Alcohol-Delivery App Drizly Doubles VC Haul with $34M Funding Round

Booze delivery app Drizly has raised $34.6 million in a new funding round, according to regulatory filings, nearly doubling the total venture capital the company has taken in since its 2012 founding.

The Boston-based company—which operates an online marketplace for beer, wine, and liquor that’s delivered to customers’ doors—closed its last funding in February 2017 with a $2 million boost from Polaris Partners, tacking the sum onto a $15 million Series B funding round announced in 2016.

Drizly did not immediately return a request for comment on the new investment, which was detailed in a document filed with the SEC Tuesday.

The alcohol-delivery niche has its share of startup and big-company operators. Businesses like Thirstie, HipBar—an India-based startup within liquor giant Diageo (NYSE: [[ticker:DEO]])—and Minibar have set up similar on-demand platforms, while Amazon (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMZN]]) has started delivering booze in some markets.

In July, Drizly acquired alcohol e-commerce startup and competitor Buttery, noting that its backend technology and employees would be fully integrated into Drizly. At the time, Drizly said it operated in more than 100 North American markets and had raised $35 million from investors to date.

Drizly sells alcohol through a mobile app, and it partners with liquor stores, who hire drivers and process the transactions themselves. Drizly charges the stores a monthly fee for the service.

In late 2016, then-CEO Nick Rellas predicted Drizly could reach profitability by the middle of 2017, according to a conversation with Xconomy. Rellas’s cousin, Cory, was named chief executive in August.

Author: Brian Dowling

Brian is a former Xconomy editor. Before joining Xconomy, he reported on Massachusetts government and politics for the Boston Herald and previously wrote as a general assignment reporter covering everything from crime and courts to electoral politics, business, and international politics. Brian earned a master’s degree in newspaper writing from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and started his career at the Hartford Courant writing about manufacturing and energy. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Theology from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.