From Dispensary Delivery to Bud by Mail: The bud.com Story
bud.com was founded to bring bud to the people. We have worked within changing cannabis and hemp regulations to make that as easy as possible for you to get high or get comfort. Based on almost a decade of experience we believe the best future for American cannabis lies with interstate commerce – easy shipping bud to your door. Pending changes to the federal laws around hemp and cannabis may impact our bud shipping service in the medium term, but not over the long term. Read ahead for what we’ve tried, what we’ve learned, and what’s coming next:
bud.com: home delivery since 2018
We registered bud.com in 1994 and spent decades experimenting and watching the legal market emerge. bud.com established dispensary delivery in the San Francisco Bay Area in January 2018, the month the state permitted recreational cannabis sales. For five years we worked with dispensaries up and down the state. We helped stores staff up delivery operations, we helped them introduce their customers to a greater convenience, we helped them with local marketing and delivery operations.
Time and time again we saw that elderly people and medical patients with serious issues were especially glad to receive home delivery of cannabis products.
Dispensaries under siege
But our dispensary partners had a terrible time operating. This wasn’t like being a regular business. Our partners paid taxes but they didn’t have bank accounts: they took grocery bags full of dollar bill to county clerks.
It turns out that if you have a store, and it’s filled with bud, bucks or both, you’re a target for robbery. Our dispensary partners had stolen cars driven through their doors and their storefronts looted by organized teams wielding guns and sledgehammers. Above is a photo from a security video feed including over a dozen people less than 30 seconds after they had breached the door of a dispensary. It was difficult to sustain momentum and reliably serve customers in these conditions.
Barely Digital
While we were a digital marketing and tech services company serving dispensaries, we couldn’t use any digital payments. If we invoiced a partner dispensary, we had to drive to their store to pick up an envelope full of cash. If their store was looted and their cash was stolen, we didn’t get paid. When we got ourselves a bank account, it typically didn’t last more than a year once our bank saw who we were working with. We had a corporate credit card for over a year – that was useful especially for paying online services like web hosts. Then they cancelled the card and also two of my personal credit cards that happened to be on the same financial network. I’ve worked for a range of software startups but never had to contend with the operational haywire I’ve encountered working in cannabis.
This is a sob story worthy of tiny violins compared to the suffering of entrepreneurs who came before bud.com and went to prison for selling this great flower. Our business couldn’t have even been imagined without the efforts and sacrifice of a long list of American heroes who fought fear and intolerance to give people access to plant medicine. I’m a tech guy and I have less appetite for risk; I didn’t start selling bud on bud.com until I was confident I could do it within the laws of my land. It turns out to be a nonlinear business, perhaps suited to trade in a psychoactive plant.
Hemp for Change
During all the operating chaos with our dispensary partners, the US senate passed the 2018 Farm Bill legalizing hemp. Senator Mitch McConnell was happy to work with President Trump to get Kentucky farmers selling industrial hemp. The new law said industrial “hemp” was anything below 0.3% THC by dry weight when harvested, hemp was different from cannabis, and hemp could be widely sold. Turns out if you grow enough of that hemp and then distill the result, you can come up with some pretty cool cannabinoids that can get you high, or maybe ease your anxiety. Enterprising botanists and businesspeople got together and found loopholes, loopholes that could make industrial hemp yield psychoactive products.
Opening a Hemp Shop
In 2019 bud.com launched our sister site hempshop to sell CBD and then psychoactive goods direct by mail. We were finally able to take credit cards for payments – we were part of a Square Payments pilot project for online CBD retailers. We were able to source and test quality products ourselves that we could drop off at our local post office to reach our customers. Suddenly we could operate like a normal eCommerce company and pride ourselves on great products, low prices, and excellent service.
By that time bud.com same-day weed delivery covered most of urban California, while our answer for the rest of the country was “visit hempshop.” We tried working with delivery fulfillment partners in other states but they were a few years behind California setting up their cannabis markets. Plus regional delivery often has demanding rules. One potential partner in Massachusetts complained that delivery regulations in 2021 required a delivery vehicle hardened for product and cash security, broadcasting GPS, plus two employees along for the ride, each wearing a body camera. The car and setup cost over $120,000, then you pay $30+ / hour to the 2-person team.
We wanted a way to serve more customers across America but we didn’t want to wait for dozens of state-level delivery frameworks to emerge and make financial sense. The potential dispensary partners were struggling enough with the math to run their storefronts without delivery. We soon realized we would be better off sourcing and selling hemp goods through bud.com direct.
Hemp Bud By Mail
With this hemp loophole, we went from picking up envelopes of cash from distressed operators to credit card settlement payments arriving automatically each morning. We could now afford to run a real business and expand our online direct-to-customer product offerings. Over the next five years, we were able to work with growers and product manufacturers to bring a range of new cannabinoids to market. We had delta-8 gummies for a reduced intensity. We CBN capsules for sugar-free sleep aid. We sourced THCA Flower which was harvested in such a way that it could be shown to be low THC but still provide a top-shelf flower experience.
hempshop demand grew, especially from parts of the country where they didn’t have proper access to weed. Recreational weed was becoming more widespread, but still you had states like South Carolina that had no neighboring state with legal bud. Many people make use of bud for chronic pain management, or stress management, or as an alternative to alcohol and opioids. So we were proud to be shipping them bud by mail.
Ultimately the challenge of working with dispensaries was too much. By mid-2025 we switched bud.com to this direct mailing model alongside hempshop, and said goodbye to our real-world dispensary partners. bud.com offered a dream of modern convenience for a formerly-prohibited plant. Browse an online menu, read reviews, buy some products with a credit card, get a tracking number, receive a box in the mail that would deliver the kind of experience you would hope to get from quality California-grade cannabis products.
The end of Hemp THC
Now in 2026 profound changes are looming in our nation’s marijuana laws. A popular loophole is closing, and cannabis could potentially be allowed to operate more like a routine, tax-paying business.
First to end the government shutdown in November 2025, the US Senate closed the intoxicating hemp loophole. The 2018 Farm Bill set a legal amount of delta-9 THC in a freshly harvested “hemp” plant. Going forward, no THC over 0.4 milligrams is permitted per container. Effective November 12, 2026, our business selling direct-to-customer hemp goods is no longer federally legal.
As we were reeling from the imminent demise of intoxicating hemp, a group of cannabis industry executives successfully prevailed upon President Trump to change the legal status of cannabis. In December 2025 he announced that cannabis should no longer be considered akin to heroin as a Schedule I drug, but instead as akin to ketamine, a Schedule III drug. This should reduce the amount of operational chaos for regulated cannabis companies. Perhaps even business banking for cannabis companies could become straightforward. The new rules of play for cannabis will be written in months to come in Washington DC.
The Future of Bud is Interstate
Hemp was clearly a temporary loophole on our way to more properly legalizing cannabis. We’ve been on all sides of local retail, local delivery, and shipping by mail – shipping through the mail is the way to go. Mail can especially serve older and medical patients who have a hard time leaving the house to shop, or might not have any local vendors around. So as this hemp-by-mail chapter of bud.com is winding down, we’re lobbying for cannabis interstate commerce. Too many adults have enjoyed safe, healthy access to this powerful plant for bud to be done.
Written by Justin Hall – Chief Technology Officer of bud.com.