New York, USA (CU)_ Uber, the US-based transport and delivery services company, announced its plans to purchase the alcohol delivery service Drizly through a deal worth $1.1 billion, as apart of its plans to expand the company and to build up its portfolio of food and other delivery services. The ultimate aim is to incorporate Drizly’s beer, wine, and liquor marketplace into the current Uber Eats program, offering Uber clients an all-in-one shop for delivery of both food and drink. However, the current Drizly app will stick on.
Drizly is essentially an alcohol e-commerce platform for established local liquor stores. The business affiliates with local vendors and then enlists delivery drivers to manage the delivery, similar to Uber Eats. More than 1,400 cities throughout the United States use this service now. In recent months, though Uber has begun to sell off less lucrative parts of its business, this deal marks the latest delivery-focused move of Uber. As it aimed to be more successful, Uber sold off its autonomous vehicle and flying taxi divisions last year.
These moves followed Uber’s unsuccessful efforts to buy GrubHub last year, together with a profitable $2.65 billion purchase of Postmates over the summer. The company recently begun to venture into the distribution of on-demand groceries in Latin America and Canada and also extended its Uber Health service to add medicine delivery. The purchase of Drizly suits Uber’s rising delivery-focused strategy.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement, “[CEO Cory Rellas] and his amazing team have built Drizly into an incredible success story, profitably growing gross bookings more than 300 percent year-over-year. By bringing Drizly into the Uber family, we can accelerate that trajectory by exposing Drizly to the Uber audience and expanding its geographic presence into our global footprint in the years ahead.”
Although the company’s future projects such as self-driving cars and on-demand flying taxis seem profitable on paper, no real profitable products have resulted from either. As Uber’s travel services dropped in 2020 due to Covid crisis, the company’s delivery services shot up and remained bright on Uber’s ledger, rising massively, as the customers made more online orders. The deal between Uber and Drizly is expected to close in the first half of 2021. Uber said that it expects around 90% of the payment to Drizly stockholders to be made in Uber stock, with the remainder coming via cash. The deal is pending standard regulatory approval.
