Dave Cotter, Leafly's chief product officer, joined Cheddar News to discuss what the partnership means for the future of cannabis delivery.

Uber Eats has partnered with cannabis company Leafly to deliver to customers in Ontario, Canada. Dave Cotter, Leafly's chief product officer, joined Cheddar News to discuss what the partnership means for the future of cannabis delivery. "It's really the first time in the world where you have a major delivery partner, probably the biggest brand in food delivery, partnering with a cannabis company to deliver cannabis to consumers. We're starting in the Ontario province, and we're really focused on Toronto," he said.

Leafly Exec on Teaming With Uber Eats to Deliver Cannabis in Toronto

and joining us now to discuss is Dave Cotter chief product officer at lee flee Dave thanks so much for joining us this morning. Welcome, this is a very cool concept, Can you break down how it will actually work? Yeah, well first of all, good morning, super excited to be here. So this is like you said, it's really the first time in the world where you have a major delivery partner, probably the biggest brand in food delivery partnering with a cannabis company to deliver cannabis to consumers were starting in the Ontario province and we're really focused on Toronto, we launched yesterday, had a great first day uh a lot of excitement and from a consumer perspective it's really, really simple, no different than ordering food or anything else through the Uber eats app, you'll age gate 19 or over and search for the dispensary to deliver to you, pick the product that you want and it shows up at your doorstep, just like your food now, it's pretty obvious here, you know what role Uber eats is playing in this um, you know, to your point, they're not actually doing third party delivery service to my understanding now they're having, you know, delivery workers from the dispensary kind of play that delivery role, but I was asking, I did want to know what role does legally actually play in this partnership. Fantastic. So really from the leaf li perspective, it's our supplier network or all of the retailers that are in our network in the Ontario and across Canada. So we've got 200 retailers that are in Ontario in the Ontario province, we have 2000 in Canada. So what we're doing is we are connecting all of these retailers to the Uber eats platform. So our technology is taking all of the menus, all the products from those retailers and making them available in the Uber eats app. The other thing that we're doing is we're providing the compliance piece and this is a really critical part of the partnership which is to deliver safe and legal cannabis to consumers. So we are also doing the compliance check and making certain that it's a legal retailer. We're also helping verify at the time of delivery, making certain, uh, that the individual is 19 years and older. So one of the key benefits for Uber into the partnering with us is the compliance and the safety peace and an opportunity for Leaf Aly and partnering with Uber is to connect to, like I said, the biggest brand in food delivery. So it's super exciting. Great context there. Dave. Now I want to talk about your partner in this Uber, its Ceo Dara, Cosmo shot. He has been teasing this since the company acquired drizzly. So now the time is finally here. What does this mean about the future of cannabis delivery? Well, you know, I was thinking about, you know, you think about just the last 30 days, you know, you have, you know, Biden's nods in the us around federal legalization that you have uber jumping in from a delivery perspective in Canada. And I really think we're seeing a real shift in terms of cannabis becoming much more mainstream and you know, we got a tip our hat to Dara and the Uber crew for being very progressive and really seeing an opportunity to start to tap into this market with the first mover advantage. And you know, we're really excited about partnering with them, They've been fantastic partners um and they've got some big plans ahead. Absolutely. And we have to ask of course, you know, this is rolling out in Canada right now, Toronto where, you know, adult cannabis has been legal since 2018 on the back of Biden's announcement here to kind of review potentially federal policy. Where can we see this happening next? Well, I mean delivery already is available in the states. So, you know, obviously California is a big delivery state, We have delivery partners there as well. So you're seeing delivery already in the U. S. I think, you know, the big opportunity with a federal legalization framework is you get a a level of per predictability and consistency across all of the states. And so I think you're gonna start to see many more consumers start to, you know, tickle the desire for food assuming for cannabis delivery and I think you're gonna start seeing more activity um in the delivery space in the U. S. In addition to Canada. Yes, Dave, unfortunately we're out of time, but you know, we're gonna be watching to see whether we have more big companies jumping in, teaming up with companies like LYFT. Really very exciting news here. Thanks so much for joining us. That's Dave Cotter, chief product officer at lately.