We all think we know digital menus and it sounds like a pretty boring subject. With this blog series we hope we can change your mind about that.

Before I get into what's so interesting about our business and other blog posts on this site that explore the potential of digital menus in general, I would like  to give you a little background as to how we got here.

Oddly enough, this all started back before my sophomore year of high school on the baseball field. I was obsessed with baseball back then - it took up 7 hours of my day every day. I had even managed to represent the US in an international tournament, and participate in the Junior Olympics before my life was changed with an incurable affliction.

One day during a summer league ballgame while at bat, I was hit in the spine with a wild pitch and immediately collapsed. I'd had pains and soreness before that; after all, sports and injury are pretty synonymous with each other. But, after that day, my pain was never the same.

It got exponentially worse every month, then every week, then every day. I remember being in such excruciating pain that during one Emergency Room visit, the staff gave me a Percocet in the lobby not five minutes after I'd arrived. I never played baseball again, and that pill was the first in about 3 months worth of opioid dependence in an attempt to manage my constant pain. I lived like this for two years.

I was completely at the mercy of pain pills to get through each day. Until I discovered cannabis.

It completely changed my life. The excruciating pain became bearable, I was able to eat, and I had motivation again. I joined the New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program in October of 2016, and immediately began searching for the best medicine available. I had a lot of choice, but not a lot of information. I found over and over that dispensaries in town had menus that didn't actually tell me what I needed to know about my medicine, and had such small text that I could hardly read them- and that was affecting my quality of treatment. Now, if I was having trouble reading and understanding the menus, how would we expect the average medical cannabis user to be able to?

I was completely at the mercy of pain pills to get through each day. Until I discovered cannabis.

Now I want you to stop for a second and picture what you think of the average medical cannabis user.

The average medical cannabis user is over the age of 50. At age 20 (as of writing this), if I have trouble interpreting small text and confusing strain names how is a 50 year old medical patient with less than perfect eyesight supposed to? That is exactly why budboard is designed to be viewable from 25 feet away and show patients data that instantly communicates how their medicine will treat them.

Now, there's another side to this issue. Bad menus aren’t exactly a boon to the business that uses them either. Menus are mostly manually managed by already busy owners and managers. This translates to stressed out dispensary managers spending hours making menus that don't influence their customers.

For us, this is more than copying a menu to a simple digital board. This is about saving business owners time, empowering customers, and creating a user experience that is consistent online and in-store

This is where boardlink comes in.  Our device plugs into the back of any display, and gives dispensaries a beautiful, branded system that is easy to update and puts more data in front of the customer, empowering them to make better choices. Boardlink is driven by the budboard control application, which harnesses the power of an intuitive User Experience and User Interface to make managing menu data simple. Today, we are focusing on making boardlink better by upgrading to more powerful components. A better boardlink unit translates to better menus, and room for more advanced technology in every storefront.

For us, this is more than copying a menu to a simple digital board. This is about saving business owners time, empowering customers, and creating a user experience that is consistent online and in-store.

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Joshua Mallett

CEO and Chief Product Officer