Get your alcohol on demand under 30 minutes (in London) with Bevy

There are some startups looking to save your life, and then there are startups that just want you to live your best life — assuming that best life involves alcohol delivery. As the on-demand economy grows ever more demanding, there’s one startup in London that is rising to the challenge. Meet Bevy, branded as your beverage butler, which promises “alcohol and more delivered to your door in under 30 minutes.” And with availability lasting until 5 a.m., Bevy understands your party style, and is here to keep things going until the wee hours of the morning.

An app truly designed for the revelers of the 21st century, the app has no minimum spend requirement and promises fast delivery times. You can even keep tabs on where your liquor (or other deliveries) are en route by way of its GPS tracking technology. And as for those “other deliveries,” it’s what you might expect from a party-centric company — you can use Bevy to order mixers, tobacco, vape products, and yes, condoms.

While Bevy currently operates solely in the U.K. (for now), its founders say that it was the success of similar startups like Minibar and Saucey in the U.S. that inspired them to begin their own ventures across the pond.

“The success of similar apps in the U.S. was hugely validating for us,” Marco Saio, co-founder of Bevy, told TechCrunch. “Typically alcohol is hard to purchase in-store after 1 a.m. in the States, so if we hit a market where purchases can be made 24 hours a day, then we have the ability to democratize alcohol around the clock and feed instant gratification at any hour.”

To really set its service apart, Bevy ensures that it’s offering something a bit different — namely in the form of “butlers,” or the drivers who ultimately are responsible for delivering your goods. They’re dressed as one might expect, and in an effort to push for responsible (or at least legal) drinking, the butlers also ask for ID once they arrive at their destination.

“Although the U.S. is well acquainted with various late-night alcohol delivery apps, our model is the first to maintain complete management of a driver network in addition to shifting responsibility of direct sales to the retailer. We spend significant resources on drivers who are put through months of training before being allocated to one single store to purchase goods,” Saio said. “This means we can operationally deliver within half the time of other convenience apps. By putting store inventories online we simultaneously avoid licensing issues and distribution risk.”

Bevy still isn’t as ubiquitous as it would like to be in Britain, though it does have a presence in wealthier neighborhoods like Kensington, Chelsea, and Westminster.

“We are laser focused on London as our first location and intend to solidify our position within the market before expansion,” Saio told TechCrunch. “Manchester is potentially a second location due to the supply landscape and availability of 24-hour retailers. The major challenge will be digitizing store operations and inventory management systems. We’re working towards a light switch activation system to instantly pull store inventories into one directory.”

And with growth averaging 55 percent month over month and revenue increasing 40 percent every month, it looks like the future of Bevy could be bright.

from Planet GS via John Jason Fallows on Inoreader http://ift.tt/24I0Yzi
Lulu Chang