Forget about the "Uber of Pot," a nickname for recent "weed tech" companies like Eaze that offer on-demand medical marijuana delivery.
According to the new San Francisco venture Marvina, pot isn't like some car to be summoned when you want it or some pizza to be delivered with the push of a button.
Instead, cannabis is like fine wine. You've got to stock up ahead of time with the best varieties and information about them. That's Marvina: the "Wine of the Month Club" where the wine... is weed.
So, are you overwhelmed by the relaxing atmosphere of San Francisco's many dispensaries, as Marvina proposes you might be? Then you're probably high already, so just chill out and use Marvina.
The newfangled company may be built on an old fashioned subscription model, as High Times reports, but Marvina isn't your grandfather's cigar of the month society... because it's for pot. To make the obligatory tech startup analogy, Marvina is the Trunk Club of trees; the Netflix of getting lit; the Birchbox of hotboxing stuff; and so on.
Marvina Subscribers head online to select between Sativa and Indica strains, with all deliveries being made in person by something called Goldstar Botanicals. Users select a "stash" amount, priced between $95 and $325. That's $95 for 7 grams with a "retail value" of $115 and $325 for 28 grams and a retail value of $380. Those retail estimates are steep, but the sticker price isn't bad.
But here's how you know Marvina is a tech-savvy company. Just like Uber isn't a taxi service, surprise: Marvina isn't a monthly pot delivery service at all! Per the company, "Marvina is not a dispensary and does not sell marijuana. Marvina is a service that connects qualified patients with local dispensaries."
That obfuscation aside, if "weed tech" is going to take off anywhere, it's here in San Francisco at the confluence of Silicon Valley's tech innovation and Humboldt County's marijuana cultivation. It's just that the future is a bit, well, hazy.