By Feuer
The online food ordering service announced Monday that its partnering with cannabis retailer Tokyo Smoke to offer online pot orders in Ontario, Canada.
Uber Eats will start listing Tokyo Smoke’s products under a new section labelled “cannabis” on its marketplace on Monday, though customers won’t be able to order pot for delivery.
Customers can place orders from the Uber Eats app, but then must pick the product up at a Tokyo Smoke store.
“By combining a streamlined ordering process through the Uber Eats app with Tokyo Smoke’s in-person pickup service, we’re creating a new end-to-end experience for responsible cannabis ordering across the province,” said Lola Kassim, general manager of Uber Eats Canada.
Tokyo Smoke, which is owned by $4.2 billion pot company Canopy Growth, has almost 50 stores in Ontario, according to its website, including one in Windsor, right across the border from Detroit.
Orders will be fulfilled within an hour from when the order is placed, the companies said, and customers must confirm they’re of legal age to buy pot in Ontario. Customers will have to show ID when they go to pick up the product.
The partnership marks San Francisco-based Uber’s entry into the marijuana business, which CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has long hinted the company may expand into.
Uber Eats already allows for liquor delivery on its app and Khosrowshahi said in April on CNBC that the company could expand to cannabis, depending on US regulation.
In 2018, Canada became the first major world economy to legalize recreational marijuana, so many cannabis companies are headquartered in the country even if they have operations in the US.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Uber’s partnership with Tokyo Smoke in Ontario is just a trial, or if there are plans to expand the offering more broadly across Canada.
Shares of Uber were up more than 1 percent to about $44.80 per share in premarket trading Monday.
The global recreational marijuana market is rapidly growing and federal, state and local regulators generally move to loosen restrictions on the sale of the drug.
Earlier this year, for example, New York state officials legalized the recreational sale of marijuana, kicking off a lengthy process expected to take years to determine exactly how the retail market will be shaped in the state.
However, fragmented state laws on legalization of the drug mostly allow just local entrepreneurs who are connected enough to secure funding largely without the help of national banks to enter the space.
Without federal legalization, it would likely remain illegal to transport the drug across state lines, though insiders have speculated that the tri-state area may move to create a regional partnership that would major chains to crop up around the area.
But a national company like Uber that relies on crowdsourced transportation likely would not risk entering the space in the US until the drug’s been legalized at the federal level.
“When the road is clear for cannabis, when federal laws come into play, we’re absolutely going to take a look at it,” Khosrowshahi told CNBC this spring.
“We see so much opportunity out there, and we’re going to focus on the opportunity at hand.”
