Following a successful trial that took place earlier this spring, restaurant delivery startup Deliveroo is expanding into alcohol delivery. The London-headquartered company has launched a wine and beer delivery service in the UK in partnership with Majestic Wines, and BrewDog, and a host of independent and other wine merchants across the country.
The new product, we’re told, works in the same way as Deliveroo’s existing restaurant food delivery service. Partnering alcohol merchants are provided with a tablet computer and the startup’s app from which they can receive and process orders, which are then picked up and delivered by nearby members of Deliveroo’s motorbike and push-bike fleet. An average delivery time of 20 minutes is promised.
In this way, the move to add alcohol delivery to the startup’s existing food delivery service, thus making greater use of its existing fleet/delivery infrastructure, feels a lot like picking off low-hanging fermented fruit, especially as Deliveroo’s investors (both existing and future backers) will be demanding continued (and exponential) growth.
Or perhaps it’s simply a convenient way for the company to raise a glass to the recent launch of Uber’s competing UberEats restaurant delivery service in London or Amazon’s rumoured UK entry.
I jest, of course, but one startup that almost certainly won’t be celebrating is London’s Bevy, a sort of ‘Uber for booze’ that promises to let you order various alcoholic drinks, along with cigarettes and late night snacks, for local same-hour delivery.