These College Students Are Launching The Uber For Marijuana Delivery

In Seattle and Denver, there will soon be an easy way to get marijuana delivered from the dispensary straight to your doorstep.

University of Washington students Josiah Tullis and Megh Vakharia, cofounders of Canary, are planning to launch their marijuana delivery service later this year. Canary, which presented at Thursday night's TechCrunch Disrupt in Seattle, was the event's audience choice winner ("We are delivering green to make green," said Tullis during his 60-second pitch).

The app has yet to launch, however. Tullis and Vakharia are taking their time with the startup to ensure Canary operates legally. The service operates only as a middleman between registered dispensaries in Seattle and Denver and customers.

To use Canary, users first have to verify that they're legally able to buy marijuana by sending a picture of their ID or their medical marijuana card to Canary. Once verified, users can select from a huge variety of strains from Canary's dispensaries and producers. Contingent upon state laws, Canary users can purchase quantities in grams to ounces.

Current federal regulations may limit customers to paying with cash initially, but Canary has plans to extend to mobile payment options, allowing users to pay with Venmo, PayPal and credit cards in the future. Once users pick a delivery location, a Canary-verified courier delivers the goods within the hour. Canary charges an extra 10 to 25% off the base price for delivery, and then gives a portion to the courier, according to GeekWire.

Canary plans to launch by the end of July for medical marijuana dispensaries. In addition, Washington is planning to open recreational marijuana retail stores in July, where anyone 21 or older can buy marijuana. The college students also plan to expand Canary to Colorado, where recreational marijuana storefronts have been open since January.