5 ms·

Uber is closing alcohol delivery service Drizly three years after acquistion

51 points by itbeho 3y ago

nerdo 3y ago
Did they ever explain the logo thing? https://longform.asmartbear.com/logo/ https://longform.asmartbear.com/logo/
- legitster 3y ago
  > The Smart Bear logo was made by a freelance designer in Austin, TX. Probably both design teams ripped off the same stock artwork for a bear by tracing it.
  - benatkin 3y ago
    That's possible but not likely, IMO.
    - legitster 3y ago
      Why do you say that? I work in marketing and this stuff happens all of the time.
      - benatkin 3y ago
        Because it either would have been wildly popular, and there would be a lot of others, or it would have been easier for Drizzly to to discover from a popular startup blog than from a not so popular stock artwork. Perhaps they could have carried out a search found the stock source as justification for copying it, but that wouldn't have the same story of independent discovery. Also if you take asmartbear at his word, that sort of implies he at least somewhat believes his designer :) If he didn't think his designer had any scruples about saying that they made that, I don't think he'd have said it so plainly, as "was made by a freelance designer"
        legitster 3y ago
        > or it would have been easier for Drizzly to to discover from a popular startup blog than from a not so popular stock artwork It's just a traced vector of a bear. Again, as someone who is familiar with this process, if we were just going to steal something, we would have put a bit of effort into not looking stolen. Even an amazing designer can't make a silhouette of a bear from memory and he probably didn't take the photo himself. So he surely stole from something else too.
    - beezlewax 3y ago
      It is very likely or perhaps they both just googled a bear and traced the same image
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - colordrops 3y ago
      Seems very likely to me.
- belval 3y ago
  I'm probably missing context or I'm desensitized by all the blatant copyright violations of the last year, but this is the outline of a bear that, by your link owns admission is not exactly the same, is flipped, has a different color and some text over it. Even if they just took that person's design and modified it is there really something to explain?
  - colordrops 3y ago
    And even then my 8 year old could easily create a grizzly silhouette from a photo in 2 minutes. Is this really something to struggle over?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
evtothedev 3y ago
I am really bummed by this. It's the best way to send alcohol across state lines (i.e. gifts for clients).
- wmab 3y ago
  Shutting down Drizly means shutting down it as an independent app - the same merchants are available on Uber Eats for the most part so you should be able to get alcohol delivered via the normal app.
Animats 3y ago
That makes sense. Why have separate services for food and alcohol?
- rhplus 3y ago
  At a guess: probably because the US has a notoriously onerous patchwork of alcohol distribution laws, and you don't want to get your food delivery service shut down in a particular market because you made a misstep with your alcohol biz.
  - eli 3y ago
    They bought Drizly before UberEats did alcohol. Now it does.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    I would be shocked if the software doesn't already account for that in every local area where it's offered. Uber definitely has a history of just doing stuff and figuring out the law later, but at their current scale and with something like alcohol that has major room for horrible consequences, I would be shocked if it's not all coded up so the customer doesn't see it as an option if it's not for sure legal, and no human has to think about it.
dudeinjapan 3y ago
In Japan we have an alcohol delivery service Kakuyasu which is known for their pink mini-trucks cruising around Tokyo. Think it was founded in the 80’s. I see them listed on UberEats and Wolt here.
pxeger1 3y ago
1.1 billion seems like an absurd amount of money.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  When you inject $4tn out of nowhere, stupid stuff happens.
- DANmode 3y ago
  To never worry about that competitor again?
fishpen0 3y ago
It always seemed like they were buying them for their existing vendor contracts and already done legal legwork to operate a business that was actually illegally operating in MA (where it was founded) for years while they did all the lobbying to make it less illegal. Uber was probably keeping them around as a legal patsy incase they caught flack as they rolled out their internal atlernative. Sucks for Bostonians though, another tech-ish company gone from the downtown roster
- scapecast 3y ago
  Yes to the vendor contracts. The important piece of that vendor contract however was the integration with the point-of-sale system of each liquor shop. That's how Drizly knew what was on the shelf, and was able to sell inventory. Drizly was one of our customers at my earlier company where I learned about these integrations. The world of POS systems is highly fragmented and arcane - there's no one system. One asset that Drizly had developed was an integration platform that connected to any possible POS any of the liquor stores were using. No one else had done that. They just kept chipping away at it. Literally every sprint, they'd add more integrations. I believe the goal was 2 integrations per sprint. That includes data model, etc. to create the analytics downstream. That integration platform was almost something like a natural monopoly. Hard to replicate by another party.
marssaxman 3y ago
Bummer - I rather liked Drizly; though I suppose I liked knowing that it existed more than I actually liked to use it. It was nice ordering liquor to a hotel room on a road trip in an unfamiliar city after a long day's drive when I didn't want to go back out again. I think that's the only time I've ordered from Drizly in the past year.
dilyevsky 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bigkahuna1986 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    That’s probably the least likely scenario. ChatGPT isn’t known for grammatical errors.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
swozey 3y ago
I wonder what sort of interactions you have with people potentially so drunk that they possibly needed a re-up
- jamestimmins 3y ago
  I found it helpful for getting unique ingredients that weren't at my nearby liquor store or when I didn't have access to a car. Delivery is surprisingly inexpensive, esp when compared to the price of a few bottles. I used it a few times out of convenience, never for a drunken re-up lol.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - swozey 3y ago
    Yeah I live downtown and use delivery all the time because it's way less hassle/stress/time than me taking transit or spending 5 minutes just to get my car out of my garage and going down the street then another 15-25 to drive the 2-3 miles one-way to get there with no parking, so another 5 minutes at least looking for that. It's really annoying when delivery comes up here or on reddit and 90% of the comments are from people who live in the suburbs, or obscenely frugal and that drive everywhere telling everyone else that they should "stop supporting delivery companies they're gouging you." Like, no kidding. It's convenience. And some people are disabled, no cars, disposable income, etc. If they lived where I lived with no car they would be absolutely mind blown at how much of a pain in the ass and how long it actually takes to go to my pharmacy (3.5 miles away, 20 minutes one way via car, 45-60 bus, I'm in a food desert) and back without their cars. And a huge portion of the population has to deal with that to pick up prescriptions, groceries, etc. I WFH and I have to schedule 2 hours off work every 2 weeks to drive *4* miles to get my haircut (cuts about 35 mins, drives about 30 minutes one way) and I still come back 10-20 minutes late all the time. I'll happily pay the $5-15 extra to not deal with any of it.
asylteltine 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39007207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39007207
frantic2821 3y ago
Was this just a US service? Never heard of Drizly before and where I am, alcohol was always delivered under UberEats
smoorman1024 3y ago
> At the time of the acquisition Uber planned to integrate Drizly into Uber Eats, but never came did. "but never came did" Is this a grammar mistake or am I reading it incorrectly? Am I going out on a limb thinking that Techcrunch might be leaning into LLMs and reducing their editor's oversight.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  This is the kind of error that LLMs almost never make but writers on minimum wage make all the time.

51 points by itbeho 3y ago

nerdo 3y ago

Did they ever explain the logo thing? https://longform.asmartbear.com/logo/ https://longform.asmartbear.com/logo/

legitster 3y ago
> The Smart Bear logo was made by a freelance designer in Austin, TX. Probably both design teams ripped off the same stock artwork for a bear by tracing it.
- benatkin 3y ago
  That's possible but not likely, IMO.
  - legitster 3y ago
    Why do you say that? I work in marketing and this stuff happens all of the time.
    - benatkin 3y ago
      Because it either would have been wildly popular, and there would be a lot of others, or it would have been easier for Drizzly to to discover from a popular startup blog than from a not so popular stock artwork. Perhaps they could have carried out a search found the stock source as justification for copying it, but that wouldn't have the same story of independent discovery. Also if you take asmartbear at his word, that sort of implies he at least somewhat believes his designer :) If he didn't think his designer had any scruples about saying that they made that, I don't think he'd have said it so plainly, as "was made by a freelance designer"
      - legitster 3y ago
        > or it would have been easier for Drizzly to to discover from a popular startup blog than from a not so popular stock artwork It's just a traced vector of a bear. Again, as someone who is familiar with this process, if we were just going to steal something, we would have put a bit of effort into not looking stolen. Even an amazing designer can't make a silhouette of a bear from memory and he probably didn't take the photo himself. So he surely stole from something else too.
  - beezlewax 3y ago
    It is very likely or perhaps they both just googled a bear and traced the same image
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - colordrops 3y ago
    Seems very likely to me.
belval 3y ago
I'm probably missing context or I'm desensitized by all the blatant copyright violations of the last year, but this is the outline of a bear that, by your link owns admission is not exactly the same, is flipped, has a different color and some text over it. Even if they just took that person's design and modified it is there really something to explain?
- colordrops 3y ago
  And even then my 8 year old could easily create a grizzly silhouette from a photo in 2 minutes. Is this really something to struggle over?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

evtothedev 3y ago

I am really bummed by this. It's the best way to send alcohol across state lines (i.e. gifts for clients).

wmab 3y ago
Shutting down Drizly means shutting down it as an independent app - the same merchants are available on Uber Eats for the most part so you should be able to get alcohol delivered via the normal app.

Animats 3y ago

That makes sense. Why have separate services for food and alcohol?

rhplus 3y ago
At a guess: probably because the US has a notoriously onerous patchwork of alcohol distribution laws, and you don't want to get your food delivery service shut down in a particular market because you made a misstep with your alcohol biz.
- eli 3y ago
  They bought Drizly before UberEats did alcohol. Now it does.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I would be shocked if the software doesn't already account for that in every local area where it's offered. Uber definitely has a history of just doing stuff and figuring out the law later, but at their current scale and with something like alcohol that has major room for horrible consequences, I would be shocked if it's not all coded up so the customer doesn't see it as an option if it's not for sure legal, and no human has to think about it.

dudeinjapan 3y ago

In Japan we have an alcohol delivery service Kakuyasu which is known for their pink mini-trucks cruising around Tokyo. Think it was founded in the 80’s. I see them listed on UberEats and Wolt here.

pxeger1 3y ago

1.1 billion seems like an absurd amount of money.

robertlagrant 3y ago
When you inject $4tn out of nowhere, stupid stuff happens.
DANmode 3y ago
To never worry about that competitor again?

fishpen0 3y ago

It always seemed like they were buying them for their existing vendor contracts and already done legal legwork to operate a business that was actually illegally operating in MA (where it was founded) for years while they did all the lobbying to make it less illegal. Uber was probably keeping them around as a legal patsy incase they caught flack as they rolled out their internal atlernative. Sucks for Bostonians though, another tech-ish company gone from the downtown roster

scapecast 3y ago
Yes to the vendor contracts. The important piece of that vendor contract however was the integration with the point-of-sale system of each liquor shop. That's how Drizly knew what was on the shelf, and was able to sell inventory. Drizly was one of our customers at my earlier company where I learned about these integrations. The world of POS systems is highly fragmented and arcane - there's no one system. One asset that Drizly had developed was an integration platform that connected to any possible POS any of the liquor stores were using. No one else had done that. They just kept chipping away at it. Literally every sprint, they'd add more integrations. I believe the goal was 2 integrations per sprint. That includes data model, etc. to create the analytics downstream. That integration platform was almost something like a natural monopoly. Hard to replicate by another party.

marssaxman 3y ago

Bummer - I rather liked Drizly; though I suppose I liked knowing that it existed more than I actually liked to use it. It was nice ordering liquor to a hotel room on a road trip in an unfamiliar city after a long day's drive when I didn't want to go back out again. I think that's the only time I've ordered from Drizly in the past year.

dilyevsky 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bigkahuna1986 3y ago
[flagged]
- janalsncm 3y ago
  That’s probably the least likely scenario. ChatGPT isn’t known for grammatical errors.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

swozey 3y ago

I wonder what sort of interactions you have with people potentially so drunk that they possibly needed a re-up

jamestimmins 3y ago
I found it helpful for getting unique ingredients that weren't at my nearby liquor store or when I didn't have access to a car. Delivery is surprisingly inexpensive, esp when compared to the price of a few bottles. I used it a few times out of convenience, never for a drunken re-up lol.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- swozey 3y ago
  Yeah I live downtown and use delivery all the time because it's way less hassle/stress/time than me taking transit or spending 5 minutes just to get my car out of my garage and going down the street then another 15-25 to drive the 2-3 miles one-way to get there with no parking, so another 5 minutes at least looking for that. It's really annoying when delivery comes up here or on reddit and 90% of the comments are from people who live in the suburbs, or obscenely frugal and that drive everywhere telling everyone else that they should "stop supporting delivery companies they're gouging you." Like, no kidding. It's convenience. And some people are disabled, no cars, disposable income, etc. If they lived where I lived with no car they would be absolutely mind blown at how much of a pain in the ass and how long it actually takes to go to my pharmacy (3.5 miles away, 20 minutes one way via car, 45-60 bus, I'm in a food desert) and back without their cars. And a huge portion of the population has to deal with that to pick up prescriptions, groceries, etc. I WFH and I have to schedule 2 hours off work every 2 weeks to drive *4* miles to get my haircut (cuts about 35 mins, drives about 30 minutes one way) and I still come back 10-20 minutes late all the time. I'll happily pay the $5-15 extra to not deal with any of it.

asylteltine 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39007207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39007207

frantic2821 3y ago

Was this just a US service? Never heard of Drizly before and where I am, alcohol was always delivered under UberEats

smoorman1024 3y ago

> At the time of the acquisition Uber planned to integrate Drizly into Uber Eats, but never came did. "but never came did" Is this a grammar mistake or am I reading it incorrectly? Am I going out on a limb thinking that Techcrunch might be leaning into LLMs and reducing their editor's oversight.

sebzim4500 3y ago
This is the kind of error that LLMs almost never make but writers on minimum wage make all the time.