A Chat With Chris Boudreau, CEO Of Cannabis Courier Driven Deliveries

Earlier this month, Driven Deliveries Inc DRVD announced that it's expanded its California cannabis delivery platform. This will ultimately allow the company to support deliveries in the Bay Area, central California, Sacramento, Orange County and Los Angeles areas.  

On Tuesday, the company named Jerrin James as  its chief operating officer. The exec was previously the head of logistics at Facebook, Inc. FB and has worked at Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Groupon Inc GRPN. 

"State-sanctioned cannabis is on the trajectory to be an $80-billion market by 2030 in the U.S., and for me it represents an opportunity of a lifetime," James told Benzinga.

Driven Deliveries "is the first publicly traded cannabis delivery company, and with the outstanding talent already at Driven combined with my expertise, I truly believe the potential is limitless."

Interested in learning more about the growing company, Benzinga reached out to Driven Deliveries CEO Chris Boudreau and asked him a few questions.

“This is an exciting time for our company, as we continue to grow at an exponential rate,” he told Benzinga.

“As we plan to advance through California and to surrounding states, Driven Deliveries will maintain the highest service to our customer while adding numerous partnerships along the way. We will continue to increase our value to our shareholders, partners and customers.”

Meet Driven Deliveries

Benzinga asked how Driven Deliveries differentiates from other delivery services and how it competes with established names like Eaze.

The company provides a “turnkey, white-labeled delivery solution for retailers where others are either their own retailer, or are acting as though they are a licensed retailer — like Eaze," Boudreau said.

In his view, Driven Deliveries is not a head-to-head competitor to those other companies; instead, Boudreau likes to think of his company as a GrubHub Inc GRUB or Uber Eats for the cannabis industry, providing vehicles, drivers and management and consulting services.

Driven Deliveries is exploring doing business in 10 states and intends to move into three or four of them by the end of 2019, the CEO said.  

Financials

Next up, we got into the company’s public listing.

It was Driven Deliveries' investors who suggested the company go public at first, Boudreau said.

“But with the excitement around cannabis businesses in the public markets, it made sense as a strategic play — and it's definitely working out for us."

The San Diego-based company recently hit a $150-million market cap and is just getting started, the CEO said. 

Driven Deliveries also changed its ticker recently and underwent a stock split. 

The ticker change related to getting rid of the symbol used by the company's prior shell, Boudreau said. The 12.35-to-1 stock split was done to “create more shares in the float," he said. 

Just For Fun

Finally, Benzinga asked a few questions just out of curiosity.

Our first: what are the most popular products that consumers order for delivery? 

That would be flower and vape pens, Boudreau said. “We expect to see increasing demand for vape pens and edibles, and decreasing demand for flower." 

Lastly, we asked about the difference between delivering cannabis and other goods, like pizza.

"Functionally, the delivery itself isn't very different than for a pizza company, just with a lot more technology," the CEO said.

The technology includes forward- and rear-facing cameras in the car, GPS trackers and a locking safe box for secured transportation and storage.

"They're probably not doing that for pizza and lasagna."

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