BakedBot AI: Leveling the Playing Field for Dispensaries w/ Accessible Tech.

Welcome to EXHALE Pro Stories, in this exclusive series, we dive into the lives of business owners, operators, and the everyday s/heroes who are shaping the culture, paving the way, and creating positive change in the world of cannabis.

In this episode of EXHALE Pro Stories, BakedBot AI delves into how this innovative platform is transforming the cannabis industry by providing accessible, AI-driven marketing solutions tailored for dispensaries. Hosted by Fame Noel, the episode highlights the founders’ mission to empower under-resourced cannabis businesses, especially minority-owned and social equity licensees, by offering tools that automate tasks, personalize customer engagement, and ensure compliance.

Founders’ Journey and Vision

  • Martez Knox and Jack Allen share their backgrounds and the inspiration behind BakedBot AI, emphasizing their commitment to integrating technology with cannabis culture.

Addressing Industry Challenges

  • The founders discuss the unique hurdles faced by cannabis businesses, such as stringent regulations and market competition, and how BakedBot AI aims to level the playing field.

Features of BakedBot AI

  • BakedBot AI offers an all-in-one virtual team for cannabis businesses, combining the roles of a budtender, marketer, and business intelligence analyst.
  • The platform provides hyper-personalized messaging, boosts sales, and assists dispensaries in navigating compliance, marketing, and customer service on autopilot.

Impact on Social Equity Dispensaries

  • The episode highlights how BakedBot AI supports social equity dispensaries by providing them with the tools and resources to thrive in a competitive market.

AI as an Empowerment Tool

  • Martez and Jack discuss their philosophy that AI should empower individuals and businesses, not replace them, by offering accessible technology that enhances human capabilities.

Community Engagement and Partnerships

Future Plans and Growth

  • BakedBot AI’s plans for expansion, including the introduction of a freemium model and the formation of a new Board of Advisors, are discussed.

Watch the full interview on YouTube and Spotify or check out the interview transcript below.


In the U.S., 21.5% of small businesses don’t survive their first year. By year five, that number jumps to nearly 50%, and by year ten, almost two-thirds have closed their doors. The cannabis industry, with its unique regulatory hurdles and social stigma, adds even more complexity to that equation—especially for minority-owned and social equity licensees.

But what if automation, data, and AI weren’t just tools for the big players? What if they could level the playing field? That’s where BakedBot AI comes in.

Martez Knox (Founder), Jack Allen (Chief Revenue Officer), and Dashon Howard (Co-Founder, CTO and Chief AI Officer) built an all-in-one virtual team for cannabis businesses—think a budtender, marketer, and business intelligence analyst in one sleek AI suite. Their platform doesn’t just automate tasks—it personalizes engagement, boosts sales, and helps dispensaries navigate compliance, marketing, and customer service on autopilot.



AI With a Purpose: Inclusive Tech for the People

While “AI” might sound like a buzzword—or even a job-stealer—Martez and Jack are flipping the script. Their mission isn’t about replacing humans. It’s about empowering the under-resourced, scaling the visionaries, and building tech that doesn’t just work—but works for everyone.

From a dispensary in Detroit that boosted online conversions by 40%, to helping teams connect with their audience based on life stages, lifestyle, and buying behavior—BakedBot AI is showing how culturally competent automation can change the game.

And they’re just getting started. With a new Board of Advisors, a freemium model to get tools into the hands of those who need it most, and strategic partnerships with the Minority Cannabis Business Association, the BakedBot team is growing fast—while staying rooted in community.


Catch their full story below in our in-depth Q&A, including:

  • Why Martez and Jack chose the cannabis industry
  • What makes BakedBot different from other AI tools
  • How they’re helping social equity dispensaries survive and thrive
  • Whether AI is here to replace—or enhance—your job
  • And yes… which Friday character they think best represents their vibe

EXHALE SOCIAL: So, Martez, we’ll start with you. Did you see yourself being in technology? How did this journey begin for you?

KNOX: Actually, I did see myself being in technology. I think I’ve been fascinated by technology and computers ever since I was a kid. So, I think if my mom were alive today, she would certainly say that she saw me in this journey. I think the wrinkle here was combining cannabis, kind of adding that aspect to it, So, most folks would say that are close to me, I’ve been around cannabis, my entire life, right? So, the folks that are close to me would say this fits you. But I think the folks that I’ve worked with in corporate America and, different partners over the years, I think they would think that it’s Interesting.

EXHALE SOCIAL: You said you’ve been around cannabis your entire life, in what ways? Your family, culturally, how were you exposed to cannabis initially?

KNOX: So, I remember as a kid I had an uncle and I’m from Chicago, and my family is from the west side of Chicago originally. My dad’s side of the family. And I had an uncle that was a pretty big, weed dealer. So I remember coming into my uncle’s basement and seeing these pounds of weed just all over the floor in the basement. And this was back, when it wasn’t, anywhere close to being legal. So there are the signs, the smells, everything that comes with it. So it was a different time, It was the 80s. You had joints laying around. We would every now and again sneak and pick up a joint and test it out. So my relationship with the plant goes back an awful long time. And it’s been a love affair if I’m, to be honest.

EXHALE SOCIAL: And Jack, let’s get to you. Did you ever see yourself as head of revenue for a cannabis company? Tell us about your journey career-wise and how you got here.

ALLEN: I actually started a little later in Cannitech. before I was at Bakebot, I worked for a few different startup Canitech companies. So, I kind of got my feet wet in that surrounding. And after I got out of cannitech, I started my own company where I was working with local shops around here, helping them with daily marketing and stuff like that. So, seeing myself get into the AI space was something different for me. That’s kind of what Martez introduced me to. It was at the peak of the whole turn of AI kind of coming into it and with us being knee and waist deep into the cannabis business. I thought it was just a natural, situation to come into.


EXHALE SOCIAL: And can you share with us a little bit about your journey with cannabis? You know, how you were initially introduced to it again, whether it was family, culturally, and your journey within that space.

EXHALE SOCIAL: That was an excellent point like cannabis touches so many things, from health and wellness to even construction. you can literally create construction materials out of it. So, it’s such an amazing plant and I love that we are finding new and creative ways to be able to access these spaces, especially as black businesses. Because I gotta keep it 100 anytime I see tech, I automatically do think white and that’s a real thing. We do not see a lot of black folk in tech spaces even though we’re there, so I’m thrilled to be able to bring you into our space.


EXHALE SOCIAL: So when you first started Bakedbot, what was your bottom line? What are you trying to do with Bakebot? And I’m going to use that to kind of launch us into what Bakebot is.

KNOX: I think first and foremost, I like to tell people I’m an outsider, right? I didn’t come from inside of the legal cannabis industry, right?  So, when I did, really have a chance to dig into some of the tools that were powering some of these dispensaries and cannabis brands, one thing that stood out was, beyond, the tools being outdated and fragmented where there were no companies ran by people that look like us, right? So, I’m an entrepreneur, right? And I first and foremost wanted to rectify that. But beyond that, right, because we know that that’s not enough to just be successful as a company, right? We wanted to bring a product that could compete, that could actually provide a higher level of value that the current players were able to bring, And I think that us having a fresh perspective and me being somewhat of an outsider and Jack being an insider, and our CTO being another outside. I think that that combination allows us to bring a lot of expertise to bear, right? and not withstanding…we come from disadvantaged backgrounds, so I think all of that matters when it comes down to, producing a product that could compete out in the marketplace.

EXHALE SOCIAL: Look at how we build our teams with how if I want to liken it to cannabis, how we crossbreed our seeds where we’re taking out the best parts of us and putting it into one thing and that’s how our teams come together, So great. That’s amazing.


EXHALE SOCIAL: So, I want to get into your preoccupation with Friday, Because I just feel like this is going to help us discover a little bit more about y’all. So, I’mma start with you, Jack. who’s your favorite character on Friday and why?

ALLEN: That’s a pretty interesting question. So, I’mma roll with it, though. My favorite character on Friday, I’m gonna probably just say just because Smokey was hustling, but he was also enjoying the plant the whole time. The entire movie he was enjoying it the most. You know what I’m saying?  So, I think Smokey— he had the mind frame of and had the right idea as far as being a hustler, but I think that the enjoyment of the plant kind of took over his hustle after a while. But, I enjoy him as as a character in general. You know what I mean?

EXHALE SOCIAL: What about you, Martez?

KNOX: So, since Jack took our flagship product, Smokey, I’m going to go with Craig our AI agent that allows dispensaries and brands to do marketing intelligence as well as well as business intelligence. So obviously, I’m a marketer. I see a lot of myself in Craig. particularly, throughout the movie, he was like the rational one, right? He was always kind of, keeping Smokey or trying to keep him on track, so that’s an interesting question. Never thought about it, but the closest I would say is definitely Craig.

EXHALE SOCIAL: So for those who are just a little bit lost, BakedBot AI named its components after characters on the movie Friday. So this will be great segue to go ahead and explain the other characters and features.

KNOX: So, Smokey is our flagship product. AI bud tender. it assists with product recommendations. as well as being able to give customers, information on safety, tarpen, canabonoids. Craig, we talked about, let’s see, we have Debo is our compliance agent.

EXHALE SOCIAL: I love that one there!

KNOX: So we have a suite of agents. they’re designed to handle, very specific functions within the dispensaries and the cannabis brands organization. so yeah, that’s just kind of an overview. I don’t want to give too much of our platform away. But those are the agents that publicly we’re beta testing and we have customers using them.


EXHALE SOCIAL: Let’s talk about how a business would actually use your products and what types of businesses you’re looking to work with that would benefit from BakedBot AI.

KNOX: So obviously dispensaries right number one. But we also work with cannabis brands and cannabis consultants. Our tool is first and foremost a customer engagement platform. So it helps to bring customers into your dispensary as well as after they get there and they shop it helps to keep them shopping right so our flagship product is Smokey AI which is our AI budtender.  It’s a widget and it lives on the dispensaries website and it helps the customers get from finding a product to checkout in less than three clicks. So if you know anything about dispensaries websites one of our partners had over 900 products and what we discovered is folks would come to the website they would click all of these different filters right and then maybe they found the product that they wanted but often not they didn’t and then they went on to the next dispensary’s website to begin the process all over again. So what we wanted to do is just totally radically simplify  that. So, we have our flagship bud tender. We also have our headless menu which allows dispensaries to show their products and get them found on Google, as opposed to iframe menus which are common in the industry. Our tool allows Google to find and index your products, So, if you have, white widow, runts, whatever, we can help you get that product found on Google.

KNOX CONTINUES: …and finally, we have our AI agents which is a dashboard that dispensaries log into and as well as brands to power all of this stuff. Our agents allow first and foremost, dispensaries to send out personalized SMSs, emails, etc. but it also gives the company insights on inventory turnover or products that aren’t moving mispriced products competitive intelligence on other folks what’s selling opportunity gaps. So the best way to look at it and what I always say our AI agents is your marketing team. So if you’re a smaller dispensary and you don’t have a marketer on staff right and maybe you have a bud tender yeah it is now that bud tender can be just as good as a $5,000 a month cannabis consultant right they can scale they can send you emails and messages and SMSs that resonate based on past purchase history, But we also have a ton of other data about the customers, For example, we know median housing income. We know if the person is retired, if the person is a student or not. Let me ask you, if you were marketing to a student, right, would you send out the same kind of messages as you would to a retirey?


EXHALE SOCIAL: And this is all automated. It saves so much time as AI does. So, you mentioned, that this could potentially replace a $5,000 a month consultant that you have on staff. This could potentially replace people like me who do marketing for cannabis businesses. So my question is for people who are alarmed at the thought of—it’s a constant theme that AI is “taking our jobs.’ So I’m going to play devil’s advocate right now—and then also in the cannabis space, we do see a lot of cannabis consulting that’s picking up. We have cannabis nurses and things like that. I’m going to let you explain how this is actually helping these businesses versus us fearing, this AI and it taking jobs and things of that nature.

KNOX: So I get this question often. one of the things that I always say, AI is not likely to take your job directly, right? it’s likely to be taken by somebody that’s probably using our tools, So, if you look at it from that perspective, you have a lot of cannabis brands that have super tight margins. They’re barely able to stay in business  So we started from that standpoint. And I want to make a point, because consultants are definitely necessary in this industry, but we need consultants that are going to provide value. So our tool can help augment that $5,000 consultant, or if you decide, it’s just not in the budget, you don’t have to go without a tool that can help you see your way through.

KNOX CONTINUES: So to recap, our AI is not going to take your job. If you’re a budtender, this is going to make you a little bit smarter. It’ll help the customer when they come in. You don’t have to necessarily speak to all the tarpines and c canabonoids because they’ve already spoke to Smokey about most of this stuff, so again, we look at it like we’re going to augment, Not necessarily replace, But we know business, And we know margins are tight, So, if I’m being realistic and I had to put on My smoky thinking cap, five, 10 years from now, a lot of the positions you do see, they won’t necessarily be necessary. But again, I think that’ll be more of a gradual thing, right? And smart individuals like you, Fame, will find AI tools, And use them to better serve your customer.  And that will give you an advantage over someone that isn’t doing it. So, what we’re saying to consultants and folks like you, hey, come on in, Let’s work together, to build better and a smarter cannabis industry.

EXHALE SOCIAL: Love that. We can use that as a supportive measure when working with our clients, especially since it is created for this specific industry. So, I do love that there’s a way that we can actually work together and AI can complement what we’re already doing, right? So, I love that. Anything that helps me gather and understand information is a benefit to me because I love the creative side of marketing. But when it comes to analytics, it’s not really the easiest thing for me, but it is necessary do my job, right? So I can definitely see how that would be an added benefit.


EXHALE SOCIAL: So with traditional businesses, we have seen a lot of brick-and mortar businesses transition to online—do you feel that there’s going to be more of an online need and more of a demand for online support in this capacity when it comes to dispensaries? Do you see that shift happening, where brick and mortars will kind of cease to exist and once they’re established they’ll go online for their customers from there?

KNOX: Yeah. Great question. So, I think, as the industry matures, right, certainly if we go down the path of legalization, I would expect to see a lot of direct to consumer companies. You’re already seeing a lot of companies in the TACA space that are doing direct to consumers and this is putting a lot of pressure on dispensaries and cannabis brands in brick and mortar spaces, So, I think over time it will get much harder for those brick and mortar spaces to compete against, THCA companies or, some of the hemp beverages that are now coming online. So, one of the first things that I would expect, is consolidation—buying other dispensaries, which will lead to some layoffs.


EXHALE SOCIAL: So, looking at over-saturation that is starting to happen in these markets, especially where there was just an explosion of licenses… So, I’m out here in New York right now and you’re finding that there’s a dispensary on every other block. So, now you’re already competing with so many different businesses that are around you. For me personally, I would advise investing in something like this because it gives you a competitive advantage, right? Most people don’t want to leave their homes to get products, to order products, any of those things.

KNOX: The idea is look, if you’re able to get a customer to come in one time, right, you should do everything in your power to get that customer to come back four more times. Studies show that after customers have shopped at least five times, right, that customer lifetime value goes up, right? You have a customer for a year, you have a customer for two or three years, So the goal for all dispensaries and all cannabis brands out there listening is to get that customer not to shop just one time, But you have to get that customer back at least four to five more times and the way that you do that is through personalized messaging, SMS, through emails, through other customer touch points, loyalty programs, etc. So yeah, very very important.


EXHALE SOCIAL: You mentioned earlier that and we know there’s a very small profit margin when it comes to these dispensaries and products and things like that. I read a little bit on you, of course, and I know that you are focused on bringing in minority owned businesses into the fold because you feel that it will help sustain their business profitability, and all of those things. So for businesses that are exactly like you described, maybe they don’t have a budget for a marketer, they don’t have all of these things, which is why they would be looking for a product like yours, right? What makes your product affordable? How can this be sustainable to a business who does not have a lot of wiggle room? How do you make this happen for them?

KNOX: Number one, when we started building our product, we built it with dispensaries that have one to three, dispensaries in mind. That’s number one…but we do have partnerships with where we’re able to offer them 50% off. So if you’re a member of any BIPO can as well,  if you’re a member of any of these organizations, you’re able to get a discount, But in the event that you aren’t, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll work something out. If you’re a social equity dispensary and you’re just, kind of getting started and looking around. So, in short, we have special incentives in place for folks that look like us, for our Latino brothers and sisters, women, folks throughout the industry, to help them better compete.


EXHALE SOCIAL: Looking at the future of cannabis, we have a lot of states that are recreational and, adult use. But then we still have these states that are sticking to, they want this to be, a medical thing. Is your product able to integrate with those types of dispensaries? And if so, are you able to adapt with the changing requirements that the cannabis medical industry might be undergoing?

KNOX: Yes. we absolutely are able to integrate with dispensaries on the medical side of things and our tool is integrated within local state. So let me just back up a little bit.  One of the ways that we are training our model and we keep it updated, right, is to constantly be aware of new laws that are passed, new regulations on the local as well as on the state level. So our model is constantly updated with this new data. So whether you’re in a medical place like Florida, right, or even in Illinois where the market is a little bit smaller, it’s trained on that legislative text as well as local regulations.


EXHALE SOCIAL: With that in mind, this model in theory would it be able to take into account previously existing conditions, current medications, things like that? And I asked because, first of all, this is news to I don’t know if this is going to be a shocker to y’all, but I’m aware after going to a conference and talking a little bit with the nurse that there are certain conditions and medications that actually interact negatively with THC. So, I was wondering, how you’re going to address things like that even from a legal standpoint.

KNOX: And that’s absolutely a good question. So, our tool is one of the only tools that would even come close to allowing a dispensary a brand to do that, So, if you’re checking out and you’re using Smokey AI, when you’re chatting with our tool, when you’re giving Smokey your preferences, your recommendations, you can totally 100% let him know I have, different interactions with this particular tarpine or this particular cav canabonoid. but I think you bring up something that’s very poignant, right? I think that we probably need to have something specific for just that feature, in that, we’ve had cases and we’ve heard feedback from folks that have tried a certain strain and had adverse reactions, the problem is it’s tough to do that from r to producer, right? because if I’m a grower and I’m growing runs, right, the ingredients and the chemicals and the stuff that I use to grow for my particular grow is not going to be the same as the next grow, and that’s one of the things that we’re working at, We’re working to get transparency into what’s actually going in this stuff because that was ironically one of the ways that the company got started.

KNOX CONTINUES: I went in to see a bud tender, got a bad strain, and it was like, wait a minute. You guys don’t know really, you’re just recommend strains, right? It’s not really based on anything. But again, that’s also a bit of science, right? I don’t think we’re quite there yet because of the federal laws, but we need to do more research into, how do certain cannabinoids and terpernes interact with other drugs.

EXHALE SOCIAL: I think even just something as simple as a prompt: “Have you discussed your medications and the fact that you’re taking cannabis with your doctor?” to kind of just put that into their hands…So, I’m just interested to see how that develops as far as warnings and guidelines and things like that. Because I haven’t seen it yet at all. And I was super surprised to hear that there was something that could actually cause someone to die from a THC interaction, right, with a specific drug. And it’s not many drugs. I’m not trying to scare y’all, but definitely check your medications and make sure it’s not one of the things listed.


EXHALE SOCIAL: Where do you see BakedBot AI being in 10 years?—and without us having to sign an NDA or anything like that, you can be as broad as you’d like.

KNOX: This is one of my favorite questions to answer, because I think it involves us, being able to be a little bit imaginative, But there’s also a lot of truth there in everything that I’m about to say, right?  So, if we were looking out 10 years from now, right, Bakebot and Smokey, right, our flagship product, our AI agent, right? You’re able to tell Smokey, “Hey, go find me an indica for the best price, You literally just send Smokey finds the dispensary, Orders it, checks out, all you do is go pick it up. But since we’re 10 years in the future, maybe you don’t even have to pick it up, Maybe it’s able to get delivered to you no matter where you are, right?

KNOX: But the fact of the matter is people won’t be going to websites, right, and digging through individual strains. They’ll be relying on agents like Smokey, right? Not just for cannabis shopping, right, but for all kinds of shopping, you want a pizza? Guess what? The agent already understands who your favorite, pizza company is, the wait is longer than two hours. We know who your second favorite pizza company is, And they’ll just go ahead and place that order, right?  So when we live in a world like that, what does that mean for dispensaries, What does that mean for brands, Some of the things that we seen right when Google came on the set, And essentially you had a search engine in between, whatever you wanted to get to. This will be similar. There will be agents. Millions, perhaps even billions at a time, In between you and whatever it is you want to get to.

EXHALE SOCIAL: It’s living efficiently. And that’s definitely a world that I want to live in. Imagine this agent being able to know that it’s Wednesday and your mother-in-law is coming to visit, So, it makes sure that it puts in an order for you early in the day to keep you chill. Like that type of intelligence, the type that picks up on bio feedback even. I can’t wait till something like that is integrated with our cannabis orders.

KNOX: We’re building it and we’re intent on owning the future and being a part of it, So everything that we spoke about, right, I would not even say it’s 10 years off, Literally, that’s probably three, four years off.  the tech is here to do a lot of this stuff. I think that what’s not there, right, is humans being able to feel like, we can rely on AI to do a lot of stuff, Especially since models still do hallucinate, so companies like us, right, over time, they’ll give folks, the confidence to know hey, AI is safe and not necessarily a bad thing. A hammer can be a bad thing, right?


EXHALE SOCIAL: So I know we’ve been talking theoretically a little bit just now but I want to bring it into the present moment. So can you share some case studies or some stories with us success stories for businesses that you have worked with? What does the success actually look like?

KNOX: So one of the ventures we work with is Ultra Cannabis in Detroit. They deployed our bud tender, our headless menu as well as our analytics agent and for the first 90 days of working with them we were able to boost their organic traffic by 3X right we automated 85% of all the marketing stuff that they were doing right so creating the emails segmenting those campaigns  And also our budtender closed 50 new orders during that 90-day period. So we were able to get 50 checkouts through Smokey. So when we started working with Ultra Cannabis they had virtually no traffic. They had no, web presence because they were using an iframe and some products weren’t being crawled by Google. When we were able to implement our headless menu, we were able to drive that first 90 days over 300 new search sessions. So that’s, people searching for strains, runts near me, white rhino on 8 mile, right? So we were able to capture a good portion of that traffic. and where they’re located on 8 mile road in Detroit is a very very competitive area, right? So there are, other local dispensaries all around, so to come in and capture that market share within 90 days we feel like we’ve been able to demonstrate value there.

EXHALE SOCIAL: Absolutely. Its just opening a shop, I stress to my clients and anyone I talk to about this, opening your door does not bring people in, it’s not a sustainable model, especially when you have the competition that we have right now. And this comes to any business. So yes, platforms like Baked Bot AI are super important. I love that you guys are, doing the groundwork of making sure that you’re getting in touch with the businesses who really need it.


EXHALE SOCIAL :So, Now let’s say there’s a business out there they’re watching this, they want to get in touch, they’d like to learn more about it. What can they do to find out more about BakedBot AI?

KNOX: A couple ways. You can visit our website, a bakedbot.ai. you can go right to the sign up button there and you’ll be able to sign up. It’s free. We have a plan as well as 60 days free for you to explore and kind of get familiar with our tool. The other way is you can reach out to me or Jack on LinkedIn or via email. We’re open and looking forward to working with new folks.


Watch the full interview for an in depth look at this week’s EXHALE Social PRO: BakedBot AI.


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