A Marlborough-based startup is trying to take the wait time out of cannabis dispensary visits with its first B2B product, soon to be launched in a new local shop.
Wings, a robotics and AI startup, has partnered with Collective Cannabis to launch its EXO Delivery System at the dispensary’s Littleton location. The new system aims to automate the movement of products from production and storage areas to delivery zones on the retail floor.
“Wait times and congregation went up, at least in 2021, from 10 minutes to 50 minutes in some cases,” Haitham Al-Beik, CEO of Wings, said in an interview. “That’s just waiting for the orders that have already been assembled.”
Al-Beik said the slowdown is caused by the necessary regulations of the cannabis industry. After orders are prepared, they are stored in a vault away from the retail floor. When customers arrive, budtenders must retrieve their order from the vault and pass through several security doors before delivering the product to the customer. The back-and-forth causes budtenders to spend less time with customers and leads to long wait times, Al-Beik said.
“That [process] sounds great if you have one or two customers at that point,” Al-Beik said. “But now we’re seeing online, to-go orders going at 150% exponential growth.”
Wings’ autonomous retail product will try to solve that problem. Each system consists of a single module, about 4 feet deep and 10 feet high. The bottom part of the module can be used as a storage unit for the retailer. The top portion serves as a vault for the cannabis products. With the press of a button, budtenders can request a certain product from the module. The product will travel from the vault, along a guard rail and will be delivered to a specific budtender’s drop-off location in the retail space.
Al-Beik said the whole process takes less than 50 seconds. Collective Cannabis will install three of these modules that can store and deliver up to 90 orders at a time.
Al-Beik said the system comes with several benefits, including product security, minimizing wait times and increasing the time budtenders can spend with customers.
Collective Cannabis will open operationally in February and Wings will begin installing its systems in March, Al-Beik said. He expects their systems to be fully operational by May.
“[The cannabis industry] has been looking for automation for quite some time,” Al-Beik said. “At some point, everybody will have high-premium products. What differentiates one from the other is the experience and how you take care of your customers.”
