I love online shopping, to the point where I should probably have an intervention. I am a lazy person who happens to work from home a lot of the time; it’s pretty common for me to spend my breaks online shopping. There’s one thing that the recreational cannabis market has been missing: a centralized market similar to Amazon. Enter Meadow. Meadow is an online market that sells cannabis very much in the same way as the billion dollar retailer Amazon (minus the evil). Meadow has been hailed by popular tech publication TechCrunch as the “Amazon of pot.” and after a quick visit to the site, it’s easy to see why.
At first glance, Meadow (only available in California for now) has a lot of the same features that other online cannabis retailers have, i.e., you can buy weed. If you don’t have a medical card you can get a quick evaluation. You choose from different local dispensaries based on your zip code. You can view strain descriptions, prices, and beautiful color photos of each strain along with the day’s deals. The goods are delivered right to your door (sorry, it’s still only cash, you pay on delivery).
One thing that makes Meadow stand out from other online retailers is that they offer loyalty points which has never been done before and is extremely cool. The loyalty program is fairly new; it only went live on the site yesterday. According to TechCrunch, Meadow’s loyalty program works very much the same as other loyalty programs; frequent customers are rewarded with points which can be exchanged for discounts, cash rewards, and of course, free stuff. The loyalty points can be redeemed either in the physical dispensary, or online. According to Meadow founder and cannabis enthusiast David Hua, this will help dispensaries “build a deeper relationship with their customers.” Hua said to TechCrunch, “We’ve seen a lot of dispensaries fail at managing a loyalty program. Creating one is easy, tracking it with inventory and your reporting often can be super onerous for the operator.”
Though Meadow is often compared to Eaze, often called the “Uber for weed”, there is one main difference. Hua only seems interested in making business easier for local dispensaries, rather than making a ton of profit (this definitely sets him apart from Amazon, which only wants to destroy local commerce). Meadow is according to Hua “getting close to profitability”, but that doesn’t seem that important to Hua. He seems more interested in covering the “back end” of the cannabis market, like patient records management, which can get a lot of dispensaries shut down, and/or their operators thrown in jail. He seems mostly interested in helping small businesses and that’s pretty dope.
Source: TechCrunch
Image Source: NY Post
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