‘All good things must come to an end,’ says Drizly as closure confirmed

Following weeks of speculation, Uber has confirmed it will dissolve US alcohol delivery service Drizly, which it acquired in 2021, into its Uber Eats platform.

Alcohol delivery business Drizly will be folded into its parent company, Uber, this spring.

Having acquired Drizly for US$1.1 billion in 2021, Uber has confirmed that the former will be absorbed into its Uber Eats platform due to “overlaps” between the two.

“Turns out, it’s true what they say… all good things must come to an end,” Drizly said in a statement.

The announcement came as a shock to many in the trade, given the tremendous success that Drizly enjoyed during the Covid-19 pandemic when its sales skyrocketed by 350% (between 2019 and 2020) due to consumers being locked down and unable to visit bricks-and-mortar stores to buy booze.

Uber has revealed it plans to shut down the service, close its Boston headquarters and merge it with its Uber Eats arm in the coming months, with more than 150 jobs at risk.

“After three years of Drizly operating independently within the Uber family, we’ve decided to close the business and focus on our core Uber Eats strategy of helping consumers get almost anything — from food to groceries to alcohol — all on a single app,” said Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, Uber’s senior vice president of delivery.

When it first launched in 2012, Drizly’s business model was to partner with “thousands of retailers and suppliers to help them to reach new customers, tap into key market and customer insights, and diversify their business to grow sales.”

Following the announcement concerning the dissolution, Liz Paquette, senior director (brand) for Drizly, wrote on Linked In:

“It’s incredibly hard to put these last five years into words. Perhaps I’ll be more eloquent on another day… I do want to express how unbelievably grateful I am for it all. To every person I had the honour of working with here. To my remarkably passionate, talented, and kind team who made me better everyday. To every lesson learned, every mistake turned into opportunity, every ridiculous idea, every laugh (and cry), every moment made. I wouldn’t recognise me before I was here.

“In reading and reflecting on all of our customers’ responses to the news, on all the write-ups on what Drizly was, there’s one thing I know for sure: we did the damn thing. We built a brand that people love. I am so, so proud.”

So what happens now?

Orders will remain open at Drizly until the end of March, with the delivery service reassuring consumers it will be “shutting down slowly”.

After this point, the full Drizly drinks selection will be transferred over to Uber Eats.

Read the full Drizly statement, released on social media, below.

The similarity between the services offered by Drizly and Uber Eats is not the only factor that contributed to Drizy being wound up.

A cyber security issue is also rumoured to have played a role in its fate.

In 2020, the company revealed that a systems hack had exposed personal information belonging to an estimated 2.5 million users, with the Federal trade Commission (FTC)  subsequently finding that flawed technology with the Drizly app had led to the data breach.

Following the gaffe, the FTC imposed limitations on the consumer information that Drizly was allowed to store about its customers.

The investigation concluded after Uber had acquired Drizly in 2021 and may have been one element in its decision to merge it with Uber Eats.