Show HN: Meadow – Medical cannabis delivered to your door | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Meadow – Medical cannabis delivered to your door

getmeadow.com

80 pointssgarman44 comments

I was under the impression that delivery cannabis in California had to be done by a nonprofit. I remember reading a court case about this a few years ago.

(although a good business model may be to offer free cannabis delivery along with very expensive cheeseburger delivery)

Meadow appears to be yet another middleman service. If you take a look at the website, they are looking for "partners" who will do all of the actual work of holding and delivering the goods.

Hi, I'm Hua, one of the founders of Meadow.

We're building the tools for dispensaries to better manage their business and a platform that makes it easy for patients to order their medicine.

We only work with top-tier dispensaries that can deliver quality medicine and friendly service.

If you are a California medical cannabis patient, we would love to hear your feedback if you try out the service.

Thanks!

Take notes folks...the above response is subtly yet beautifully crafted.

Notice how he doesn't mention "Marijuana" anywhere. In the case where that word's use would be warranted, he uses "Cannabis" instead; a terminology more commonly used in scientific discussion of the substance.

Repeated use of "Medicine" in the description reinforces the idea that they are delivering a ~medical service~ to ~patients in need~. In fact he uses "medicine" in cases where "cannabis" or "marijuana" would be warranted. Limiting references to the actual substance, and increasing references to the intent of the substance is very powerful in shaping perception.

In the last bit, the use of the full qualification "California medical cannabis patient" gives you a higher perception of legitimacy or makes it seem more "established" than to the extent that it really is.

Choosing your messaging carefully has a huge impact on how people perceive what you do and this is one great example of that in effect.

Kudos!

While I agree with the point you're making, sort of, a large number of people do legitimately use marijuana for medicinal purposes, not just to get high.

Of course! I completely agree with you, but at the same time a large number of people also just like to get high, and there's nothing wrong with that either. In fact it's so incredibly easy to get a medical card that I'm sure a very large percentage of card holders just like to get high (again, nothing wrong with that, we should 100% legalize it imo).

Anyway, I'm just saying that when you start a service like this, it's effectively an uphill battle against public perception (for now) and I think these guys are doing public messaging the right way.

Even when you go to their website they say "cannabis based medicine" not "cannabis" or "cannabis products".

It's what they are signaling about their service and about the product through their delicate use of language that's interesting.

It's a stark contrast to real doctors who don names like "THE 420 DOCTOR" (I'm not making this up), or services that might choose names like "Speedweed".

Ditto for the actual product names. Selling a strain of cannabis with the name "Girl Scout Cookies" will do little to help earn the tolerance of anyone who might be on the fence about the legality of cannabis. I recognize getmeadow doesn't name the product, so they're limited in how they can effect this. It's something the category needs to address though.

Not to mention Green Crack and Alaskan Thunder Fuck.

Strain names are all behind closed doors where sellers aren't trying to convince anybody of anything.

This could well be a weak backdoor in the whole attempt to gain legitimacy, though, because .. after all .. if you're describing the effects of various strains in an interview of the patient, guiding them towards a preferred result .. aren't you practicing medicine in that regard? Are dispensaries allowed to do that? (I am truly ignorant.)

what is wrong with starting a nonprofit to do this? nonprofits can pay prevailing salaries for engineers and so on. No need for stock options and other trappings.

There's nothing wrong about starting nonprofits. However, from what I read on the website, this appears to be a for-profit company.

I always thought the delivery pizza business was set to be revolutionised by legal marijuana.

Friday special, two large pizzas and a dime bag...

There are lots of dispensary that deliver. For example, you can find them by checking the Delivery search filter on https://weedmaps.com.

Not sure what the value add is here.

A few questions spring to mind:

The interface is obviously image-heavy, do you perhaps plan to offer photography services to your partners (a la AirBNB in the early days)?

Also, pricing/availability can vary significantly from week to week and dispensary to dispensary, in addition to the cycle of daily promotions many clubs employ, and other broader discounts (like those offered to patients with terminal illnesses, for instance). I'd be interested to hear how you're approaching the challenge of keeping all of that information up to date in a way that's relatively frictionless for your partners.

There are some weird complaints elsewhere in the thread, but I generally like the design. Good luck, I hope this goes well for you.

Hi Sahara,

Patients need to know the quality of the medicine that they are receiving so we really wanted to focus on the photography of the products.

You raise a great point on promotions and one that we are well aware of. Each dispensary is different on how they engage with their patients. We'll do our best to onboard our partners thoughtfully and build the tools that help them run their business.

Thanks!

I am mostly surprised that we have an "uber for XYZ" cropping up, as opposed to a general-purpose delivery service winning out, like postmates.

this makes me think - perhaps most of the value in the delivery service is the catalog of specific goods you want, and less so how they will actually get it to you. for example - sure postmates could deliver medical marijuana, but perhaps not the exact strain you prefer to treat your affliction.

interesting too - the delivery will probably just get easier over time, particularly if we ever figure out the rules for commercial drones. so focus on catalogs of stuff people really want (catalogs that don't already exist).

Postmates is a great delivery service, but at least in Seattle they cannot handle certain types of special deliveries, such as the delivery of alcohol or tobacco. It was explained to me as a licensing issue. For similar reasons I doubt they'd be willing or able to handle cannabis at the moment.

I could imagine this changing in the future. I heard that Postmates can deliver alcohol in California; and Amazon Fresh can deliver alcohol today in Seattle. But I suspect there would be many barriers to overcome for cannabis delivery (assuming it can be done lawfully at all).

Hey Everyone,

I'm Hua, one of the founders of Meadow.

If you happen to use our service, we would appreciate your feedback. We want to build a product that you love.

Feel free to reach out anytime at hua at getmeadow dot com.

Thank you :)

Hi,

I love your website- the logo is amazing!! who designed it?

How do you verify the prescriptions of your potential clients?

I don't live in California, but AFAIK prescriptions aren't per order. You get a medical card via a doctor's recommendation, and then present that card to become a member of a medicinal "club" (which probably requires validation with the state that you are properly licensed). If I understand correctly, Meadow then interfaces with these clubs to provide expedited delivery to their members. Essentially, the hard verification work has already been done since only members (with medical cards) can order from the clubs Meadow delivers for.

As of a couple years ago (the last time I was there), you can actually call the club and have them verify you at the time of delivery (eg, you show your recommendation when the driver arrives, before any transaction is made).

Doctors who issue recommendations have sites or phone systems that can be used to verify a patient 24/7. VaporRoom and other delivery services use these and then check the paper copy + id upon delivery.

We and our dispensary partners verify through third party verification service.

You might consider putting a link to the app in the mobile version!

Hi Hua,

I had a very similar idea to what you guys are currently doing. One question, how are you going to make sure the inventory count is accurate for all the dispensaries you partner with? (AFAIK, a lot of dispensaries use different POS systems)

I'm curious why you went with the purple color scheme and that particular logo. The branding doesn't really come across as anything medical marijuana related but perhaps this is something you were going for.

To me it feels like they were deliberately trying to avoid using shades of green, and at least in RGB colourspace, purple/magenta (FF00FF) is basically the opposite of green (00FF00).

Reminds me of http://www.prestoweed.com - seems like a hot industry right now!

http://trycanary.co/

http://www.potspace.io/

http://bakerclub.co/

http://leafly.com http://weedmaps.com

In WA weed cannot be delivered, medical or otherwise.

Only licensed producers or processors can transport. On end-users under the legal limit (28g)

Well, as a WA resident, I promise you, nobody follows those rules. There are MMJ delivery companies everywhere; some even deliver recreational pot.

EDIT: recreational

The recreational deliveries are not long for this world, unlicensed, untracked, breaking all the i502 rules. Just dealers with balls to freely advertise.

Not too different from medical pot dealers. All pot is for recreational use. The medical thing is just easing the subject into politics and law.

Medical marijuana has been delivered in Washington for at least 5 years, and as of a couple months ago, still was being delivered.
Do you have a citation for claiming it's illegal for medical services to deliver? Your claim doesn't jive with what I recall about designated providers, which is the legal aspect of the medical law used to justify dispensaries.
While it's true that the recreational market isn't allowed to transport when operating under I-502 rules, the complete failure of the Liquor Control Board to do a decent rollout of the recreational market has essentially forced the police to pick between busting up more or less legitimate delivery businesses and having everyone be really, really mad they can't get legal weed.
Also, the 28g thing is incredibly complicated, because of the rules for various infused or extracted products.

Similar to https://www.eazeup.com/

I don't smoke for any reason, but great name for this.

Thanks!
We really want to bring people together and believe that Meadow embodies that.

sigh. we don't have anything like this in vancouver, BC. supposedly the chest thumping and shouting BC BUD now seems embarassing.

You guys have MMPR though, online ordering, credit card payment, overnight shipping. Would take that any day over dealing with cash and a delivery guy coming to my house.

this is news to me.

http://www.leafly.com/knowledge-center/canada/the-mmpr-and-y...

yeah but unfortunately you can't get one for insomnia or just stress.

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