New booze app eyes up national roll out

An app that brings booze to your door within 20 minutes of ordering is hoping to extend its reach across London within six months, before targeting other cities.

Bevy drinks app promises late night wine delivery in 20 minutes

On-demand booze delivery app Bevy soft-launched on the Apple Store three weeks ago, and is available in six London boroughs – Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Wandsworth and Lambeth. But the brains behind it, Marco Saio,  Kevin Kovar and Guy Kemball-Williams, are determined to see it roll out across zones 1 and 2, a move that will benefit independents and off-licences, they argue.

The company has partnered with 15 independent off-licences, small chains and retailers across central London who are looking for ways to extend their reach, maximize sales and reach new customers.

“Typically they are British corners stores who are getting squeezed out and losing around 1% market share a year,” Saio told the drinks business. “They all admitted they were thinking about doing something digital, but were are able to leap-frog the likes of the big retailers who only do scheduled or next day deliveries.”

Currently, only four of the retailers are “active” in supplying customers via the app, with the remainder set to come on-stream as the service establishes itself across the capital.

“We want to nail down our service before we scale up, but we also want to move quickly and be anywhere people are looking at the app,” Saio said.

The app detects the nearest store to the shopper, based on GPS and pulls in the prices and products in store. Bevy is working with retailers to develop faster inventory management systems to make it easier to pull in the product data which is currently a more manual process. Around 300 products are already listed, but the choice available to shopper is obviously it is dependent on the stock of the nearest retail partner.

The overall wine selection is “robust”, Saio says, and includes some exclusive and new brands. Prices for wine start at £10 rising to around £50 for higher-end, premium wines, although the most expensive product is an Armand de Brignac Ace of Spades champagne at £300.

“We’re identifying the most popular products and encouraging retailers to consider stocking these, and help them test new products,” Saio told db. “It is a selection that caters for different demographics. We’re trying to be very local and very tribal.”

The minimum order is £15, which includes a £5 delivery fee required to sustain a fleet of ‘Bevy Butlers’ who pick up and deliver the wine at any time between 8pm and 6am – and who also check for id. “The rule is no id, no delivery,” Saio points out.

The app has taken a year to come to fruition and draws on Saio’s background as an UK country manager and international export manager for the HotelTonight app, which curated a list of last minute hotel deals by area.