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Businesses Transportation

Uber Buying Booze Delivery Company Drizly For $1.1 Billion (axios.com) 45

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Uber on Tuesday announced an agreement to buy Drizly, a Boston-based alcohol delivery startup, for $1.1 billion in cash and stock. From a report: This could represent a strategic departure for Uber, in that Drizly doesn't hire delivery drivers itself. Instead, it provides the backend infrastructure for local liquor stores to provide their own delivery services. Drizly co-founder and CEO Cory Rellas is expected to remain with Uber in an executive role.
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Uber Buying Booze Delivery Company Drizly For $1.1 Billion More

Uber Buying Booze Delivery Company Drizly For $1.1 Billion

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  • This could represent a strategic departure for Uber, in that Drizly doesn't hire delivery drivers itself. Instead, it provides the backend infrastructure for local liquor stores to provide their own delivery services.

    That's really not much of a departure. Either way, the drivers aren't Uber employees. They could and probably will also give liquor store owners the option to either provide their own services, or use Uber drivers.

  • Uber weed delivery?
    • I don't think the marijuana laws in most states would allow such a middle man.

    • Seriously, you can wander down to Home Depot (wear ur mask!) and pick up an LED grow setup for a couple hundred bucks. Mail order seeds arrive in "discreet packaging" within a couple days. If you have a closet, you can have infinite weed for almost no cost, if you're not too much of a lazy stoner to get up at roughly the same time every day to water your plants.

      • I got a medical card for my state and the whole process was hilarious. Thanks to Covid you can do it by video chat now. The "doctor" I talked to was clearly lounging on a hotel room bed. It took all of 10 minutes. The company will even refund your money for the appointment if you are denied! Minutes after his submission I received an email from the state. Paid my fee and had the card in under a week. I never cared much for drinking but weed is much more pleasant.

        • Sounds like you got the best experience out of Late Stage Democracy.

          In my view, weed is great in the short term, but over time, the effects build up and tend to space people out of anything like reality.

          This is why so many crash and burn, or end up working for non-profits for $10 an hour while working on their mix tapes for two decades.

          • I think it's going to take people a couple decades to internalize the fact that something being legal doesn't mean it's good for you.
            • I think it's going to take people a couple decades to internalize the fact that something being legal doesn't mean it's good for you.

              Naw, man. You see, weed is all natural, unlike processed stuff like cocaine or meth. No additives or preservatives. Since it's all natural, it has to be good for you. Whoever heard of someone being hurt by something which is natural?

            • Good, time to get rid of alcohol then. It kills hundreds if not thousands daily.

              • I don't drink either. Partly because I was raised religious. But also I don't trust myself to not get hooked. I'm sure I am missing out on some degree of enjoyment and most likely wouldn't be an alcoholic, but then again I might, so why start now? That doesn't mean I think it should be outlawed.

            • It is made hard by the fact that we are used to government agencies banning anything deemed harmful to us. Get rid of the FDA and legal or decriminalized drugs become more of a possibility.

      • I know someone who did that. The weed came out terrible, borderline unsmokeable. Barely better than lighting one end of a hemp rope and putting the other end in your mouth. And I was hardly a weed snob, I almost never smoked anything better than Mexican brick weed.

        Grow Dank Weed With This One Weird Trick doesn't work. Great genetics don't do anything for you if your growing conditions aren't right, and there's a lot more to it than a water pail and a lamp. About the only thing you can use that weed for, bes

        • It's an easy plant to grow. If you are bad at growing plants, you may end up with issues. Even Mexican brick weed, if you can find an uncrushed seed, is not terrible if grown with moderate care. There's a reason they call it weed.

    • At least one city in Colorado is either looking at weed delivery or has approved it. Aurora, which for half the city is just a place you don't want to live!

    • MR. NICE GUY

  • Employee status aside for a moment, this was probably a very wise business decision.

    Sadly, the pandemic gave birth to a lot of alcoholics. Demand, will remain high.

    • Yeah, sure, pandemic might be a time when you want to have your booze delivered to you instead of going to the store yourself.

      But as soon as the pandemic wanes down several things become obvious.
      One, it's cheaper to cut out those middle men.
      Two, people start noticing the booze van constantly parked in front of your house - which can have various lifestyle consequences.
      From getting gently or not so gently pushed towards sobriety to being asked to move to even police dropping by from time to time cause neighb

      • Yeah, sure, pandemic might be a time when you want to have your booze delivered to you instead of going to the store yourself.

        But as soon as the pandemic wanes down several things become obvious. One, it's cheaper to cut out those middle men.

        You GROSSLY underestimate people's ability to be lazy. Drizy existed and justified itself well before a pandemic came along to reinforce that mentality.

        Two, people start noticing the booze van constantly parked in front of your house - which can have various lifestyle consequences.

        If the booze van is visiting that often and stopping long enough to be "parked" in front of your house, then the customer is likely too damn drunk to give a shit. Consequences have already happened. They don't care, like most alcoholics.

        From getting gently or not so gently pushed towards sobriety to being asked to move to even police dropping by from time to time cause neighbors keep calling in either on account of "disturbance" or "welfare check". Either case, number of customers might drop suddenly.

        And three... every booze delivery is a roll of dice whether the customer will cause trouble. And another, delayed, roll - whether there will be trouble related to the delivery LATER.

        It's kind of amazing the assuming you're doing here. It's almost as if an entire army of well-trained lawyers wouldn't

      • Two, people start noticing the booze van constantly parked in front of your house - which can have various lifestyle consequences. From getting gently or not so gently pushed towards sobriety to being asked to move to even police dropping by from time to time cause neighbors keep calling in either on account of "disturbance" or "welfare check".

        That is the dumbest goddamn thing I've read in awhile. Holy crap, man. Pull yourself together and check back into reality.

    • but with the bars closed a lot of the time (and if you're sane you're stay away) it means you're drinking at home or you're not drinking. As a soda drinker who can't get my preferred beverage (Caffeine Free Coke Zero) it's driving me nuts. The increased demand for canned beer means I can't get soda since there's an aluminum can shortage. Heck, I can't get anything caffeine free & diet except maybe plain 'ole diet coke (blech).

      • Seems like in their infinite wisdom, the soda companies have mostly shifted production to sugared (well more accurately, HFCS) products. It's fucking annoying.

  • Ride sharing. Booze sharing. What could possibly go wrong? Maybe it's time to start a prostitute delivery service; have all the bases covered.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Archer: Oh my God, you killed a hooker!
      Cyril: Call girl! She was a call girl!
      Archer: No, Cyril, when they're dead, they're just hookers!

      (As an example of what could go wrong.)

  • I guess this is what they mean by a service economy. No one in the first world will make everything, but we will all labor to provide luxury services to other people paying for them with credit card debt.

    • I'm fairly certain all of the booze being delivered is bottled in the good old U.S. of A. and outside of some products (e.g. Scotch whisky, Champagne, etc.) that have some kind of regional production requirements, will continue to be made locally because the cost of shipping them overseas is more expensive than producing them domestically.

      Because the first world has industrialized quite well, we don't need as much labor to produce the goods themselves or our labor has become too valuable to allocate towa

      • Or is it just more credit card, or displaced payments from something else?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        ...

        The flip side of what you're trying to argue and don't seem to recognize is that a lot of Americans are now wealthy enough that they can afford to have someone make their beer run for them. No one is forcing anyone to use this service, but that people do so of their own free will and will part with money to do so suggests it's something that's valued.

        The flip side is whether Americans are now wealthy enough to pay a living wage for booze delivery or if people are so desperate for money that they'll sacrifice their vehicle for a quick buck.

  • 1 BILLION for a local startup that delivers booze? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @11:34AM (#61019246)

    I'm telling you people, the bubble is about ready to burst at this point. The ridiculousness threshold has been crossed. Brace yourself for another 10 years of speculative invesment-fueled economic depression.

    • Come on, clearly there's money in it?

      Drizly has raised $85 million in venture capital since being founded in 2012.

      Well, there's 13 times less money in it than what they're paying for it but still...

      Or was that 61 times less?
      I have this weird feeling that whoever wrote that Axios article linked in the summary copied those venture capital funding numbers off of Drizly's old Wikipedia page - which used to claim $35 million in funding. To a post-it.
      Then, typing the "article" turned that $35 million post-it squiggle into $85 million.
      Which would be funny, if not for the fact that the arti

    • Yeah, I'm feeling like GME situation is the 2021 equivalent of the 1929 story about the shoeshine kid giving stock tips.

    • It's Uber that's buying them and they seem utterly allergic to making money, so I'm not surprised if they're shoveling another billion into the pit before torching it.
      • It's Uber that's buying them and they seem utterly allergic to making money,

        That's where I was going as well. Uber loses at least $1 billion each year, so where did they come up the money, any money, to buy this company for such an outrageous price? Even including Uber's worthless stock.
    • NEVER underestimate the power of alcohol

      In 2019, alcoholic beverage sales in the United States reached approximately 252.82 billion U.S. dollars.

  • maybe, maybe not (Score:3)

    by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @01:16PM (#61019706)
    We used to have alcohol deliver till the '70's when it ended. Kids would scam to get booze delivered and it ended. All this will take is a couple of lawsuites to end it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      Why not just have the delivery driver check people's drivers licenses/other IDs when they deliver the booze? It seems to work here in Australia.

  • For a company that already has problem with sexual harassment of it's employees, and sexual assault of its customers by drivers, where *else* to go but adding alcohol to the mix . . .

    hawk

  • Just a reminder that Google bought the whole of YouTube for $1.65 billion (which was considered a crazy amount of money back then, but turned out okay).

    But this current bubble is silly.

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