Grower Stories #169: Cathy McCorquodale

Taking time out for a conversation with the AskGrowers team, Cathy McCorquodale from Mary Jane Menu talks about her background in technology and how she saw a need for a smart ordering platform for cannabis distributors. The company utilizes the power of AI to give cannabis brands an economical and highly effective way to market and sell their products. Cathy also mentions the people she admires in the industry, among a lot more.

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Tia: So, tell me, how did you get into the cannabis industry?

Cathy: I have spent my entire 25+ year career in technology focused on business software solutions. I do a lot of management consulting and I help companies cost effectively apply technology to automate their operations and improve their sales. I was not intentionally targeting cannabis, but I was referred to a client in California who has a cannabis distribution and delivery company. As I always do for my clients, I mapped out all of their operations processes and analyzed the costs associated with the software, systems and manual processes they use to run their business. As I set about automating their distribution processes, I reached out to a number of existing cannatech vendors and I was absolutely mortified by what I found.

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Tia: What made you think of starting your own cannabis company?

Cathy: I was shocked at the state of technology in the Cannabis industry.

There are so many nefarious tech vendors out here not providing the true value technology should and they are holding cannabis companies hostage. For example a client of mine paid one technology platform over $35,000 a month for an online storefront and to list that store in the #7 spots for their specific region. $35k a month! That is $420,000 a year and it gets worse! …

When we went to get my client’s customer and order data from this canna tech platform, all we could get was a list of customer names and a list of orders with only the order number and order date. No details and customer contact info. My client had no way to market to their own customers after paying well over 400K/yr to be listed on this platform. Insane!

So we created Mary Jane Menu to give cannabis distributors an economical, smart solution to streamline their own wholesale ordering process and help them automatically use their own data to increase sales.

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Tia: What’s so specific in your platform, that you represent?

Cathy: I realize there are a lot of ordering platforms out there, but they are not smart (powered by AI) and they do not allow cannabis distributors to own their own data and they certainly do not actually HELP them leverage their own data to increase their sales.

Mary Jane Menu was designed specifically to help cannabis distributors streamline their bulk ordering process and enable them to offer their buyers a superior frictionless buying experience. Mary Jane Menu uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to suggest alternatives when previously ordered products are sold out and to provide recommendations (like Netflix and Amazon do) to intelligently upsell and cross sell a buyer which can help increase the average order value.

This same AI is also used in Mary Jane Menu’s automated marketing engine which sends automatic smart emails and texts to buyers notifying them when previously ordered items or similar new offerings are in stock. So your buyers receive personalized and customized announcements recommending current items for sale that the buyer is most likely to purchase. There is nothing more annoying than being marketed carts when all you have ever purchased is flower, right?

Mary Jane Menu’s AI is also leveraged when it comes to inventory management. Let me explain… We all know inventory management just plain sucks! Right? There is always going to be the manual counts and data entry process because even with systems and automated scan in scan out at the batch level product goes “missing”. However a super cool feature of Mary Jane Menu is that it manages inventory, but with an actual purpose! It rewards you for the diligence it takes to properly count and enter your accurate inventory counts. After the counts are entered into Mary Jane Menu the first time, Mary Jane Menu automatically manages the deduction of the items by the batch as buyers select the items and orders. We also have the ability to manage inventory in multiple locations and most importantly we provide inventory restock recommendations.

Mary Jane Menu leverages AI to predict what should be stocked so it reduces the manual guessing game of what to plant, grow, produce, order in the next cycle. We help our clients save time and reduce the carrying cost of having product that does not quickly sell by providing inventory recommendations based on AI predictions on what is likely to sell.

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Tia: What are the industries you are concentrating on with your solution?

Cathy: Mary Jane Menu only does business in Cannabis. We help our clients with their B-2-C websites and also do custom development projects when needed, but our core product at Mary Jane Menu is a AI-driven B-2-B wholesale ordering site. We help growers, manufacturers, and brands streamline their wholesale ordering process and improve their sales.

We are lucky enough to be in the cannabis space at a perfect point in time. New markets are still coming online while a lot of the first generation Canna Tech companies are imploding, doing massive layoffs and generally struggling to keep their existing customers. Cannabis businesses are beginning to realize that they do not have to be extorted and held hostage by these first gen cannatech companies with their sub standard solutions and nefarious data practices and they have the option now to access awesome yet economical solutions like Mary Jane Menu that help them streamline bulk ordering and inventory management.

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Tia: How do you think you can help people with your solution?

Cathy: I was horrified to find the big and small cannabis brands, growers, and distributors alike using spreadsheets, e-mails, texts and good old fashioned phone call after phone call to attempt to manually manage their cannabis bulk ordering and wholesale sales process. There is absolutely no reason in this day and age cannabis wholesalers should not have access to a smart, economical solution to automate their wholesale ordering process and Mary Jane Menu is here to help!

Most tech and cannabis companies are focused on the B-2-C retail side. There is no argument that the end consumer is the key in our industry and we certainly do help clients establish and improve their B-2-C sites and incorporate AI into their retail operations; however, it is the wholesale distributors that are absolutely underserved by viable and economical technology solutions.

I get there are wholesale platforms out here and they serve a purpose, but not all growers and processors can afford to give a cut of their profits or sacrifice such a large chunk of their revenue to “pay to play” with these big tech guys; especially at the cost of giving up all their hard earned customer data to some of the more nefarious players out there.

If we are going to continue to have access to diverse genetics and high quality cannabis, it is vital that the small and mid sized businesses have the opportunity to survive and profit. Mary Jane Menu is here to help these hard-working folks by providing these small and midsized companies a cost effective, easy-to-use, smart inventory and order management solution that helps them streamline their processes and drive sales.

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Tia: How do you react to the current cannabis news that is up on the news? (for instance the case of Brittney Griner)

Cathy: Everyday I am grateful to those who have sacrificed so much so the rest of us have a chance to access the plant. There is so much war and hate in history and it is still rampant in today’s current world as you too unfortunately are experiencing. I still find it unbelievable that any Statesman / Stateswomen would have the time, wherewithal and lack of courage to attack a plant (an actual plant for goodness sake) and implement laws to jail people for the possession when they could be using their positions to address the numerous crisis that plague our planet. I am disgusted with our leaders across the world for not legalizing a plant that could bring so much benefit to people, communities and mother earth and I remain so so grateful to those who have and continue to stand up and fight for the injustice caused by prohibition.

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Tia: What are you top people in the cannabis industry and why?

Cathy: I am learning new stories of courage, perseverance and struggle everyday in this industry. I have followed and learned so much from Cassandra Farrigngton and Chris Walsh of MJBiz. Cassandra, her business partner Annie started MJ Biz way back in 2011 (whoo hoo shout out to woman entrepreneurs). They had the trailblazing vision to share high quality information and offer a forum for professional networking in the fledgling legal cannabis market over 10 years ago. Chris Walsh risked his career and joined these ladies in their early days and he went on to deliver a high level of professional journalism that still sets the bar for quality reporting in the industry today. MJBizDaily’s newsletters and MJBizCon Industry conference is what really opened my eyes to the breadth of possible opportunities in this space. I also routinely listen to the podcast Chris Walsh does called Seed to CEO filled and find it is filed with great insight on starting and growing a business in this space.

Also I greatly admire another two trailblazing women entrepreneurs in this space Nacy Whitman and Jessica Billingsley. Both of them took risks and built incredibly successful companies in this space. Nancy went from making infused edibles in her kitchen to building one of the most widely recognized, high quality, consistent brands in the industry. I admire that she saw the potential for gummies long before they became a mainstay in the industry. She took the unprecedented risk at the time to solely focus her business on one product line and set about the challenge of creating and replicating brand consistency in each state. I would love to replicate how Nancy set the singular focus for her company and the hired, partnered and led the talent she surrounded herself with to build a successful company.

I also follow Jessica Billingsly with Akerna as she is a woman who has been in technology her entire career and committed herself to supporting Cannabis businesses. I respect her ability to identify needs and create technical solutions in a very wild time at the infancy of the Cannabis Industry and I find her current publications incredibly insightful and well written.

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Tia: Are there any platforms you were passionate about and had some lessons to learn when you started the business?

Cathy: Oh boy, I have been learning lessons my whole career. I am a female in technology, so I have been underestimated and unsupported by my male colleagues and bosses my entire career. Ugh the stories I could tell, but that would take more time than you have. I feel that if there is a hard way to do something, I have found an even harder way to do it. I struggled with my first tech company in the cannabis industry. I think we may have been a bit ahead of the industry, but the great thing is that with that company I had the opportunity to take the time to really learn about the industry. I got to spend a lot of time mapping cannabis data and building an understanding of cannabis data relationships which has been incredibly helpful as I train and validate the AI behind Mary Jane Menu.

I create data-driven technical solutions that help businesses compete so I guess you can say “data” is my thing. I am an absolute data nerd and I love accessing, analyzing and helping companies actually do something useful with data. This is why I am so excited about the opportunity to bring Mary Jane Menu to the small and mid sized cannabis distributors and wholesalers, because I know I really can help them! Owning your own data and using that data effectively to drive sales and increase profitability works and Mary Jane Menu is here to help cannabis business to exactly this!

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Tia: Do you smoke yourself? What are your top strains (maybe you consume edibles?..) to consume?

Cathy: Yes, but I am new to cannabis as I just really started my cannabis journey in the last couple of years. I am a wine drinker and I am a kid who grew up in the 80’s in the States so the war on drugs instilled a very real fear of the plant and associated prosecution from indulging. In previous positions in my career I was frequently drug tested so if I wanted to remain employed in my tech positions I had to refrain. Once I became the boss, I changed the rules and started to explore the potential of the plant to help me calm my anxious ADD mind. I am not a patient woman and I like to drink wine which has an immediate calming effect on me, so I have found that edibles do not work well for me as I end up taking them then drinking wine anyway because I do not feel the edibles immediately. So I just end up drunk and high. Therefore I much prefer to smoke and really I much prefer smoking pre-rolls over vaping, but as a lieral proverbial soccer mom vapes are super handy. As a relatively new consumer, I have a lot to learn before I can become a connoisseur. So I am still shopping by strain type like indica for sleep and sativa for creativity, which I know isn’t quite the right thing, but the great news is I still have a lot of discovery left to do!

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Tia: Have you ever faced social anger/misunderstanding when people realized you present the cannabis industry and/or when they realized you smoke weed? (at any age of your life) Cathy: I committed to stepping into leadership for technology company in the cannabis industry exclusively, so I feel like the door slammed shut to technology exec positions elsewhere.

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Tia: If you could smoke with anyone on this planet (dead or alive) who’d that be and why?

Cathy: He passed away several years ago, but I would love a chance to have a smoke with my Dad and ask him about what it was like to be a little boy and grow up in Zimbabwe. I was born seven years into a civil war in Zimbabwe and my family fled the country seven years later when the war ended so I never knew what the country was like. I would love to smoke with my Dad and just chill under the beautiful African skies ( you can see the milky way in there in the southern hemisphere) and have him tell me stories about his adventures in Africa.

Tia: What would be your advice for people who want to start their own canna platform/brand etc?

Cathy: Cannabis companies' margins are slim at best. There are a lot of folks out here struggling to survive. Be careful, be brave, be wise and do your best to help!

You can follow Mary Jane Meny here:

Website

LinkedIn

Thank you so much, Cathy, for taking time to join this interview.