58% Increase in Loyalty Purchase Frequency: How North Shore Dispensary Built a Loyal Customer Base

The Origin

A Lifelong Dream Meets Minnesota’s Competitive Market

When Minnesota legalized recreational cannabis, John Borden, Founder and Co-owner of North Shore Dispensary in Duluth, moved quickly, submitting an application almost on instinct. With a background in supply chain and regulated industries, he knew how to build an operation from the ground up, and he had the vision to match.

“I viewed it as not only a personal challenge, but the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.”

John Borden, Founder & Co-owner, North Shore Dispensary

Despite John’s previous experience, nothing could fully prepare the North Shore team for the complexity of cannabis. They quickly realized winning in the Minnesota market would require tech infrastructure that kept North Shore compliant, operations connected, and customers satisfied from the very beginning.

Choosing Dutchie

Full Stack From Day One

In a city of 85,000 people with seven dispensaries set to open, the North Shore team spent months evaluating the landscape before settling on a tech partner. To compete and capture customer attention in a crowded market, they needed to get the technology decision right.

“We evaluated pretty much every POS and e-comm provider, even down to the really high-end custom build platforms, pretty much all the players, small and large. In the end, Dutchie was always kind of the standard for us.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

With Point of Sale, kiosk, e-commerce, loyalty, and payments all needing to work together from day one, piecing together a stack from multiple vendors wasn’t the direction North Shore wanted to take. They recognized the need for one platform their team could learn, operate, and grow on, while still having the flexibility to layer in partners and integrations that fit the way they run their business. So they chose Dutchie.

Getting a Head Start

Building Top of Funnel With Range Marketing

With their core operations running on Dutchie, North Shore was able to bring in Range Marketing, a Dutchie Certified Partner specializing in cannabis SEO, web development, and digital strategy, to take their digital presence further and start building a customer base before they even opened.

“We built North Shore a temporary landing page to collect emails and client data prior to their opening. Which meant they weren’t starting from zero.”

Nate Geary, Range Marketing

The landing page ran on Dutchie’s Loyalty and Marketing Pro infrastructure, making sign-up frictionless and connecting new customers to the loyalty program from their very first interaction.

“Dutchie makes it very easy for us to simply embed that information right into our platform… We can typically get these landing pages up within one to two weeks.”

Nate Geary, Range Marketing

For a first-time operator, every advantage matters. Having the technology side move in days rather than months meant North Shore could focus on the business, not the build. By opening day, they had a warm, loyal audience ready and waiting.

Discovery to Purchase

Range Marketing & Dutchie E‑Commerce Pro

After building out their initial customer base, North Shore set to work capturing new eyes through their online channels. Range Marketing built out North Shore’s SEO in deliberate coordination with Dutchie’s e-commerce structure, driving an 80% increase in impressions in their first month:

“We developed very detailed information pages to optimize SEO in conjunction with Dutchie’s E‑Commerce categories. We did it all in sync so they all pushed forward together.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

A strategically built SEO foundation, combined with a customer base that existed before opening day, paid off fast. According to Range Marketing, keywords ranking in first place have grown from 7 to 30 and clicks have increased 23% in one month, putting them at the top of local search across nearly every relevant category in Duluth.

“When you’re looking for dispensaries in Duluth right now, it’s pretty hard not to see North Shore dominating most of those search engine results pages.”

Nate Geary, Range Marketing

Once customers arrive at the site, the journey to purchase is natural. Dutchie’s E‑Commerce Pro functions as a native part of the North Shore website, so customers never feel like they’ve left it.

“Our Dutchie clients have by far the most consistently low bounce rate. It looks like one native experience rather than a jarring subdomain. When people get to that menu, they’re purchasing.”

Nate Geary, Range Marketing

With an SEO strategy purposefully created to win online, a loyalty program built out early, and a seamless online shopping experience from first click to checkout, North Shore has seen an E‑Commerce AOV that runs 44.4% above the industry average since opening.

Kiosk Pro

Turning Every Kiosk Into the Store’s Best Budtender

While their online experience encourages discovery, North Shore wanted an in-store experience that would set them apart and keep customers coming back. Kiosk Pro gave them the tool to do it.

“The kiosks have actually been fundamental in our business, helping customers who have special circumstances or would like access to more detailed information such as COAs [Certificate of Analysis], terpene profiles and effect filters.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

North Shore makes sure every customer can get what they need, with staff carrying mobile kiosk setups to complete orders wherever is most convenient for customers. But the kiosks do more than solve edge cases. Staff use them on the floor to guide customers through product discovery:

“When people are asking for certain effects or don’t know what they’re looking for, I’ll walk over to the kiosk, filter by effect, and show them their options. We’ll go through the descriptions, the images, the terpenes. Then we’ll either build the order at the kiosk or bring them up to the POS.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

For returning customers, the kiosk experience is an even bigger selling point. They’re met with personalized recommendations and a ‘buy again’ shortcut the moment they log in to their account. For most North Shore customers, shopping anywhere else for their favorites just wouldn’t make sense.

“We worked with Dutchie engineering to get the personalization, recommendations, and ‘buy it again’ turned on the kiosks. We have a lot of people who know the drill. They go straight to the kiosk and it’s straight up to the counter, in and out.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

By using Kiosk Pro as a tool to improve the customer journey rather than just a checkout terminal, North Shore’s kiosk AOV is 24% higher than the industry average.

Dutchie Hubs & Payments

From Checkout to Customer Experience

With customers able to shop however and whenever they’d like, North Shore needed a checkout flow that could keep up. In-store, that meant installing the Dutchie Hub at the POS. Now, a single device handles the entire payment experience, cutting what used to be a multi-step checkout down to a few seconds.

“As soon as we installed the Dutchie Hub there was a massive spike in customer satisfaction and ease of transaction.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

With the Dutchie Hub in place, the ability to integrate additional payment providers, and a native ACH payment solution through Dutchie’s Pay by Bank, North Shore became a leading Minnesota dispensary for payment flexibility. For customers deciding where to buy their cannabis, the difference was noticeable.

“We have a lot of customers who go to other dispensaries and then come back and say ‘it’s so much easier to come here.’”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

By removing the last barrier between walking in and walking out satisfied, North Shore has seen a 40% increase in GMV month-over-month since launch.

The Dutchie Hub didn’t just improve the experience for customers. Before, electronic tipping wasn’t an option. After, it became a real part of the employee experience.

“We saw a huge increase in budtender tips just by having that ability to electronically tip. Before implementing integrated electronic payment solutions, half of the customers didn’t choose to tip.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

Loyalty & Marketing Pro

Built to Make Every Customer Feel Known

Most dispensaries in the Duluth market launched without a loyalty program. North Shore launched with one already in motion, having started building customer relationships with the help of Range Marketing months prior.

“Many dispensaries, especially up here in Minnesota, don’t have loyalty programs at all. We started out the gate using Loyalty & Marketing Pro with Dutchie, which has been incredibly beneficial to the customers.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

The program is built on simple mechanics — one point per dollar, 5% redemption, double-point days, and rotating deals — but its real power is in the details. North Shore used Dutchie’s segment builder to create a full customer segmentation library, tracking product preferences, spend level, visit history, and more, so every customer interaction is informed before it starts.

“The general reaction when they get up to the counter and you already know the products they like, know where they’re from, how long they’ve been a loyalty member… It’s almost like a surprise.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

That philosophy of making every customer feel known extends into their marketing. One of their first automated workflows targeted customers who took the time to leave a review, putting them in a segment and sending a personalized $5 thank-you within hours. Another let customers know deli style was now available. As North Shore evolves, customers stay informed and connected. But their segmented messaging doesn’t just keep the right customers informed, it also drives revenue.

“After the first run, within a few minutes, both on the deli-style announcement and the review thank-you, we had orders generated off of it.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

Their loyalty program and marketing efforts have become a core part of what differentiates North Shore in the market. And Minnesotans are responding, with loyalty members driving 63% of all Dutchie POS orders over the past three months and visiting 58% more frequently since the program launched.

“Everything’s driven from trying to make it as personable as possible. When you come in for the second time, we want you to feel like you’re known. It would be a completely different world without Dutchie’s Loyalty & Marketing. It’s been fundamental.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

The Results

Surpassing Expectations With Dutchie

By going all in on Dutchie from day one, North Shore entered Minnesota’s competitive market with everything working together: Range Marketing’s SEO and pre-built customer base driving traffic, E‑Commerce Pro converting it, Kiosk Pro elevating the in-store experience, and Loyalty & Marketing Pro bringing customers back.

“For being open only three months, I feel like we’ve surpassed even our own expectations on community involvement, customer sentiment, and our ability to take care of the problems that customers have experienced.”

John Borden, North Shore Dispensary

The result is a dispensary that hasn’t slowed down since opening its doors. Since launch, North Shore has seen an 80% increase in impressions in their first month according to Range Marketing, a 40% increase in GMV month-over-month, and a 58% increase in purchase frequency among loyalty members.