Stacking Bodies: How To Save Cost
There comes a time in every operator’s life when you realize you can’t lower prices any more. You can’t cut any more positions. Payroll is maxed out, and promotions have been trimmed. Eventually, the margins have to come from somewhere else.
That usually means trimming the fat in a surgical way. But how do you do find savings without sacrificing quality, or changing things so quickly that the operation breaks?
“Money see, money do…”
Usually most operators have to learn the hard way, but it doesn’t have to be like that. You can rely on your community to share experiences; good and bad, so we can all learn and become better versions of ourselves.
Here are some of the easiest and most common ways I help people save cost…
Examples
One of the biggest forms of waste in New Mexico is not always labor, product loss, or compliance fines. Sometimes, it is simply a lack of understanding of the systems operators are already paying for.
Example 1: Printing and Label Waste
Many operators in New Mexico use the paid version of BioTrack Core, the same track-and-trace platform tied to the state system. What many teams do not realize is that BioTrack already has built-in capabilities for designing and printing compliant labels.
Instead of using the tools already available, teams often export inventory data into spreadsheets, manually reformat labels, and print through outside software. In some cases, operators pay for expensive programs like Adobe Creative Cloud just to create labels that could have been printed directly through a standard thermal printer such as a Zebra device.
The result:
Extra labor
Additional software subscriptions
More opportunities for data entry mistakes
Slower receiving and packaging workflows
All for a problem that was already solved inside the original system.
Example 2: Double Work Through Manifesting
Another common example comes from operators using Dutchie POS.
Many teams do not realize that manifests can be sent and received directly through Dutchie integrations. Instead, products are received into BioTrack, and staff manually map or recreate those products inside Dutchie a second time.
The workflow becomes:
Vendor sends manifest → Receive in BioTrack → Open Dutchie → Manually rebuild products → Re-enter inventory → Reconcile mistakes
Instead of:
Vendor sends manifest → Receive once → Inventory syncs correctly
In many cases, this is not a technology problem. It is a training and onboarding problem. No one explained how to configure the system correctly during implementation, so teams built manual workarounds and simply accepted them as “the way things are done.”
Double Digits
The saving from small changes like this add up quick,
Potential savings example 1:
Eliminate unnecessary software costs: $500–$5,000+/year
Reduce manual labor: $2,000–$10,000+/year
Faster receiving and packaging
Fewer labeling mistakes
Estimated impact example 2:
$5,000–$20,000+/year per operation
Potential savings:
Reduced duplicate labor: $2,500–$12,000+/year per location
Fewer receiving errors
Faster product onboarding
Less inventory mismatch
This is just a small example, the tips and tricks are endless, you’d be amazed what you can learn from your neighbors…
