As Americans faced seclusion due to the COVID-19 pandemic, shoppers in San Francisco had the option of stocking up on one popular product with a minimal amount of human interaction: Marijuana.

TerrAscend Corp.’s TRSSF, -0.22% TER, Apothecarium cannabis dispensary chain offered the option to pick up online orders in kiosks at their stores, a popular idea amid social distancing and quarantines. As of early Monday, nearly half of shoppers ordered product using one of the chain’s online options, more than three times the percentage of customers that used the service the prior week, according to finance director Jack Wallace.

By the end of the day, San Francisco told residents to stay home alone for at least three weeks, and social-distancing went out the door along with lines at dispensaries, whether they had kiosk-ordering options or not.

Cannabis stores were shut down Tuesday but appeared set to re-open after a tweet from the city’s public health department.

As the coronavirus pandemic causes chaos in financial markets and the global economy and sends shoppers in search of toilet paper and hand sanitizer, cannabis shops and delivery services report that they are selling more pot than usual. That would not be a surprise to MKM Partners analyst Bill Kirk, who recently wrote that a proprietary survey showed that when people are alone or in small groups, they resoundingly prefer to consume cannabis instead of alcohol.

“The vice of choice when alone is cannabis. The vice of choice in large groups or with new people is alcohol,” Kirk wrote in a recent research note detailing a survey of 1,000 cannabis consumers and 863 alcohol users. “We believe any increased stay-at-home activity related to COVID-19 will accelerate the vice share shift away from alcohol toward cannabis.”

Dispensary owners said that business has been on an uptick for at least a week, and that consumers are spending more and opting to purchase larger amounts of weed than is typical.

Wallace said that Apothecarium’s order-ahead business in San Francisco rose to 44% of all transactions, up from 13% a week ago. Beginning about March 12, the shops began to see meaningful increases in sales, with a large spike Monday — 70% to 80% above the normal number of transactions, a 50% increase in the number of customers and total unit sales up 150% — as San Francisco announced its shelter-in-place order.

The increased purchasing in California was not confined to the Bay Area, where six counties told residents to stay home Monday. Jerred Kiloh, who runs a cannabis store called The Higher Path in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks, said that many of his customers have echoed what Kirk wrote, telling him that they didn’t want to sit at home and drink alcohol by themselves but would consume cannabis products. Kiloh said sales have increased and the average amount spent by customers at his pot shop went up 50%, to roughly $90 per person.

“I want to tell people to do something productive, like write a novel or something,” Kiloh said. “But I guess a lot of people want to watch Netflix NFLX, -0.05% . ”

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Sellers said people are opting to purchase larger volumes of weed than is typical. California dispensary owners said cannabis stores don’t sell a large amount of ounces — the largest quantity of cannabis a person can possess in California for recreational purposes — as consumers typically prefer to buy in smaller amounts. But in the past couple of weeks, that behavior has changed.

“We wouldn’t usually go through 8 pounds in ounces in 10 days, but we did that,” Nug Inc. co-founder Nico Enea told MarketWatch over the phone. “It’s kind of shocking to me, I didn’t think ounces would move like that.”

Delivery service saw an uptick over the weekend, according to California marijuana-delivery company Eaze Inc., which saw a 34% increase in sign-ups and a “significant increase” in the average value of an order, spokesman David Mack said. Edibles are proving more popular, he said, with a slight decrease in vape and cannabis flower sales.

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Harborside Inc. HBOR, -1.90% HSDEF, -1.54% , which runs a drive-through dispensary in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., saw an uptick in sales at that location. According to general manager Pedro Fonseca, consumers are looking to get in and get out as quickly as possible, adding that, “There’s a cabin-fever effect, if they’re home, people are thinking how they can take their mind off [COVID-19] and drinking isn’t always the best thing.”

In Canada, Superette Inc. Chief Executive Mimi Lam said sales ramped up in the week before she closed the Ottawa store late Monday. “There was a rush, last week was [a] record week,” Lam said in a text message.

Early Tuesday, Canopy Growth Corp. WEED, -0.04% CGC, -0.24% said it was temporarily closing all of its corporate-owned retail locations, effective at 5 p.m. local time due to the virus.

MKM’s Kirk, who focuses on the Canadian market, did not predict any immediate effects for that country’s cannabis companies in his note, reiterating buy ratings on Cronos Group Inc. CRON, +0.95% CRON, +0.87% and The Flower Corp. FLWR, -1.08% , and neutral ratings on the other pot stocks he covers, including Aurora Cannabis Inc. ACB, -5.22% ACB, -4.85% and Tilray Inc. TLRY, -1.65% . Kirk does see potential for those waffling between alcohol and cannabis to change their habits on the other side of the pandemic, however.

“We believe any increased stay-at-home activity related to COVID-19 will accelerate the Vice share shift away from alcohol toward cannabis,” Kirk wrote. “According to our Canadian Vice Model, we believe Cannabis share of Total Vice (Cannabis and Alcohol) will accelerate from about 15% of Servings to >20% by 2022.”