Cannabis brands can now sell direct and keep the customer data

Posting this because the thing itself seems like a real structural change.

You know the problem. Brand pays to create demand, pays to tell people where to buy, then the sale happens on a dispensary menu the brand can't see into. Retailer gets the customer record. Brand gets aggregate sell-through.

Kris Walker from Hoodie Analytics demoed their fix, their store locator now has add-to-cart. Shopper stays on the brand's site, finds nearby inventory, checks out. Order pushes to the dispensary, they fulfill the pickup. Brand captures the email, phone, and marketing opt-in. Roughly half of dispensaries are enabled for checkout today. No added cost for existing clients right now. Runs in an iframe, headless version coming.

What I'm unsure about is whether retailers push back. They get a customer they didn't pay to acquire, but they lose the upsell that a menu visit gives them.

Demo is a screen share, not slides: https://www.mediajel.com/cannabis-podcast/cannabis-brand-direct-checkout

Anyone tried this? Curious about the retail side especially.