How to start selling nicotine pouches.

1. Check your licence

You need whatever tobacco or retail licence your state requires to sell nicotine products. If you already sell cigarettes, vapes or dip, you almost certainly hold it. If you're a business that has never sold nicotine before — a gym, a general store, a campus shop — this is the step that decides whether you can proceed, and it's worth resolving before you shop for product.

Also check whether your state runs a product directory or registry that limits which nicotine products can lawfully be sold there. Several do, and the list changes. Ask us and we'll tell you what we know, but confirm your own position with a qualified advisor.

2. Decide your first order size

One carton is 90 cans at $3.87 each. That is deliberately small, and it is the right starting point for a single store. You'll learn more from three weeks of real sell-through than from any amount of guessing about what your customers want.

If you're buying for several locations, buy for all of them at once — the tiers are based on the total order, not per store.

3. Build the assortment

Weight the first carton toward mint. Across almost every US market, mint and wintergreen do the majority of pouch volume, and a shelf of nothing but fruit will disappoint you.

• About half the order in Cool Mint, Winter Green and Peppermint
• Two or three fruit facings — Lush Ice, Mango Marvel, Black Cherry
• One or two novelty SKUs for browsers — Cola Ice, Belgian Coffee

4. Get the strengths right

This is where new retailers most often go wrong. Stock the full range, not the middle. A customer coming off dip wants 16 or 20 mg and will walk if you don't have it. A customer trying pouches for the first time wants 6 mg and will have a bad experience on 20. See the strengths guide.

5. Price the shelf

Look at what the national brands sell for in your area and price just under. You do not need to be the cheapest — you need to be visibly better value than the name the customer already knows. Run your numbers on the margin page.

6. Place it where it sells

Behind the counter, at eye level, near the cigarettes. Pouches are an impulse and an ask-for product, not a browse product. If the customer has to request it by name from a drawer, you've capped the category at people who already knew it existed.

7. Restock on data, not instinct

After three weeks you'll know which two or three SKUs are carrying the shelf. Go deep on those and thin on the rest. Five-day restocking means you don't need to hold much buffer — reorder weekly if that suits your cash flow better than a big monthly drop.

8. Handle the compliance

Every can arrives with the FDA-mandated nicotine warning and the 21+ statement already printed, so nothing needs relabeling. Age verification at the register is your legal responsibility under federal Tobacco 21. State excise tax and any PACT Act obligations are yours to file.