up at roughly a quarter of the average flower purchase. But the strategic meaning is bigger than the maths. A category that shows up in nearly one of every three purchases is not a revenue engine. It is a visit engine.

Pre-rolls are the impulse buy, the add-on, the low-commitment trial of a new brand or strain. They are how a shopper samples a store without committing the weekly budget to it. We saw this play out at state level in our Michigan wallet share breakdown, where pre-rolls were closing in on flower as a share of category spend in one of the most competitive markets we track.

Competition inside the category is also brutal. Pre-rolls attract almost as many competing brands as flower, roughly 94% as many in June, all fighting over a pool of dollars one fifth the size. For brands, that means shelf presence in pre-rolls buys awareness, not margin. For retailers, it means the category is nearly impossible to differentiate on product alone.

What operators should do with this

Cannabis retail cannot buy its way to traffic. Mainstream ad platforms remain closed, a problem we covered in depth in our guide to why cannabis brands cannot advertise on Google, Meta or TikTok. That makes the pre-roll shopper unusually valuable: they are footfall you did not have to pay a platform for.

The play is conversion, not margin extraction. Treat pre-rolls as the top of your loyalty funnel. Reward the frequent small basket, then use that relationship to move shoppers up into flower and vapes, where more than 70% of the dollars sit. Retailers who measure only average order value will read pre-roll buyers as their worst customers. Retailers who measure visit frequency will recognise them as their best prospects.

FAQ

What share of cannabis purchases are pre-rolls?

In June 2026 receipt data from the HighRewards network, pre-rolls accounted for 30.2% of all items purchased across US cannabis retail, second only to flower at 32.7%.

Why do pre-rolls generate so little revenue compared to flower?

Price. The average pre-roll rings up at roughly a quarter of the average flower purchase, so even with near equal unit volume, pre-rolls delivered just 11.6% of product spend versus 51.9% for flower.

What should dispensaries do with this pre-roll data?

Treat pre-rolls as a frequency and acquisition tool rather than a margin line. Shoppers who visit often for small purchases are the easiest to convert into loyalty programme members and larger flower or vape baskets over time.

Turn your dispensary runs into gift cards

Earn gift cards by earning rewards at any dispensary — and even liquor stores! Every purchase earns points you can redeem for gift cards to Amazon, Starbucks and more with the HighRewards app.