Booze delivery startup Thirstie is adding a new twist to its model — it’s working directly with alcohol brands, starting with Dom Pérignon, to offer on-demand delivery.
When we wrote about Thirstie back in 2015, the startup allowed consumers to buy alcohol from nearby stores that already made deliveries. Co-founder and CEO Devaraj Southworth said Thirstie will continue to offer this consumer service (where it competes with other startups like Minibar). But his focus has shifted elsewhere.
“We set off on a slightly different strategy, looking at a more enterprise or B2B solution,” Southworth said. “A lot of it had to do with capital efficiency” — rather than launching expensive marketing campaigns to attract consumers, Thirstie can leverage the name recognition of a brand like Dom Pérignon.
In this case, Dom Pérignon is testing out a service where consumers (starting in New York and Miami) should be able to order a bottle directly from the Dom Pérignon website and get it delivered within an hour.
“A continuation of the Moët Hennessy USA ambition of innovation in the market, the launch of a 1-hour luxury delivery service for Dom Pérignon presents a new avenue in which to delight the Dom Pérignon consumer, in the on-demand and immediate world they live in,” said Dom Pérignon vice president Jorge Cosano in the announcement.
Southworth said Thirstie built the underlying e-commerce platform powering these transactions, while fulfillment gets handled by stores in the Thirstie network.
He added that while Thirstie partners don’t mind the additional sales, the real benefit is in the data, which could allow brands to better measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and understand consumer taste. Eventually, he suggested brands could even follow the “Netflix model” and “create new product offerings based on the data.”