When the munchies strike, Uber Eats is there to help, bringing you a wide selection of delicious meals anywhere you are. The food delivery giant is now listing cannabis on its website in Canada, thanks to a partnership with Ontario Cannabis Store authorized cannabis retailer, Tokyo Smoke.
Tokyo Smoke is the first licensed retailer in the Canadian cannabis industry to list its cannabis menu on the food delivery platform. Just like browsing through your favorite dining options, you can now check out the latest selection of dried flower, edibles, and extracts from Canada’s leading producers in the UberEats “cannabis” section. Orders will be packaged within the hour so shoppers can get what they need quickly at their closest Tokyo Smoke store. The retailer currently operates 65 locations in Ontario, so chances are there’s one near you.
The partnership between a cannabis retailer and a major food delivery service highlights both how the plant is steadily merging into mainstream commerce, and how legal retailers are attempting to lure cannabis buyers away from the illegal market. Illicit cannabis is half of all cannabis purchases in Ontario, forcing legal retailers to find new ways to attract buyers.
Mark Hillard, VP of operations at Tokyo Smoke, sees the collaboration as “the next ideal offering” for cannabis users, an effort to give Canadian shoppers more options in purchasing cannabis safely. The hope is that the speedy turnaround from placing an order on the Uber app to its being ready for pick-up at Tokyo Smoke stores will entice more would-be buyers in the illegal market to make a quick mobile order on UberEats instead.
UberEats has expanded into alcohol delivery in recent years, so the move into cannabis is not entirely a surprise. The company is yet unable to make a similar move in the United States, as cannabis remains illegal at the federal level. It remains to be seen if the delivery service will partner with retailers in other provinces for similar partnerships in the future.
