On-demand startup for wine, beer and spirits delivery service to expand into new markets and grow its editorial platform, The Craft
New York – September 15, 2015 – Thirstie, a leading national on-demand wine, beer, and spirits delivery service, announced today it has started its Series A funding process. The company, which previously raised $2 Million in seed funding, has proved its content-to-commerce business model and will continue to expand into new markets, partner with retailers, brands and continue to grow its editorial platform, The Craft.
Thirstie, which already operates in 18 major cities with its biggest markets in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston and Miami, will also use the new funding to expand into at least 30 new markets by the end of this year.
The Craft, Thirstie’s editorial platform that launched in June, provides users with relevant content including cocktail recipes and informative how-to-videos that help keep users engaged. Being the first company to prove out the content-to-commerce model in the wine & spirits industry has enabled Thirstie to partner with liquor brands and allowed the company to move into a vastly different direction than its competitors.
“Thirstie has clearly differentiated themselves from the competition. As an investor, as well as a producer, we chose to invest with Thirstie based on their unique strategy of helping brands get noticed via their discovery to delivery model- something never seen before in the industry,” said Carter Reum Founder of VEEV Vodka, and Partner at Plus Capital and Otter Rock.
“The on-demand alcohol industry is hot, as evidenced by Amazon’s interest in our sector. Our results over the last couple of months not only show our growth, but also validate our strategy,” said Devaraj Southworth, CEO and Co-founder of Thirstie. “We’ve proven that our content-to-commerce strategy is working as we are witnessing significantly higher conversions and repeat customer usage on a month-to-month basis.”
Thirstie’s content strategy has also allowed the company to scale their user base exponentially and as a result has increased engagement with users spending over four minutes on articles. “The team has proven that contextually-relevant content drives engagement and ultimately purchases,” said Dariusz Paczuski, Thirstie Advisor and Head of Growth, Yahoo Communications. In the last three months, 80 percent of Thirstie’s users have come through The Craft with close to a 20 percent conversion rate.
This year, Thirstie has experienced unprecedented mobile downloads, and has been consistently rated within the top 100 food and wine apps in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Thirstie has also seen in-app engagement increase by nearly 70 percent, customer growth increase to 35 percent month-over-month, with 52 percent of orders coming from repeat users.
This round of funding will continue Thirstie’s overall expansion and growth, including continuing to build out their content and eCommerce platforms and growing their technology, sales and marketing teams.
For more information visit, www.Thirstie.com
About Thirstie
Thirstie is currently making the delivery of alcohol easy for consumers who embrace the convenience of on-demand services. Thirstie’s integrated, original lifestyle editorial platform gives consumers the opportunity to discover, engage, and “buy now” – all from one platform. Partnering with several hundred liquor retailers in major cities across the U.S., Thirstie is the go-to discovery, shopping, and delivery tool for anyone seeking cocktail inspirations, a good bottle of wine or food pairing ideas; for celebrations at home or in the office. For more information go to www.thirstie.com.
