Uber Eats is now delivering cannabis in Toronto.
The ride-sharing app has partnered with Leafly to offer cannabis delivery orders through the app. Users can place orders through Uber Eats, but they won’t be delivered by Uber Eats couriers. Instead, the orders will be fulfilled by a cannabis store’s own staff—in accordance with Ontario regulations that say those deliveries must be made by the retailer’s employees. However, by making cannabis available on their delivery platform, Uber is signaling to the world that they endorse the market—and see a future with it.
UberTrees
UberEats has just signed three retailers to sell cannabis products through their app.
Minerva Cannabis, Hidden Leaf Cannabis, and Shivaa’s Rose are the dispensaries that have signed on to sell their products through UberEats. The move is part of a larger effort by the company to expand its reach in the cannabis industry, which has grown exponentially since legalization in Canada.
This partnership gives them a bigger reach than ever before for these dispensaries, who face advertising restrictions throughout the province, and are in strict competition for only a small share of the market. These dispensaries will be reaching a new customer base with this move—around 1.19 million UberEats users in Ontario. The platform has completed more than 300 million deliveries in the city of Toronto alone, so this partnership is huge for these dispensaries.
Why This Deal Matters
When you think about it, cannabis delivery isn’t really new. MoMs across Canada have been delivering weed through Canada Post for years, and dispensaries often have their own local courier services. What makes this historical is the partnership between Leafly and UberEats—it shows that the cannabis industry is coming into its own and moving beyond the fringes of mainstream culture.
It’s also a sign of good things to come for the industry: more partnerships like this are likely to develop, which will help integrate cannabis into mainstream markets and make it easier for people to access legal weed. This is a significant step toward equalizing cannabis with alcohol in terms of social acceptability, which will make it easier for people who are curious about cannabis but afraid that they won’t fit in or be accepted if they try it out.
We might even start to see cannabis or cannabis products sold at grocery stores or gas stations.
Will Cannabis Get Too Corporate?
Is cannabis going to get too corporate? Is capitalism going to swallow up the cannabis industry and make it impossible for us to feel good about buying weed? Will there be a future where we all end up buying our bud from Walmart? It’s not out of the realm of possibility; there’s big money in cannabis right now, and there are lots of people who want a piece of the pie.
For now, Americans don’t need to worry about Kroger Kush or other corporate cannabis products taking over the market. Federal scheduling will keep that from happening. The state-by-state approach does make it slightly easier for small businesses to survive, and we recommend buying local as much as possible.
Third-party partnerships are a good sign for the mainstream success of the industry, which is good for legalization and destigmatizing but not great for the integrity of the industry. Capitalism makes a lot of things unsustainable—we don’t want to get to a point where we’re factory farming cannabis or have it become too much like any other product on supermarket shelves. We must remember to balance convenience and accessibility with sustainable consumption.
Overall, this is a pretty cool partnership. We hope the Ontario dispensaries will see success from this partnership and look forward to seeing how it develops over time. It’s cool that you can order weed and munchies on one platform, but we need to remember that convenience isn’t everything—balance is key! Let’s hope weed becomes accessible without being an unsustainable commodity.
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