How to Optimize Your Alcohol Delivery Business

This is an article about optimizing alcohol delivery in 2021.

In this new article, you’ll see five proven techniques that drive efficiency.

And actionable tips that help you overcome the challenges of modern alcohol shipping.

Best of all:

These tactics work regardless if you deliver drinks from a bar, restaurant, liquor store, supermarket, or beverage distribution center.

So if you want to handle more drink orders at lower costs, you’ll like all of the steps that we’ve outlined here today.

Let’s get started.

On-demand Liquor Delivery Business Changes Overnight

The pandemic has forced wineries, breweries, restaurants, and shops to look for new ways to reach consumers, such as apps that deliver alcohol.

Worldwide, retail stores that sell alcohol turned to curbside pickup and home delivery for the solution.

Buying alcohol online became the New Normal.

In fact, online alcohol sales in 2020 went up by 243%, according to research from Nielsen.

In response to this demand, alcohol sellers have turned away from the on-premises environment in favor of direct-to-consumer delivery.

But this shift to alcohol home delivery hasn’t exactly been seamless.

And there have been some major challenges in alcohol delivery.

Top Challenges in Alcohol Delivery

The alcohol industry remains a challenging industry.

Whether you sell wine, beer, or spirits, many trends pose HUGE challenges in 2021.

The shifts that are happening affect everyone.

And challenges are present across the market:

Competition is everywhere

There is more competition than ever.

All of a sudden everyone is offering online alcohol delivery.

From bars and restaurants, through drink stores, to supermarkets, everyone is in on the game.

So if you want your business to stay relevant, you need to set yourself apart.

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Fast delivery, excellent user experience, and good marketing are key here.

There is no space for mistakes if you want to succeed when competition is this high.

Regulations

One of the most significant concerns among consumers is the sale of alcoholic beverages to minors.

According to the Washington Post, Uber Eats and their drivers have been delivering cocktails and alcohol without ID’ing or even seeing the customer first.

Because of COVID-19, consumers demand contactless delivery.

And delivery personnel are happy to assist with that, as it lowers their risk of contagion.

But for businesses, this means improving last-mile delivery.

Companies that deliver alcohol have to conduct ID checks before a purchase.

If you don’t comply with these regulations, the lack of face-to-face ID checks may lead to alcohol getting into the hands of underage consumers.

And that can harm your bottom line.

Direct-to-consumer marketing

Traditionally, alcohol that’s sold in stores relies on a certain distribution model.

An alcohol manufacturer first sells their products to distributors. Which they then sell to retailers.

This is why only top brands have had the opportunity to distribute at the national and international levels.

For direct-to-consumer brands of alcohol this is not the case.

For them, the challenge lies in getting people to order alcohol online.

They have to convince buyers to purchase alcoholic beverages without tasting them.

That’s why many are using direct-to-consumer marketing and branding.

These companies focus as much resources on marketing products, as they do on the delivery service that gets them to the consumer.

Manging Order Fullfilment

Delivering drinks is a simple enough concept.

But once you build a delivery, you realize there ’s much more to it than that.

That’s why delivery and pick-up is a common pain point for business owners.

Solving these pains demands ongoing improvement of the delivery process.

That’s why it’s crucial to know the biggest last-mile delivery challenges. (And how to overcome them.)

Now, it’s time to focus on the optimization of your alcohol delivery business.

5 Ways to Optimize Alcohol Delivery

#1 Plan logistics according to your starting point
#2 Deliver Efficiently and Quickly
#3 Develop excellent customer experience
#4 Combine Forward and Reverse Logistics
#5 Use analytics to upgrade alcohol delivery service

#1 Plan logistics according to your starting point

The start of any delivery is crucial.

Whether you run a beer or wine delivery, you need to optimize the very start of the delivery journey.

Most liquor delivery businesses fall into two categories:

• those that deliver drinks from a local store or shop
• those that make their drinks (breweries, vineyards)

With that in mind, there’s two ways of starting a delivery:

Departing from one location

If you own a liquor business, the chances are you’ll depart from a single location.

If this is the case, then consider yourself fortunate.

You don’t have to worry about the initial start of your delivery.

Pick up from Multiple Stores

As we mentioned before, some alcohol delivery businesses rely on a diverse supply chain.

This can be problematic for a few reasons:

First, drivers need to pick up orders from different locations and bring them to customers in time.

To do this, you need to carefully plan routes with multiple stops that include pick-ups and drop-offs.

Dividing the delivery area into several zones is one way to simplify routing and keep drivers from getting lost.

Another is to split your delivery areas into quadrants based on square mileage and order clusters.

Of course, zones can be modified if demand alternates.

But this strategy is perfect for reducing overall mileage and minimizing the delivery time.

Driver route software like eLogii will help you plan the best and the fastest route.

#2 Deliver Efficiently and Quickly

Like any other customer service, beverage delivery has to be fast and efficient.

Manually planning routes isn’t an option.

It takes a lot of time and resources, and errors are frequent.

If you plan routes manually it’s impossible to stay ahead of competitors and satisfy customers.

In fact, according to a survey conducted by Deliverect, 81% of consumers said they were only willing to wait 60 minutes or less for delivery. While 31% of them said that they consider the optimal wait time to be 30 minutes.

Whether you’re planning deliveries in advance or same-day alcohol delivery, you’ll need last-mile delivery software to do it.

The software will calculate the most efficient route in a matter of seconds, and your drivers are ready to hit the road.

Remember, people want their beer home delivery, and they want it fast.

Streamline driver onboarding

When it comes to speed, customers are not the only ones who want things to be done fast.

This is where delivery management software comes in, it’s designed to minimize adoption time.

Routes are directly sent to drivers’ phones with the navigation, so you don’t need to think about hiring only drivers who are logistical experts.

Instead of that, you can focus on hiring drivers with excellent communication skills.

Additionally, delivery tracking allows you to know the location of every delivery at every moment.

This ensures a seamless transition from pick-up to drop-off.

It even lets you share that information with your customers for a better customer experience.

Remember, you are building trust with your customers through delivery.

#3 Develop excellent customer experience

It’s not a secret that customer experience is crucial if you want to achieve brand loyalty.

In order to achieve customer lifetime value, you have to create an outstanding customer experience.

Every part of your customer journey needs to be as straightforward and intuitive as possible.

The ordering process needs to be optimized, ordering liquor home delivery should require as few clicks as possible.

Customers that order alcohol online and are looking for 30-minute delivery don’t want to read three random paragraphs before ordering.

They just want to mix a drink and relax.

Real-time order tracking

Real-time tracking will help you deliver a flawless customer buying experience.

You can also customize your messaging and then set updates to automatically go out when a customer’s order is on its way.

Then, your customers will receive SMS notifications or emails with relevant updates about their order, and they’ll be able to see exactly where their delivery is via a live tracking link.

Communicate with your team and customers

Communication determines the success of each delivery.

Equipping teams with technology that lets them instantly share and access data, allows you to build an agile delivery operation.

It also allows your staff to extend the line of communication directly to your customers, so they can provide a better service.

96% of all customers say customer experience is an important part of their loyalty to a brand.

Maintain your stock

You need to keep track of your inventory.

Tracking inventory relies as much on your supply chain network, as it does monitoring the flow of goods.

When you don’t have a clear view of how many products are moving upstream vs. downstream, you can end up using up all your stock.

If that happens, it is difficult to maintain fulfillment and delivery volumes.

Not to mention, how unsatisfied your customers would be if they order their favorite beer and later find out you don’t have it in your stock

#4 Combine Forward and Reverse Logistics

In case your business uses reverse logistics you should combine them with your forward logistics to significantly reduce planning and drive time.

So, what does that exactly mean?

For instance, let’s imagine you run a brewery, and you deliver kegs to local pubs.

Once the kegs are empty, you retrieve them so you can reuse them. There is no need to send a separate carrier to do pickups.

You can simply add pickups to your regular delivery routes.

#5 Use analytics to upgrade alcohol delivery service

Vineyards and breweries are working non-stop to improve and perfect their products.

Delivery services require the exact same level of maintenance and attention to every detail.

That’s why monitoring performance is critical for upgrading delivery service.

It helps you find opportunities for optimization.

Measuring key metrics in delivery logistics will give you all the necessary information.

You can check on how each driver is doing individually and evaluate your team’s overall performance.

Analytics gives you deep insights that help sharpen your delivery process— so you always know what you need to improve.

And you can’t do it without having visibility over the entire supply chain.

Raise visibility over the entire supply chain

A supply chain has well-defined steps.

That is why looking at the entire process from a wide and a narrow-angle is key to identifying opportunities on how to improve it.

Without a complete overview of all operations, you can miss out on key opportunities to optimize.

Remember, visibility is the solution.

It gives you complete control over how you produce, source, and distribute drinks across the entire supply chain network.

In turn, you will have the range to fulfill any order volumes despite the demand.

It’s time to break into drink delivery

It’s never been a better time to set up your perfect delivery service.

Don’t wait for your customers to come to you.

Bring drinks directly to your customers.

If you have delivery but you need help scaling, use these proven delivery tactics to grow your operations.

And remember to optimize your operations.

Let technology do the job for you. It’s time to optimize your drink delivery and pick-up with delivery management software.

Remember to make adjustments and analyze your performance.

In a short amount of time, you will have an alcohol delivery service that will run at maximum capacity and your customers will love it.

And we can help you with that even more.