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10 Worcester Business Journal | October 14, 2019 | wbjournal.com Homegrown technology companies face out-of- state competition, regulatory hurdles in order to service the marijuana industry Cannabis tech PHOTO/ALLAN JUNG I N F O R M A T I O N T E C H N O L O G Y FOCUS BY ZACHARY COMEAU Worcester Business Journal Staff Writer V ictor Juri spent the early part of his professional career in digital marketing and enterprise architecture, before opting to start his own digital marketing consulting agency. Five years ago, he was doing work for an undisclosed competitor to food delivery company GrubHub, seeking a better its technology platform. at platform included a web interface to take orders which were routed through a dispatcher who assigned orders to drivers, notified by a mobile app. at's when it hit the experienced marijuana user like a ton of bricks. "Oh my god, this is the future of cannabis," Juri said. "Everyone is going to want it delivered." at idea sparked an entirely new company, Stalk & Beans, of which Juri is CEO. Breaking through firewalls e Fitchburg and Natick company offers a full-marketing stack for dis- pensaries, including a regulation-com- pliant website, in-house online menus updating in real time, a delivery module and mobile app, product pages including lab test results, and an in- store pickup module with email and SMS marketing functions. What has Juri most excited, though, is the potential to offer delivery mar- ijuana in Massachusetts, which is just beginning to explore that service for an industry with $316 million in recre- ational sales since November. However, with the slow rollout of recreational marijuana in Massachu- setts, Juri and other would-be cannabis tech entrepreneurs are facing obsta- cles on two fronts: a limited number of licensed cannabis companies to do business with, and competition from established tech companies who already have cut their teeth in ear- ly-adopting marijuana markets like Colorado and California. Juri said existing Massachusetts marijuana companies choose to use marijuana websites Leafly and Weed- maps for their online menus, but cannabis companies are in effect losing their customers to those platforms. "Our model is empowering the dispensary to have their own kind of marketing stack and tools to gain the customer, keep the customer and continue to market to the customer." Juri said. Multi-state competition Cannabis IT and marketing service companies are coming to Massachu- setts from the West Coast, where they have had more time to establish their offerings and find clients in existing Stalk & Beans n Locations: Fitchburg & Natick n CEO: Victor Juri n Employees: 10 n Clients: 6 Stalk & Beans CEO Victor Juri (right) and COO Matthew Knox at the company's Fitchburg warehouse, which is under construction and could eventually serve as a delivery hub for the marijuana industry.