Dom Pérignon is getting in on the on-demand online ordering business, selling champagne through its flagship site to shoppers who can have bottles delivered in as little as an hour.
The pricey champagne brand is working with alcohol ordering platform Thirstie to sell its bubbly to consumers in Miami and New York. A Thirstie spokeswoman says there are more than 100,000 Thirstie users in those areas.
Thirstie generally charges a $5 fee for on-demand delivery in the U.S. and $10 for Canadian consumers, according to its website. On the Dom Pérignon site, a consumer in the Greenwich Village section of New York City can, for example, order a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon (2006 vintage) for $224.99, plus a $10 tip (the amount can be edited, but a suggested charge is automatically added) and $19.97 in tax for a total of $254.96. The fee for a scheduled delivery within an hour is listed as $0.
“The launch of a one-hour luxury delivery service for Dom Pérignon presents a new avenue to delight the Dom Pérignon consumer in the on-demand and immediate world they live in,” Dom Pérignon vice president Jorge Cosano said last week when the brand launched the service. “We are continuously looking to find new ways to further drive innovation and deliver on our commitment to building luxury brands with a strong consumer focus and to create new opportunities to strengthen our partnership with our retail customers.”
Thirstie is available in 10 North American markets including Chicago, Dallas and Toronto. The company works with local liquor stores that “have their own local delivery mechanism,” meaning the retailers are responsible for fulfilling the orders.
However, Dom Pérignon orders will be handled differently than other alcohol orders, as Dom Pérignon and Thirstie have presented participating retailers with instructions on how to deliver the champagne, says Thirstie CEO Devaraj Southworth. “[They] have been specially trained on the handling of this unique product and it is transported in a specific carrier to ensure that the bottle arrives to the customer perfectly chilled and ready to consume,” he says.
Thirstie is one of several online ordering platforms for alcohol. Competitors include the likes of Drizly, Saucey inc. and Klink, which was acquired by grocery and food delivery platform Delivery.com in April. Drizly is available in more than 70 cities throughout North America and has raised nearly $35 million in funding to date, according to CrunchBase,
Amazon.com Inc., No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2017 Top 500, in August 2015 began offering one-hour delivery of wine, beer and spirits in its hometown of Seattle and has expanded the program to include other cities where its Prime Now one- and two-hour delivery service is available.