The past, present and future of WP Dispensary - Robert DeVore

The past, present and future of WP Dispensary

It’s been nearly 7 years since I first released WP Dispensary ????

On November 26th, 2015 I published this article announcing to the world that I built the first cannabis menu plugin for WordPress.

Needless to say, it was met with both good and bad responses ????

Some people knew where the industry was heading and seen the need for this type of plugin.

While others still couldn’t look past the typical stigmas surrounding the cannabis plant itself to even consider an entire industry being built around it.

I stayed focused and didn’t let anyone else opinions drown out what I knew to be true, and I met near-instant success.

Over the course of the first year, I got the plugin’s pro add-on’s to a point where I thought I could quit freelancing full time to run WP Dispensary exclusively, but that was short lived.

At the time, I was naive about what exactly would be required to run a business like this full time.

Fast forward 6 years and I am more confident in my ability to provide an elevated experience for businesses within the cannabis industry.

I am also confident in the ~7 years of consistent updates and product enhancements that I’ve released to make the suite of plugins what it is today.

This current codebase is lightyears ahead of what I launched in 2015.

What’s been happening?

Last year I made a decision to move forward with my plans, registered the LLC and I am now about to launch my new MRR business:

CannaBiz Software, LLC.

Set to launch on the 7 year anniversary of WP Dispensary’s first release, CannaBiz will provide a hosted suite of WordPress plugins to cannabis dispensary and delivery services.

I’ve had conversations with people from the very beginning who said I needed to turn WP Dispensary into a SaaS business.

That’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and I am now in a position to make this dream a reality – but it’s not SaaS, so I’ll simply refer to it as a MRR business.

CannaBiz is uniquely positioned to provide what’s required to power high performing websites that use our software.

The demo site’s GT Matrix score ⚡

The goal is to give dispensary and delivery services a simple way to host their own menus without third-party services like Weedmaps and Leafly.

And by building a business on the open source codebase that was also built in-house, CannaBiz is in a unique position to provide a better quality alternative at a much lower cost.

Beyond the main suite of plugins CannaBiz Software provides, I’m also be including other must-have plugins for SEO, contact forms, popups and more.

What’s coming next?

As we get closer to the launch date, I will be blogging about the various features that CannaBiz Software will be providing and what customers can expect:

  • Menu management
  • Online ordering
  • Inventory Management
  • Analytics and Reports
  • Loyalty and Rewards
  • Product Reviews

I’ll also break down some of the business decisions I’ve made, the products/services I’m using to manage the business itself and what my goals are with running my first MRR business.

You can also keep up with my shenanigans on Twitter, where I am currently finishing up a 90 day grind, which is leading the way for the CannaBiz launch ????

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