DoorDash Muscles Into Cannabis Delivery

DoorDash Canada is getting into the cannabis delivery game in Toronto with cannabis retail and lifestyle brand, Superette. Denizens of Ontario’s capital and Canada’s most populous city will be able to pull up their DoorDash app and access Superette’s curated menus and special collections that both reflect and evoke Toronto’s many unique neighborhoods. Matt McLeod, CEO said, “We’re starting to see how Canadian cannabis retail can be a great proving ground for how the industry can evolve and innovate. Superette works really hard to offer an experiential and playful experience for our cannabis consumers. We’re thrilled that DoorDash recognizes this and chose us to be their first partner! Superette is proud to have this opportunity and we hope this partnership can serve as a model for DoorDash’s operations in the US.”

DoorDash prides itself on building logistics infrastructure for local commerce while pushing innovation in the convenience economy while Superette is known for creating “retail destinations” that attract customers from both in and outside of the cannabis consumer base. Superette’s focus on empowering local communities and sourcing from sustainable vendors made them a perfect partner for DoorDash, which seeks to translate Superette’s famously immersive retail experience to their marketplace app. Customers will be able to pre-order and pick up a range of compliant cannabis products at their local stores through an age-gated process that will prevent anyone under nineteen years of age from viewing anything related to cannabis or cannabis products. At pick-up, Superette will verify IDs and strictly enforce maximum possession amounts before allowing customers to leave with their purchases. 

This approach to integrating cannabis into the convenience economy in Canada is not the sole purview of DoorDash, at least as far as Ontario is concerned. Uber Eats will begin allowing customers in Ontario to order cannabis through cannabis retailer Tokyo Smoke on its app in November of 2022. The model will resemble that of DoorDash, with customers ordering online to one of Tokyo Smoke’s fifty locations across Ontario and pick-up times scheduled in one-hour windows. There are other cannabis delivery resources, like dutchie and Buddi, that help retailers complete delivery and pick-up and other cannabis marketplaces jumping in on delivery across Canada’s provinces (regulations permitting). But with DoorDash and UberEats entering the game, the playing field just got substantially bigger and a whole lot more competitive. 

In the U.S., DoorDash, UberEats, PostMates and GrubHub are the top delivery services, but none have entered the cannabis delivery game just yet. Instead, companies like Eaze, Caliva, and Lantern (which became an independent subsidiary of Uber when Uber acquired sister company and online liquor store Drizly) are dominating in states like California and Colorado, where the regulatory environment is more hospitable. The United States’ top-ranking delivery sources are most certainly eager for strategic shift in the US federal regulatory environment that will allow them to follow in their Canadian counterparts’ entrepreneurial footsteps.

Denizens of Ontario’s capital and Canada’s most populous city will be able to pull up their DoorDash app and access Superette’s curated menus and special collections that both reflect and evoke Toronto’s many unique neighborhoods. Chief Brand Officer at Superette, Drummond Munro, lauds DoorDash’s support for his company’s outside-the-box approach to retail. “It really reinforces DoorDash’s ambitions to build community and do things differently from their competitors. They could have chosen a national chain and gotten into more doors, but they chose to work with Superette and we’re really proud of that. Superette set out to rethink the cannabis retail experience and it’s amazing that we’re being recognized by an industry leader.

Logistics

DoorDash prides itself on building logistics infrastructure for local commerce while pushing innovation in the convenience economy while Superette is known for creating “retail destinations” that attract customers from both in and outside of the cannabis consumer base. Superette’s focus on empowering local communities and sourcing from sustainable vendors made them a perfect partner for DoorDash, which seeks to translate Superette’s famously immersive retail experience to its marketplace app. Customers will be able to pre-order and pick up a range of compliant cannabis products at their local stores through an age-gated process that will prevent anyone under nineteen years of age from viewing anything related to cannabis or cannabis products. At pick-up, Superette will verify IDs and strictly enforce maximum possession amounts before allowing customers to leave with their purchases. 

This approach to integrating cannabis into the convenience economy in Canada is not the sole purview of DoorDash, at least as far as Ontario is concerned. Uber Eats will begin allowing customers in Ontario to order cannabis through cannabis retailer Tokyo Smoke on its app in November of 2022. The model will resemble that of DoorDash, with customers ordering online to one of Tokyo Smoke’s fifty locations across Ontario and pick-up times scheduled in one-hour windows. There are other cannabis delivery resources, like dutchie and Buddi, that help retailers complete delivery and pick-up, and other cannabis marketplaces jumping in on delivery across Canada’s provinces (regulations permitting). But with DoorDash and UberEats entering the game, the playing field just got substantially bigger and a whole lot more competitive. 

In the U.S., DoorDash, UberEats, PostMates and GrubHub are the top delivery services, but none have entered the cannabis delivery game just yet. Instead, companies like Eaze, Caliva, and Lantern (which became an independent subsidiary of Uber when Uber acquired a sister company and online liquor store Drizly) are dominating in states like California and Colorado, where the regulatory environment is more hospitable. The United States’ top-ranking delivery sources are most certainly eager for a strategic shift in the US federal regulatory environment that will allow them to follow in their Canadian counterparts’ entrepreneurial footsteps.

Julie Aitcheson

Julie Aitcheson is a freelance writer, author and educator. In addition to Green Market Report, her work has appeared in Vanguard Magazine, The Fresh Toast, Green Entrepreneur, Daily Press, The Baltimore Sun, LA Weekly and The Chicago Tribune. She received a full fellowship to the 2013 Stowe StoryLabs and won second place in the 2014 San Miguel Writers' Conference nonfiction writing competition. She has published two young adult novels and is currently at work on a piece of adult fiction.


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