The alcohol-delivery service Drizly, which Uber acquired three years ago, will reportedly shut down. The decision by Uber will end more than a decade of orders for Drizly, which was founded in Boston in 2012.

Eventually, Uber acquired Drizly in 2021 for $1.1 billion. At the time, it was Uber’s second-biggest acquisition to date behind its $2.65 billion Postmates deal. That same year, though, Uber also acquired the Chile-based grocery-delivery service Cornershop for $1.4 billion. In addition, Uber subsidiary Uber Freight went on to acquire Transplace for $2.25 billion.

Cornershop will also shut down as a part of the latest round of changes at Uber, CNN reported.

Uber’s reasoning behind shutting down Drizly

Monday’s news that Drizly would be shuttered was first reported by Axios, which quoted a statement from Uber’s senior leadership. The company indicated a desire to focus its efforts behind Uber Eats.

“After three years of Drizly operating independently within the Uber family, we’ve decided to close the business and focus on our core Uber Eats strategy of helping consumers get almost anything — from food to groceries to alcohol — all on a single app,” Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, senior vice president of delivery at Uber, told Axios, according to the report.

Gore-Coty called Drizly an “original industry pioneer” in the delivery space for alcoholic beverages.

Drizly’s time under Uber

Uber allowed Drizly to operate as its own brand and app following the acquisition. The service notably used a different approach from Uber Eats, which hires contract delivery workers. Instead, Drizly provided a system for participating liquor stores to fulfill their own incoming orders.

At the end of 2023, Drizly ranked No. 40 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the top 100 online marketplaces.

FTC action against Drizly

Drizly ran into problems when a cybersecurity incident from 2018 came to light. According to the original complaint, insufficient security at the company resulted in “a malicious actor” gaining access to Drizly’s customer files, “comprising more than 2.5 million records.” The hack ultimately led to an order from the Federal Trade Commission that placed limits on the types of customer data that Drizly could continue to collect and retain.

Drizly’s partners and customers

As of Monday, Drizly’s website still stated that it partnered with “thousands of retailers in more than 1,400 cities” and that its service was available to more than 100 million customers in the U.S. and Canada.

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