Drizly: Everything you need to know about the Alcohol Delivery Giant

It’s Friday night and your friends invited themselves to your house for a party, you know it’ll be a long party as the weekend is just commencing. You go to your kitchen and don’t find any drinks. This is where apps like Drizly come in handy. Drizly is basically a tech intermediary that enables liquor stores to deliver the Liquor to their customers. It does not sell or deliver alcohol to consumers that is the reason it proudly calls itself a tech intermediary.

Alcohol consumption has become a staple for almost every party. With this growing customer base of tipplers who want to relax over the weekends and leave the exhaustion of working from Monday to Friday behind. Drizly helps you by delivering the alcohol directly to your doorstep and solves the pain of going to buy the same.

About Drizly

Simply put Drizly is a marketplace that connects people with Liquor stores near them to get the desired alcohol/drink delivered to their doorstep just by doing some simple swipes on the customer app. The more the number of people grows on the app looking for alcohol delivery the more liquor stores get interested in signing up on the app to increase their revenue. Founded by Nick Rellas and Cory Rellas in Boston in the year 2012.  It has been growing its customer base and seller network rapidly. Presently the app has a seller network of more than 3000 liquor stores spread across the USA and Canada.

According to the reports by Crunchbase. Drizly has gone through 9 rounds of funding and has raised a total of $ 119.6Mn with 31 investors and 4 lead investors. It has also acquired a start-up Buttery.

The alcohol beverage market was valued at $1493 Bn in the year 2017. It is expected to reach $1684 Bn by 2025 showing a growth of 2% CAGR from 2018-25. According to the reports by Allied Market Research.  The growth is expected to be more exponential due to pandemics raising the stress levels and increasing alcohol consumption among the people. This makes the alcohol industry a Low-Risk High-Reward industry. The people who invested in the industry early on have already gained huge returns and the demand for the drink has been increasing exponentially.

How Drizly like apps work?

Drizly allows customers to order their fav. Alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks with simple clicks on their customer app. It has 2 parties customers and business .i.e. Liquor stores. It provides a convenient platform for both parties to function.

In order to make it possible, the app follows very simple steps:

1. The customer goes on the apps and places an order for their favorite drinks.
2. The app then sends the notification to the nearest available stores which take care of the fulfillment of the order and the delivery.
3. The customer gets regular updates on their app with notifications and gives them the ability to track their orders.

Drizly is an intermediary between the liquor stores and customers, streamlining the efforts ordering and fulfillment. Since the order fulfillment is taken care of by the stores they do not need any special licenses and thus they call themselves tech intermediaries. 

The reason why Drizly is popular with stores is that it does not take a commission on every order. It rather takes a monthly membership fee. It also plays the role of an advertiser for the liquor store by providing them with a larger audience. The reason it is popular with the customers is because of the stringent quality tests for the stores to get them listed.

Business Model

Drizly is not like other delivery services it does not sell its own alcohol and neither does it have its own delivery fleet. It is a unique concept that only provides the customers with an app to place orders and the liquor stores with technology to fulfill the orders. It is more like an advertising platform for the liquor stores that provides them with more orders. For customers, it offers them an extensive range of alcoholic beverages at reasonable prices.

Revenue Model

We are clear on how Drizly works and the business model it uses. Let us understand on what is the major sources of revenue Drizly has. The main source of revenue for Drizly is the monthly membership charges. It takes a fee from the Liquor store to become a delivery partner. It does not take any commission from the liquor store. I this manner, it stays out of the alcohol delivery business while managing to provide customers with unbeatable offers.

It also has a proprietary age verification framework which it offers to other companies for monetization purposes.

Drizly also applies a service fee on orders which cover any cost associated with developing and maintaining its products and services.

Not only this, but Drizly also earns by offering advertising space on the platform and by selling aggregated user data to other companies and brands.

Is Drizly Sustainable?

Drizly has almost all the characteristics of a successful business. But, maintaining scale in all the cities is a challenge. The alcohol Delivery business is not a winner takes all business and can be copied by a determined competitor.  Since Drizly depends upon the liquor stores for fulfillment in different cities like uber it is also a clustered network. It can be copied in a single market or large market with multiple liquor fulfillment stores without too much work.

The only line of defense Drizly has is its data and ability to create the best-in-class experience for its customers. While it is a clustered network the data provides Drizly an edge over the competitors. It can draw the best insights to create hyper-personalized recommendations.

How is Drizly Unique?

Drizly offer best-in-class features to the stores and customers that the rest of the industry is still trying to perfect, some of which are:

1. Smart and Elegant UI: Drizly’s application offers simple and easy to use Ui and UX which helps customers to navigate through the app easily. It also offers features such as filters and product search that make it easier for the customer to purchase the desired product.
2. Insights from Customer Data: Drizly being an old player and having first movers advantage has an edge over the customer data which it uses to give out hyper-personalized offers and preferences to the customers.
3. Wide Array of Listing: The on-demand alcohol delivery app has more than 2000 products on the platform, offering a wide range of products at the most affordable prices.
4. Quality Checks on Stores: Drizly has very stringent quality checks to ensure the quality of products being delivered to the customers. These quality checks are done before a store becomes the partner and joins the platform.

In order to get started with a similar model of Drizly do check with your local offices for the laws you’ll have to comply with.

How can Yelo help you achieve your alcohol delivery start-up goals?

Yelo offers you all the industry-leading features you require to get started with an app like Drizly. We have an end-to-end solution that helps you take care of customers and stores in a single place. Yelo enables your customers with mobile applications having smart and simple UI and UX which encourages them to make a purchase decision.

We also have merchant apps that your stores can use to list and fulfill orders on your platforms. Efficient tax management also helps you with calculating taxes automatically and makes your customers aware of the same.

We also boast a plethora of payment gateway integrations providing your customers with a smooth transaction experience. Along with a wide range of 3rd party add-ons enabling you to take on any challenge that the industry has to offer.

Also, read – 8 best alcohol delivery apps