London Inc. June 2022 - 12

Upfront Technology
SAY HELLO TO
THE POT BOT
A conversational AI
recommendation platform
aims to help cannabis
retailers enhance
the online shopping
experience
WHETHER AN EXPERIENCED
consumer or a first-timer, a Canadian
cannabis user has an incredible
amount of choice in today's legal market.
In Ontario, for instance, there
were over 1,800 distinct SKUs on the
market in September 2021 - and that
number has only climbed since.
A wide array of choices rarely makes
the act of choosing any easier. When
you're shopping in a retail dispensary,
this problem is mitigated by a helpful
budtender - but what about if you're
searching for cannabis products
online, either for delivery or the ubiquitous
click-and-collect model? The
choices come at you like a firehose, and
it can be hard to make sense of it all.
Enter Heed (www.heed.chat), a
London-founded cannabis tech firm
that has created a recommendation
engine designed for use on a dispensary's
website.
" Our plugin offers recommendations,
brand awareness, education - a
lot of things that dispensaries aren't
able to tap into when their users are
shopping online, " says Brett RennieFliss,
co-founder of Heed. " The core
problem is, there's a vast number of
cannabis products, and users are
just unsure which ones to pick from.
It might be easier when shopping
in-store, but unfortunately that's not
always the reality. "
The Heed AI
conversational
platform is an easy-to-use tool - far
easier than sifting through an online
shop or trying to decipher the results
of a third-party review service like
12 | londonincmagazine.ca | JUNE 2022
Heed co-founders Keith Merker
and Brett Rennie-Fliss
" WE HAVE REALLY TRIED TO HAMMER
HOME ON THE INDEPENDENTS, AND
WE REALLY FEEL THAT OUR PRODUCT
ALIGNS WITH WHAT THOSE SMALLER
BRANDS ARE TRYING TO PUSH FOR
THEMSELVES " -Brett Rennie-Fliss
Leafly or Lift & Co.
" The budtender is the gateway to
cannabis products in the Canadian
marketplace, and what we've enabled
is a virtual version of a budtender, " says
Heed's other co-founder and former
CEO of WeedMD, Keith Merker. " Our
team has developed a very sophisticated
algorithm that essentially
filters through all the products that
are available in a specific retailer's
inventory, and measures those against
the parameters we put within the
algorithm. "
As they've started to grow (Heed
is now up to around 200 partner
dispensaries who are subscribing to
use the tool) the company has focused
primarily on " mom-and-pop shops, "
says Rennie-Fliss.
" We have really tried to hammer
home on the independents, and we
http://www.heed.chat http://www.londonincmagazine.ca
London Inc. June 2022

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