Uber is shutting down its alcohol delivery app, Drizly, just three years after acquiring it for $1.1 billion.
Buoyed by the pandemic-era at-home delivery boom, Drizly had grown to become the largest online marketplace for alcohol in North America, but it will officially shut down at the end of March 2024, according to Uber.
The alcohol delivery service operated as a standalone app, and its marketplace was to be integrated into Uber’s delivery app, Uber Eats.
In a statement, Pierre Dimitri Gore-Coty, Uber’s senior vice president of delivery, said Uber had decided to focus on its “core Uber Eats strategy of helping consumers get almost anything - from food to groceries to alcohol - all on a single app.”
In a push to consolidate Uber’s product delivery offerings into Uber Eats, the company also sunset its grocery shopping app, Cornershop. Groceries and alcohol are still available for delivery on Uber Eats.
“We’re grateful to the Drizly team for their many contributions to the growth of the BevAlc delivery category as the original industry pioneer,” Gore-Coty added in his statement.
News of Drizly’s closure was first reported by Axios.
Uber’s purchase of Drizly came during a transitional time for the company. A push to stay at home during the early days of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 meant that Uber’s core ridesharing business suffered losses as its delivery business skyrocketed.
In an effort to ramp up its competitive edge in the delivery business, Uber also purchased another delivery company, Postmates, for $2.65 billion a few months before it acquired Drizly.
Uber’s ridesharing business has bounced back in recent quarters, though. In November, Uber reported gross bookings for the third quarter that beat the company’s own expectations.
