Rapid grocery service Zapp adds £5k Romanée-Conti, Petrus and Domaine Armand Rousseau to range

London premium delivery service Zapp has added rare vintages of Romanée-Conti, Pétrus, and Gevry-Chambertin Grand Cru Domaine Armand Rousseau to its range, which customers can have delivered to their door within 20 to 30 minutes – for around £,3000-£5,5000 a pop.

The company was founded in 2020 as one of the new breed of rapid grocery delivery apps to offer an ‘on-demand’ approach to retail, catering for a wealthy clientele who want to order online and have an immediate delivery of wines that are ready-to-drink.

The new additions are a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands Echezeaux Grand Cru 2009 (RRP: £3,499.99), Château Pétrus Pomerol 2000 (RR: £5,499.99) and Chambertin Grand Cru Domaine Armand Rousseau 2009 (RRP: £4,499.99). The service is also stocking the rare Clase Azul Ultra (RRP: £2,649.99), of which there are only 100 bottles worldwide.

Although it has been selling wines since it started up to the £1,000 mark – often of limited releases or small parcels of “something exceptional” as well as Jeroboams “in quite large quantities” – this is the first time it has sold anything above £5,000, Zapp’s head of fine wines & spirits, Dan Whine told db.

Speaking to the drinks business, he explained that Zapp’s point of difference, particularly in the fine wine space, was in offering an on-trade experience, rather than following the well-trodden path of traditional wine retail.

“What I’m trying to offer is a sommelier experience,” Whine explained. His ten years experience in the restaurant sector with the Conrad Group, followed by roles at Liberty Wine, Borough Wine and more recently, as head of buying and operations at Petersham Cellars gives the appropriately named Whine great insight for the role.

“We’re driven much more by what’s going on in the on-trade, so it is quite often a continuation or replication of that experience – people go out to a nice restaurant or they go to a member’s club, and they see something they like and go ‘I’d like to have that at home’,” he said.

The company claims that its on-demand approach is “fundamentally changing how these rare vintage wines are bought and sold”, by catering to consumers who value the convenience of ordering online for immediate delivery, rather than focusing on in-store experiences or long-term purchases. For example, more than 50% of its beer, wine, and spirits category is dedicated to premium items, with names including Antinori, Gaja, Château Mouton-Rothschild, and Opus One.

He says that while it’s very easy to get hold of current and more recent vintages, its value to its growing customer base lay in being able to offer something unique that is drinking well is quite unique. “You really only get that experience in the restaurant.”

“It’s all about what our customers want, so we’re listening and interacting with our customers and listening to what they want. Our list is made up pretty much exclusively of customer requests.”

He has previously said that data analytics forms a key part of this, with wines that people are searching for informing what to stock. It also allows it to forge close relationships with its growing customer database – which are London-based, predominantly higher income young professionals and  parents – around 57% of its customers are aged between 20 and 30 and female, Whine notes. Growth has largely come through word of mouth, although there was a large marketing campaign when the company started.

Zapp’s list is made up of around 200 wines – around half at the £50 sweet spot – many of which have been sourced direct from the negociants, and it it is keen to forge   “As a result, we some of the largest allocation in the UK, in Europe on particular fine wines,” Whine notes, but the team is “very dynamic” in its selection, with changes made all the time. Looking forward, Whine says it will focus more on limited edition or limited release parcels.

With backing from renowned investors such as Formula One legend Sir Lewis Hamilton, Lightspeed, 468 Capital, BroadLight Capital, Atomico, Burda, and Vorwerk Ventures (Sky News reported that the Singaporean state’s Government Investment Corp (GIC) was also an investor, although Zapp would not confirm this with db), it has raised considerable investment, but Whine notes that it has been profitable for the last 18 months.

Turnover has tripled in the last and Zapp claims to have become London’s largest independent retailer of beers, wines spirits “in general but certainly on the premium end”, Whine told db. As yet figures aren’t available for the latest financial year, however according to accounts filed at Companies House for the group behind Zapp, Quick Commerce Ltd, showed turnover for the year to December 2022 was £28.9 million, up from £11.5million in December 2021 (although .

Following its launch on Uber-Eats and Deliveroo at the end of Q4 2022, there had been “extremely strong traction” through the channel, the accounts statement said, a trend that “has developed throughout 2023”.

Whine remains confident that the company will continue to grow in the same way that it has done so far. “In the world of BWS, it’s a very unique offering what we have. There isn’t much competition in what we do and yes, volume is really important to us and growth is really important to us, but my vision for the category is really to start to offer more and more of this kind of sommelier led experience.”

“What I really like to do is offer a very wide range of especially on the fine wine side of things, of exceptional vintages, things that are drinking really well at the moment and start to capitalise even more on that on-trade off-trade [model] that I’ve talked about.”

“We are confident the next year the next three years, we will continue to grow and become London’s biggest alcohol retailer on the biggest online retailer.”