Over the last several years, the online retail landscape has been on a wild ride. Internet-based shopping had been on a slow but steady upswing for a while, until the Covid-19 pandemic caused an explosion of online activity. During 2020 and 2021, web-based stores benefited from a meteoric rise in shoppers, as people around the globe were encouraged to stay home and make purchases for everything from groceries to luxury indulgences like spirits and wine from the safety of their homes. Now, a few years later, many online beverage retailers are still posting growth and steady sales.
Retailers like Seelbach’s and Wine.com continue to see strong sales and new consumer traffic. And while people are back to shopping in stores, online retailers report that their sales remain above pre-pandemic levels, even if they have softened after the world normalized post Covid-19. “The online marketplace is growing, especially for new brands,” says Seelbach’s founder Blake Riber. “Covid showed brands and distilleries how important direct-to-consumer shipping was. From a consumer perspective it opened a lot of eyes for people who realized they wanted to have alcohol delivered to their home. The internet is a great place to build a community and find interest and a customer base for new brands.”
Seelbach’s was founded in 2018 as a website where whisk(e)y enthusiasts could find craft and micro-distilled labels that were previously unavailable to a wide audience. Riber was a Bourbon enthusiast with a lot of distillery contacts, and he used those connections to create the concept. The site maintains its focus on spirits, with Bourbon and American whiskeys dominating sales, though Riber says he’s since added other spirits to broaden the scope of his business. He now also offers a variety of annual specialty private barrel labels available only to enthusiasts on the site, and he says they do very well.
“Seelbach’s goal is to tell the stories of craft producers to our audience, and offer a place to purchase their products when traditional distribution isn’t available,” Riber explains. “We’ve seen significant growth and an influx of new products and bottles that can compete with [larger heritage distillers]. These products and our growing audience continue to fuel our growth.”
Consumer Attraction
Convenience is a primary attraction for online shoppers. But the notion of exclusivity, especially in spirits and wine, is also impactful. Seelbach’s targets specialty spirits consumers by emphasizing offerings that aren’t generally found on traditional brick-and-mortar retail shelves, whether that be allocated labels or private selections. Some of the company’s popular collections include labels by Bardstown Bourbon Co., Pursuit Spirits, B.R. Distilling Co.’s Blue Note whiskey, and Barrel Craft Spirits. Meanwhile, some of Seelbach’s recent private labels have included Lucky Seven Kentucky Straight Bourbon The Frenchman Single Barrel ($110 a 750-ml.) and Stellum Spirits’ Serpens N4 Single Barrel rye ($60), as well as propriety labels like Seelbach’s Private Reserve California Cab Finished Bourbon ($130), which is sourced from Bardstown, Kentucky and finished for four months in a barrel that aged Aonair Winery’s Cabernet Sauvignon.
“We’ve released our 2024 Seelbach’s Private Reserve flagship lineup and the response has been incredible to our unique finished whiskies,” Riber says. “We’re excited to see where this year takes us.” Beyond whiskey, Seelbachs.com also lists gin, vodka, rum, and Tequila, and Riber adds that he has some Armagnacs and aged rums that he hopes gain traction. “We work really hard to search for the best in craft spirits and provide an outlet for brands to tell their story and connect with consumers,” Riber says. “Our goal is to have a growing audience that trusts the vetted collection at Seelbach’s. I believe online beverage retail will only grow from here. It’s how the majority of Americans currently shop for other products. Traditional retail is very important, but for unique products and one-offs, and bottles that need more narrative explanations, the online space can be huge.”
Online haven Wine.com has been in growth mode for 25 years. The company stocks more than 15,000 wines, led by imported labels, and also offers about 2,000 spirits. The spirits piece was added in 2020 and makes up about 5% of Wine.com’s business, led by whiskeys and Tequila. In wine, the site excels with offerings from France, Italy, and Spain. Wine.com founder Mike Osborn says that his customers are showing interest in discovering new wine regions, and as such his company offers labels from more than 30 countries. Red wines make up more than 60% of total sales, but white wines, sparklers, and rosés are gaining share.
“Compared to the overall wine industry, we have a younger (shopper) demographic and higher average selling price,” Osborn says, noting that Millennials make up about 28% of the company’s customers and that their average bottle price is $35 a 750-ml. Though he adds that Gen X consumers are Wine.com’s largest customer group. “The majority of Wine.com visits are now on mobile devices,” Wine.com CEO Rich Bergsund adds. “Mobile-based shopping has grown to 40% of our revenue. To be relevant to younger consumers, especially on weekends, you must have a quality mobile experience, so we keep investing there. Over the years we’ve accumulated a lot of data about wine and customer behavior, and our next big thing is to use today’s modern tools to put that data to work to personalize the shopping experience for our customers.”
Embracing Change
Drizly has been an online beverage powerhouse for the last few years, offering a platform that allows consumers to purchase alcohol online from a retailer local to them, and have it delivered through Drizly’s network. However, brand owner Uber Technologies—which purchased Drizly in 2021 for over $1 billion—shuttered the company last month. The services formerly provided by Drizly will now fall under the Uber Eats umbrella. According to the company, alcohol is one of the fastest-growing categories on Uber Eats worldwide and the alcohol delivery business more than doubled for Uber Eats in 2023. Uber Eats offers delivery from local restaurants, but also has partnerships with more than 100,000 retail brands.
ReserveBar operates under a similar model, offering an online marketplace that facilitates the delivery and shipping of spirits and wine from licensed beverage retail partners nationwide. ReserveBar has roughly 3,500 retail partners, which allows it to have an extensive online catalog with upwards of 100,000 SKUs. Much like Seelbach’s, the product assortment on Reservebar.com is curated and skews toward luxury and super-premium labels.
“We enjoyed a meteoric rise during Covid-19, and coming out of Covid there was some retraction,” says ReserveBar CEO Derek Correia. “If you take out the crazy blip of the pandemic, both for the adoption of alcohol e-commerce and the fact that people’s only options were at-home occasions, you would still see this business is on a path of growth. It’s still healthy and there’s a lot of opportunity.”
Brown spirits have been the top movers on ReserveBar since its inception in 2013, led by whiskies like Bourbon and Scotch, though Correia says Tequila is also doing well, as is rum to a lesser extent. He adds that new products often excel on the online platform, and says both the non-alcohol mocktail movement and celebrity-backed brands also have support on the site. Additionally, ReserveBar recently launched its Topflight Series barrel pick program that Correia describes as a huge success. Some of the company’s recent exclusive offers include a George Dickel 15-year-old single barrel Tennessee whiskey ($61 a 750-ml.), Old Potrero single barrel rye ($106), and Westward Single Barrel Stout Cask Finished single malt ($91). The ReserveBar CEO notes that shoppers on his site tend to have higher incomes, due to the luxury nature of the company’s products, and adds that he’s seen increased interest from female whisk(e)y drinkers, as well as African Americans, Latinos, and members of the LGBTQ+ and veteran communities as the alcohol industry embraces inclusivity.
“The beverage alcohol e-commerce industry went from zero 11 years ago when we started to a couple percent through Covid-19, and it’s still growing,” Correia says. “Overall e-commerce—including online shopping for food and consumer goods—is at about 20%, so we have a way to go. But the online environment, with the content we provide and the guidance and trust we give to people, in addition to the convenience and access, has no reason to not continue growing. We enjoy a lot of traffic and serve a lot of people who I’d consider to be enthusiasts. They come to our site to be educated and get immersed in cocktail culture. We’re finding new ways to connect with consumers to drive growth.”