Uber Eats Drizly
First Postmates, and now Drizly. Uber really is becoming that logistics company we all thought it could be. Here’s the interesting part. With Uber’s acquisition of Drizly they have effectively increased their marketshare by nearly 22% in the alcohol delivery space. The best part is we should have seen it coming
←Take a look, pre-Postmates acquisition Uber represented a sizable chunk of the food-delivery marketplace and instead of spending marketing dollars on brand awareness campaigns, subsidized delivery they choose the more expensive, but more effective route — just buy marketshare.
While Doordash still is the king-pin here, Uber Eats is attempting to do what we have seen Amazon do to businesses and marketplaces for a decade now; enter the marketplace through acquisition, and apply the strategy of lower margins and scale.
The oxygen in the room for other companies to compete is now gone.
Uber, has just done the same thing with the alcohol delivery marketplace. Disclaimer: Charts below are inaccurate! It’s really difficult to get an apples / apples take here as the data is all over the place. A lot more companies delivery alcohol: Wine.com, Instacart, Walmart.com, etc.. but I wanted to see the impact of the acquisition in the pure alcohol space and not combined with grocery, and not a retailer themselves.
But to be fair, I did include on-premise delivery of Alc. companies as that was the business that Uber Eats operated. I’m trying to paste together why this made strategic sense beyond acquiring a company that can really use the capital and expertise that Uber has.
← Ok so the companies that I figured were in direct competition in the alc delivery space: Drizly, Postmates (Uber), Minibar, Wine.com, Doordash, Postmates, Saucy.
Again full disclosure these data points are not accurate and are a blend of a few different sources via google, but it’s the best I could do and it’s really to illustrate a point. I’m sure Robbobank alc. insight team will give you accurate numbers in short order.
So, my hunch is with the acquisition of Drizly, Uber just became one of, if not the biggest player in the alc delivery space.
So far Uber has acquired companies in on-premise food delivery & pure play alc. delivery. Do we see them looking into convenience next? Drizly already has “snacks” you can order along with your beverages — is Uber seeing an opportunity outside of grocery? Own convenience (snacks, beer, fast food) or is this simply a way to eat up the largely ignored and underserved portion of the market until they reach a critical mass then move with strength into grocery? who knows but it’s interesting to think about.
