The USA’s largest e-commerce alcohol marketplace has been bought by Uber Technologies for US$1.1 billion, according to a press release.
Drizly has been designed to be fully compliant with local regulations from 1,400 cities across the majority of the USA. The company works with thousands of local merchants to provide consumers with a large selection of beer, wine and spirits with competitive, transparent pricing, claims Drizly.
After the completion of the transaction, Drizly will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Uber. Drizly’s marketplace will eventually be integrated with the Uber Eats app, while also maintaining a separate Drizly app.
Drizly plans to innovate and expand independently in its fast-growing and competitive sector, while also gaining access to the advanced mobile marketplace technologies of the world’s largest food delivery and ridesharing platform. Merchants on Drizly will be able to benefit from Uber’s routing technology and significant consumer base.
“Wherever you want to go and whatever you need to get, our goal at Uber is to make people’s lives a little bit easier. That’s why we’ve been branching into new categories like groceries, prescriptions and, now, alcohol. By bringing Drizly into the Uber family, we can accelerate that trajectory by exposing Drizly to the Uber audience and expanding its geographic presence into our global footprint in the years ahead,” said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
While during the time of Covid-19 restrictions Drizly sounds like a great way to get your product into customers’ hands, according to Trustpilot, in the UK nearly 40 percent of Drizly customers are very unhappy with the service.