The Most Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lit Alerts?
Lit Alerts is a market data tool that crawls publicly available menu data multiple times per day during business hours and aggregates that data in one, easy-to-use spot. We give you a directional picture of the important events happening in your market, like low and out of stock inventory alerts, pricing, image reviews and even estimated sales.
How does the Lit Alerts tool work?
The software crawls publicly available cannabis retail menu data multiple times per day during business hours. It then performs an analysis of the changes in that data and creates a new dataset (often referred to as a “derivative dataset”) of critical events that are happening in your market. These include out of stock alerts, low quantity alerts as well as estimated sales via inventory quantity tracking.
This massive database of events is aggregated in one easy-to-use spot, where you can view the data to answer specific questions about the market. The tool also has a notification feature which currently includes:
a morning email digest for brands that includes low quantity and out of stock alerts
a morning email snapshot for retailers with important events at specific locations from the previous day.
Who uses Lit Alerts?
Brands
Lit Alerts gives brands a clear directional view of critical market activity, tracking key metrics like out-of-stock events, low inventory levels, and estimated sales volume via quantity tracking. Our daily morning email digest delivers these actionable insights straight to your inbox, making it our users’ favorite feature.
Retailers
Retailers leverage Lit Alerts to gain deep visibility into their local and statewide markets, evaluating competitor pricing, product mix, and estimated sales data. With our Comparison feature, benchmarking rival retailers in a single, side-by-side view is effortless.
Manufacturers
Manufacturers rely on Lit Alerts to monitor shifting retail demand, track product distribution footprints, and align production schedules with real-time market trends.
Processors
Processors use Lit Alerts to track supply movements, anticipate downstream demand, and monitor end-market pricing to optimize processing volumes and protect margins.
Distributors
Distributors utilize Lit Alerts to identify stockout gaps across retail channels, track regional inventory levels, and optimize supply chain logistics based on live market demand.
Vertically Integrated Operators
Vertically integrated operators leverage Lit Alerts across their entire supply chain—combining brand tracking, retail benchmarking, manufacturing demand, processing shifts, and distribution insights into a single dashboard. This complete, end-to-end visibility helps operators align cultivation/production with shelf demand, eliminate channel bottlenecks, and maximize profitability at every stage.
Ancillary Businesses
Service providers, investors, and industry consultants use Lit Alerts to prospect for new business opportunities, identify active market players, and leverage timely market intelligence to pitch clients more effectively.
Who is behind Lit Alerts?
A dispensary owner, an online marketing executive, a technology leader, and a software operator. If you’d like to find out more about the background click here.
How do you source and generate the market data in the tool?
The analytics throughout the Lit Alerts tool rely on publicly available data on cannabis retailer online menus. Our technology analyzes and produces a directional dataset that predict activities happening in market. This dataset does not leverage or integrate with POS providers or other inventory management solutions, and should not be used as actuals for financial reporting purpose.
We crawl publicly available data from retail menus and utilize a proprietary mechanism to analyze that data to predict events that are happening in the market, like product availability and estimated sales. This is not POS data and is not meant to represent or replace it, but rather to be used as a guide to help brands and retailers better understand the market and gain helpful insights to sell more products.
It’s a compass, not a GPS.
Is data from every retailer available in the tool?
We certainly try. Unfortunately, it’s just not possible currently.
If a retail location is missing, it’s either because they don’t currently have a live ecommerce menu or they use an ecommerce system we don’t currently crawl.
In every market, we operate there are a handful of retailers who select a seldom used or custom ecommerce platform to power their online store. We’re currently we’re focused on adding menu systems that are the most commonly used.
Current ecommerce platforms we do not crawl (if a retailer uses one of these platforms to power their online menu, we currently do not source data from this retailer.
VFI
Leafly
Weedmaps
Proteus
Woo Commerce
Cannalogic
DispenseFirst
Please note: Most states we cover we have better than 90% coverage. You can see our a summary of our coverage in each states by going to MARKET > LOCATIONS and then viewing the Retail Menus Supported and Retail Menus Not Supported Tables.
What states do you currently offer market data?
We currently focus on the East Coast markets and Midwest markets. We are currently live in the following markets: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut, Missouri, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, Delaware and Nevada.
LIVE Markets – Generally Available
Tier 1 – Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada.
Tier 2 (Reduced price) – Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine and Delaware.
IN FINAL TESTING, SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE END OF JUNE
None currently
PRELIMINARY TESTING, NO RELEASE DATE
Florida, California
Will you be expanding to new markets?
We’ve focused on expansion mainly in the East Coast and Midwest markets to date. Beginning in 2025, we will begin to address markets in the Rocky Mountains in West Coast. However, talk to us in two months. Our plans change constantly, depending on what our customers request of us.
Why would I use Lit Alerts as opposed to a competitor of yours?
- Simplicity of the user experience and ease of use to getting the information you need.
- Simplified, cost-effective pricing.
- Lightning fast response time. You don’t believe us? Everyone tells you this? Take the free trial. Let us show you how quickly we respond to every single customer message we receive.
- Frequency of updating the data (we update multiple times everyday).
What happens if I find data that looks incorrect to me?
Notify us as soon as you see something that looks incorrect. We use publicly available information that is largely inputted and managed by humans. Most of the cannabis supply chain does not lock down product information data entry and therefore, this is very active and dynamic dataset. We are actively identifying incorrect data to improve our methodology and product. If you see something looks off, please alert us at support@litalerts.com.
Do I get rewarded if I tell someone about Lit Alerts and they sign up?
Once you’re a customer, you’re automatically enrolled in our referral program. For every customer who you refer who ends up signing up for a paid plan, you receive one month free (up to three months per year).
Have More Questions? Ask One of Our Customers!
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