The Challenge
The Scale Was the Bottleneck
Every plant has to be weighed, tagged and reported to METRC before it leaves the field, and a paid crew waits while that happens.
Before the BaykedStation, harvest compliance on the Central Coast ran on paper. Crews wrote weights in a notebook and texted photos of the pages from the field. Someone retyped the numbers into Excel and built .CSV files that METRC timed out on. Manifests took more than two hours while freshly cut product sat in the sun. Read the full story.
Each farm faced its own version of the problem.
Outdoor
HAND-CUT FLOWER
The processor couldn’t commit to a daily intake, so volume was hard to plan and trucks sat waiting to load.
Greenhouse
POTTED FLOWER
Several buyers each wanted fixed daily amounts of specific strains. The farm needed to fill every order with the smallest possible crew.
Hoop house
FRESH & BLAST FROZEN
Product had to leave the field fast to protect terpenes and cannabinoids, with a 35-person crew on the clock from day one.
The Solution
One Button at Every Weigh Point
Each farm put a BaykedStation at every weigh point: an NTEP-approved scale, a label printer and a computer running Bay Kinetic’s harvest software. Capturing a weight works like printing a receipt. The crew sets the plant or bin on the scale and presses print.
That one press
After two days, the greenhouse cut its crew from 17 people to 7 and still shipped every order.
Every weight was captured at the source, so each farm had accurate cost and output numbers at the end of every day and could adjust overnight. After three days, the outdoor farm changed how it moved plants to the scale.
The Results
62% to 85% Off Every Pound
All three farms cut labor cost per pound by 62% to 85% between their first and best days. Pounds shipped per labor hour rose 2.6x to 6.6x.
| Farm | Harvest | Day 1 $/lb | Best day $/lb | Reduction | Lbs / labor hr | Lbs shipped |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outdoor | Nov–Dec 2021 · 6 days | $0.67 | $0.26 (D5) | 62% | 32.5 → 84.7 (2.6x) | 54,775 |
| Greenhouse | Jul 2022 · 4 days | $1.14 | $0.41 (D3) | 64% | 18.5 → 50.7 (2.7x) | 8,767 |
| Hoop house | Jun 2022 · 5 days | $7.91 | $1.21 (D3) | 85% | 2.7 → 17.4 (6.6x) | 12,367 |
Outdoor. With the same 26-person crew, daily shipments grew from 4,230 lbs to more than 15,000 lbs. Cost fell from $0.67 to $0.26 per pound.
Greenhouse. The crew went from 17 people to 7 by day three, and every daily order still shipped. Cost fell from $1.14 to $0.41 per pound.
Hoop house. By day three, 35 people shipped 4,873 lbs of fresh-frozen product in a single day at $1.21 per pound, down from $7.91 on day one.
How We Measured
Labor cost per pound = laborer hours × hourly rate ÷ pounds shipped, tracked daily through each harvest. Every farm was on the system from day one, so results compare each farm’s first day to its best day, not before and after.
Source: Internal study · client-reported labor hours
