Meet Baker, the Salesforce of Cannabis
North American legal marijuana sales totaled $6.vii billion in 2022, and that number is only expected to abound in 2022 and beyond. Twenty-six states and Washington, D.C. have passed laws to legalize cannabis in some form. Threat of federal enforcement nevertheless, we're looking at an already booming economic sector.
If you break it down on a town-by-town level, call up about what this ways for dispensaries: more products, more customers, and more than money to manage in an increasingly competitive market. That's where platforms such equally Baker come in, giving dispensaries customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities, marketing automation tools, and analytics at the betoken-of-sale (POS) to not only attract new customers merely to likewise retain existing ones.
Baker is a Software-equally-a-Service (SaaS) platform that helps dispensaries manage the whole forepart terminate of the business concern: client loyalty programs and promotions, texting and e-mail marketing campaigns, forth with online shopping and a host of analytics on everything from popular products to customer buying cycles. The platform is now active in more than 250 dispensaries beyond ten states and Canada. It equips dispensaries with a customized iPad for in-store customer cheque-ins and engagement, and an online dashboard for "budtenders" and entrepreneurs. Altogether, Baker gives dispensaries a Salesforce-sized arsenal of commerce, marketing, and sales tools to go along customers coming dorsum for that free edible they won in a prize cartoon or in a ridiculously practiced deal on their favorite strain.
From On-Demand to B2B
Baker launched in 2022 in the middle of the on-demand economy boom; this was when every startup wanted to be the next Airbnb, Doordash, or Uber. Baker Technologies co-founder and CEO Joel Milton was living in New York Metropolis where he was edifice applications and investing in early stage startups. Colorado had just passed recreational marijuana use, but there were still a lot of POS bug. An order-ahead weed app seemed like a good idea.
"There were long lines at dispensaries and there was a segmented customer base of operations," Milton explained. "Some customers knew exactly what they wanted, simply a lot of tourists and first-timers would come in and ask what indica and sativa were and how many milligrams they should eat in an edible. Being in New York City where everything was on-demand, nosotros initially pitched Bakery every bit an idea to social club alee."
Milton co-founded Bakery Technologies with Chief Product Officeholder (CPO) David Champion and Primary Engineering science Officer (CTO) Roger Obando. They initially built a minimum viable product and and then chop-chop realized there was a far bigger marketplace there than on-demand deliveries. Baker was accustomed into the 500 Startups accelerator in Silicon Valley in 2022. In 2022, information technology raised the start half of its seed funding (around $1.ix one thousand thousand) and refocused from an online ordering app into a set of tools for dispensaries. The company completed raising another $1.6 million this month, bringing its total funding to $3.5 meg.
Company DossierName:
Baker
Founded: 2022
Founders: CEO Joel Milton, CPO David Champion, CTO Roger Obando
HQ: Denver, CO
What They Do: Salesforce for the legal cannabis industry
What That Means: CRM and marketing automation platform for dispensaries
Business organization Model: SaaS subscription and consulting services
Current Condition: Live in more than 250 dispensaries across 10 states and Canada
Current Funding: $3.5 meg
What's Next: Relaunch of a redesigned e-commerce platform; customer growth and expansion
"We took a stride back and realized there'south a lot of competition in the infinite for customers: listing sites like Leafly and Weedmaps and delivery apps like Eaze, Meadow, and SpeedWeed. Every startup wants to exist a brand and own the customer, but no 1 is actually helping dispensaries retain customers," said Milton.
"If you lot're just running deals without a customer retentiveness tool, and so past the time you lot annunciate the deal and a customer comes in and buys a production that'southward on sale, a lot of dispensaries will lose money on that," Milton added. "It's like a Groupon. They go in, get their $10 haircut, and never come back. So we shifted to a B2B model and congenital a suite of tools that helps dispensaries retain customers and build their make."
Inside the Platform
Baker's platform is made up of a number of different tools, but the customer'due south first touchpoint is through marketing automation. Customers fill up out a contour on strain preferences, favorite products, and preferred edibles, and so Baker blasts out personalized emails and texts with call-to-action (CTA) links to order ahead or take reward of a bargain. In its 250-plus dispensaries, the visitor says targeted SMS campaigns have increased conversion rates and daily revenue by 10 pct.
The majority of the dispensaries running Baker are in Colorado, with around 75 to lxxx stores in the Denver surface area. Milton said the Pacific Northwest is the company'due south adjacent strongest market place, with dispensaries in Oregon and Washington running the startup's software. Bakery is beginning to ramp up in California afterward the state legalized recreational utilise this by November. Baker too works with dispensaries in Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, New United mexican states, and Ontario. Milton said Baker is working with a couple of shops in Connecticut and Massachusetts too and is looking to expand on the E Declension. The company has grown from half dozen to 27 full-fourth dimension employees in the past year. One of the dispensary brands with which the startup works is Native Roots, the biggest dispensary chain in Colorado.
"Nosotros send personalized messages based on interest. Think near logging into Amazon and seeing products of involvement to you based on purchase history," said Milton. "Then, you might get a text most Wax Wednesday if you dab, simply if you don't, you lot wouldn't subscribe to that. Instead, maybe you'd sign upward for texts near Munchie Mondays."
The in-store experience begins with the customized iPad that Baker provides to each dispensary. When a customer walks in, they check in on the tablet and get an update on their loyalty plan, current deals, and reward points available. The clinic employees manage everything from a web dashboard, which gives them interactive data visualizations and analytics on metrics such every bit online sales versus in-store cheque-ins, average order size, category-by-category product breakdowns, and popular in-shop hours. Milton said Baker also analyzes the information on a macro level (anonymized data with no customer Personally Identifiable Information or PII) to recommend additional marketing ideas and runway conversions.
"We come across a ton of data, and work with dispensaries on how they should structure their loyalty programs or come up upwardly with a messaging strategy," said Milton. "The analytics volition help dispensaries figure out things like what day of the week is nearly constructive for a $5-off sale versus a 20 percentage-off deal."
In the past month lone, Milton said Bakery'southward industry-specific CRM platform has helped generate a total of $three.1 million in incremental revenue across its agile dispensaries. This includes both in-store and online sales. The company has an e-commerce widget that dispensaries can embed on their websites, and is currently working on a revamped eastward-commerce experience that's scheduled to roll out later this year.
Where Baker Fits in the Weed Economic system
In the larger scheme of the constantly evolving cannabis space, it's as well important to discuss what the platform doesn't do. If Baker is to have a Salesforce-sized presence in the weed economic system, a telling indicator is how the startup works with the manufacture around it. On that subject, one of the primal questions I had for Milton is how Baker differentiates itself from seed-to-auction players.
There'southward a whole category of cannabis tech companies that runway each plant and cannabis-infused product from the growing and packaging procedure through aircraft and sale through dispensaries. Seed-to-sale companies such as Flowhub track plants and products in accordance with land-by-state compliance systems, just that also includes a POS component that helps dispensaries manage retail transactions, deals and discounts. It also helps them compile analytics reports on sales trends through a cloud-based dashboard. On its confront, that sounds a lot like what Baker does.
Milton said Baker really integrates with a number of the major seed-to-auction and POS software platforms, including Blackbird, Flowhub, Greenbits, Guardian Data Systems, and MJ Motorway, among others. The CRM as well offers an application programming interface (API) integration with Leafly to pull strain data and reviews into its organization.
"Information technology's virtually focus. Rather than keep rolling out features, we're working on improving the ones we take. Our goal is to assist dispensaries build their make and connect with customers. By focusing solely on the marketing automation platform, we were able to build information technology much better than a POS could," said Milton. "There was some reluctance from the seed-to-auction and POS companies to accept that originally just, when it came downwards to it, the dispensaries really liked the product. So we went to them and said, hey, why don't we integrate with your seed-to-sale transaction recording systems and free u.s.a. both upward resources to focus on other components of the business."
Fresh off a new circular of funding, Milton doesn't programme to spread Baker'south upper-case letter too sparse. It'southward the same reason Bakery isn't trying to solve the marijuana banking problem. There are a number of cyberbanking and payments startups already building solutions to assist "cannabusinesses" work around federal regulatory restrictions that are preventing them from using traditional banking. Milton said Baker is actively monitoring that space for possible partnerships.
Baker isn't terribly worried nearly how the new United states of america administration volition affect the industry, either. While new Attorney Full general Jeff Sessions has fabricated no surreptitious of his opposition to marijuana legalization, Milton—along with the vast majority of entrepreneurs I've spoken with in the space—believe the land-past-state majority and the economic touch of legal cannabis are too stiff to finish the momentum.
"At this bespeak, it'south pretty articulate u.s. are in favor of legalization. States like Florida voted Trump and also passed [medical] cannabis by a significant margin. States realize this is a lot of taxation revenue and lots of adept jobs in these communities," said Milton.
"We're no longer in the early days of whether this will work; we know it works," he continued. "Conservatives are known for respecting states' rights and they would face an uphill boxing trying to override them. This administration has proved to exist a bit of a wild card, merely the threat of federal marijuana enforcement is non keeping us upwards at night."
Almost Rob Marvin
Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/feature/14781/meet-baker-the-salesforce-of-cannabis
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