Walk into Unplug Cannabis Co. and you won’t hear “sativa” or “indica.” You’ll hear Uplift and Unwind — and a budtender ready to explain the terpenes behind them.
Key takeaways
- 4 vendors → 1 ecosystem: POS, e-commerce, payments and loyalty now run on one platform.
- Online orders up: from single digits a week to 3–4 a day, mostly from regulars.
- Zero fraud attempts since switching to BLAZEPAY, down from 6+ stolen-card orders.
- Instant menu updates: product changes go live online the moment they’re made in the POS.
- Loyalty everywhere: one profile and points balance, in store and online.
Unplug’s tech stack
While most Ottawa dispensaries compete on price and THC, Unplug leans into health and wellness: oils, tinctures, a tea-infuser category and minor cannabinoids like CBG, THCV and CBC. Each store — downtown and in suburban Orléans — runs its own menu, and a customer request can turn into a case split between locations.
That model depends on clean product data, flexible merchandising and loyalty that rewards trying something better. For years, Unplug’s tech stack made all three harder.
The challenge: four vendors, zero sync
Greenline POS has been Unplug’s point of sale for five years. But when Omar took over operations three years ago, everything else was bolted on: one vendor for the online menu, another for loyalty and SMS, a third for payments.
“I had three separate softwares going on at the same time talking to each other,” he says — before remembering the payment processor made it four.
The friction was constant. A product renamed in Greenline could take a day or two to reach the website, or never sync at all. Online receipts dropped the format, leaving budtenders to guess from the price whether a customer bought the 14 g bag or which capsule pack.
The US-built menu platform added its own problems: “quarters” and “eighths” instead of Canadian formats, effect claims Ontario retailers can’t make and, eventually, per-store pricing billed in USD. “Even with the deal, it’s unfeasible,” Omar says.
Loyalty meant building every discount twice — once in the loyalty platform, again in the POS. And fraud was a real cost: at least six stolen-card orders on expensive, full-price product, usually discovered when the real cardholder called from out of town.
The solution: one ecosystem
When BLAZEPAY launched alongside BLAZE ECOM, Omar saw his opening.
“I want one ecosystem. If I want to update one thing, I just want it done straight away — and not have to double-check or log in to three other things too.”— Omar, Operations, Unplug Cannabis Co.
He brought it to Unplug’s owner, who asked why they’d still need a separate loyalty platform. “We don’t,” Omar told him. They cancelled the add-ons and moved everything onto Greenline POS, BLAZE ECOM and BLAZEPAY.
Greenline POS + BLAZE ECOM: one source of truth
Now, when a shipment arrives, Omar creates products in Greenline once. Names, formats and prices flow instantly to the website and onto receipts. He even adds minor-cannabinoid ratios to product names in the POS, and they display the same way online — no stray spaces or missing numbers. Merchandising is on Unplug’s terms too: categories sort newest-first, so fresh drops lead instead of a single featured brand.
Integrated loyalty: one profile everywhere
With integrated loyalty, customers use one profile in store and online, and staff can see every order, every point redeemed and which store it happened at. Points never expire, and Omar excludes the deepest rewards from thin-margin formats like ounces and 14 g bags — so even a budtender mistake can’t slip below margin.
BLAZEPAY: fraud signals before release
Alerts give the team a name, card details and profile history to review before an online order is released. “At least you give all the info for me to decide,” Omar says. “Before, it would just be a credit card and a name.”
The results
From browsers to regulars
On the old menu, a weekly report might show seven online orders downtown and five in Orléans. Today Unplug sees three or four online orders a day — mostly from regulars. Even shoppers who don’t check out online use the menu to build a list before they walk in.
The biggest driver is loyalty, now online for the first time. It powers Unplug’s education pitch: shoppers use points to bring a premium organic product down to their usual price — and taste the difference.
“They can literally log into the website, have their profile with the loyalty, and use the loyalty online now.”— Omar, Operations, Unplug Cannabis Co.
Fraud stopped cold
Since switching to BLAZEPAY, Unplug hasn’t had a single fraud attempt. The only flag was a legitimate customer who’d signed up with a hidden Apple email — and the alert gave the team enough detail to hold the order and have her pay in store.
Five years in
The transition took a few days of back-and-forth, and the stores never stopped running. Support has been just as smooth: refunds, delayed payments and double charges get sorted in a quick chat. “It could be done in a couple of minutes now,” Omar says.
Next up: richer cannabinoid profiles on the menu, giving an education-first retailer even more ways to help customers find what works for them.
“You guys have been great since day one. I wanted the ecosystem — and it’s been fine since.”— Omar, Operations, Unplug Cannabis Co.
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