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Drinks delivered on demand is a dream
for some incomes Many Bar Delivery. It's

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a startup that offers the easiest way
to lift your spirits. With a few

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taps, customers can get wine,
beer, and liquor delivered to their doorstep.

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Co founders of Many Bar Delivery,
Lindsay Andrews and Lara Crystal met at

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Wharton Business School. They have over
fifteen years of e commerce experience and a

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proven track record of building and growing
online businesses. Lara previously was a founding

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member at Rent the Runway, an
e commerce business that rents luxury clothing and

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accessories to women, where she served
as the vice president of Marketing. Lindsay

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meanwhile spent her career in consumer products
at fresh Direct and soap dot Com.

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She most recently helped launch wag dot
com and built it into a leading pet

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e commerce business within two years.
Today we'll hear from Lindsay, who walks

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us through their journey to a millie. A million in sales, a million

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in revenue, a million followers,
or a million in funding. To amass

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one million of anything is a major
fee, and that's why we're highlighting women

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who have done just that. You'll
hear from women who have made their mark,

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impacted lives, blaze trails, and
amassed a millie. So many of

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our delivery really came out of Lara
and myself. We were getting take out

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one Tuesday. We used to do
takeout Tuesday at my apartment and brainstorm business

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ideas. We had been out of
business school for a couple of years,

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which is where we met, and
we really thought it'd be fun to start

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something, but we hadn't had that
spark of an idea, and then you

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know, one Tuesday or seamless came
and disaster ensued. We were out of

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white wine, so we figured we
must be able to place an order much

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like we could our food and get
it delivered. And when we started to

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dive in, we saw that alcohol
was really difficult to order online. Less

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than two percent of sales of one
hundred billion dollar industry was being done online

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and there was no go to brand
or destination. So we really wanted to

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create that brand and destination that people
could rely on to press the button and

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get their wine, spirits and beer
delivered to their home quickly easily. So

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that is where many bars started from. I mean, I think we really,

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once we started diving in and doing
the research, we saw that it

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was an industry that lagged all others
for e commerce penetration. It was huge.

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It was one hundred billion dollars just
at home consumption, not even including

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bars and restaurants in the US,
which was way bigger than most other industries

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like flowers or Taxis. Obviously verse
huge now and is doing more than taxis,

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But it was just a huge,
huge industry, and it was very

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complex because it's there's the three tier
system in the US where they're suppliers who

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make the products like Absolute or Tito's, and then the distributors that move products

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from point A to point B,
and then the retailers that sell the product

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to the end consumer. So it's
a complex industry, highly regulated, and

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so I think those are many of
the reasons that it was slow to getting

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online. But some of the newer
technologies, such as payment processing being more

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accessible, like Brain treat Gateway,
which allows you to send money to different

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places based on who that is,
has enabled alcohol to come online. So

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I think really, once we started
seeing all the facts come together, we

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were really excited and thought there was
no reason this industry shouldn't be online.

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It's the commodity, it's heavy,
it's bulky. Why wouldn't you want it

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delivered? It just seemed like a
natural fit. I think it was more

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the fear of leaving a job and
leaving security, and leaving all the things

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that come with that, like health
insurance in a four one K and a

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steady paycheck. I think those were
more the scary parts entering the unknown,

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not knowing when you would make money, not knowing who would give you money

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to run the business. So I
think those were really scary. But I

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think also what excited us that we
could build something from scratch and our successes

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would be our successes and we could
really make something from nothing. So I

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think it is obviously a scary leap, but we felt like if we didn't

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take it now, we would never
take it, So I think we really

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wanted to give it the best shop
we could. I don't know if I

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have one super bower, but I
mean I think to do a startup,

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you just have to be scrappy and
persevere and not take no for an answer.

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You know no means just not right
now, and just keep pushing and

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keep finding a way to succeed or
get the yes from the partner or the

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investor the store that you need.
So I think it's really in a startup,

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you need to obviously a great team
and fundraising and all that, but

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I think you really just have to
have be really optimistic, positive and persistent.

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In the early days, we didn't
have tons of money to spend on

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marketing dollars, so it was really
us being scrappy, like the entire team

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going to giant buildings in New York
and hanging door hangers on every single door,

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so starting it, you know,
the fortieth floor and just working your

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way down, or you know,
we would do a lot of like happy

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hours at corporate offices. You know
a lot of times other startups or media

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companies people with kind of young consumers
that are happy to order stuff on their

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phone and get it delivered and are
used to that. So really, you

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know, doing happy hours, three
of us would go set up a table

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and you know, serve cocktails and
tell people about Mini Bar. So we

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really wanted to find ways to be
scrappy and get the buzz out, and

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I think it helped, you know, we when we launched, we were

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just in New York, city,
justin Manhattan and Brooklyn, so it wasn't

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like we were across the whole US, so it would be a little bit

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harder for people and spread tooth in. So we were all in New York.

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You know. We emailed every single
one of our friends. We were

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shameless about asking them to promote it, posting on our own Instagrams and facebooks,

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really doing everything we could to help
give people a way to discover us

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and ask our friends to really promote
us and push it to their friends and

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try it share on Facebook, etc. A personal knee led Lindsay and Lara

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to recognize a void in the alcohol
distribution market, and as a result,

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they created a business. I love
hearing about the grassroots approach that they took

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to spread the word about Mini Bars
Delivery. When asked what advice she would

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give to those hesitant to ask for
support and pushing their big idea forward,

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Lindsay offered a few thoughts. I
mean, I feel like the worst answer

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you who get is no, and
then you're just in the exact same positions.

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There's really nothing to lose. I
think it is, you know,

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asking someone to post me on their
Facebook or email ten friends it's a pretty

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easy thing to give them, and
you should make it as easy as possible.

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If you want them to tweet,
send them the actual tweets so they

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can just copy and paste and they
don't have to write it themselves. So

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make it his turn key. And
it is another thing asking people for,

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like money. If you're doing your
friends and family round, that's obviously a

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little bit harder, it's a little
bit more on the line. You feel

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a little bit more responsible in the
long term because that's a little bit different.

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But we definitely, you know,
Laara and I both have family members

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that invested and took the leap of
faith and you know, bet on us,

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which is really nice of them,
and you know, we really appreciate

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when it from the early days that
supporting us when it was obviously harder to

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raise and we raised one point eight
million. That was our first round.

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Though it definitely started out smaller and
started out more friends and family. We

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did end up having a couple institutional
investors in there, like Female Founders Fund

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who's been really supportive since the beginning. I mean, fundraising is a slog

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it is a lot of work,
it's a lot of it's a lot of

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meetings. You know, I think
you really want to go into it being

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prepared, so having a great deck, having easy to understand and rational numbers,

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knowing the landscape backwards and forwards,
knowing our competitors, knowing the key

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players, and really being ready for
all those questions and then being ready afterwards

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if they have follow ups and are
looking for specific data, and just being

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really on top of all the different
people you're meeting with and making sure to

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some think you know, it's etc. We definitely met with tons and tons

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and tons of people. You are
also always fundraising, you know, people,

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especially as you get to bigger and
bigger rounds, people or investors want

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to, you know, kind of
get to know you over time. It's

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not just like a split decision they're
going to make in a two week period,

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So it's helpful for them to get
updates and feel good about your progress

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and the team that you're building and
leading. But fundraising is definitely a difficult

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endeavor, and we've definitely, you
know, had some successes and I definitely

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met challenges. I'm really happy I
have a partner to do it with.

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Um. I think, you know, doing it alone could be hard and

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definitely. You know, all the
note if you get them, can be

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you know, slightly demoralizing at times. What I feel like doing it with

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someone traveling with someone, having someone
you know, if someone's you know,

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feeling a little defeated the other one, can you know, cheer them up.

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Or if there's a question in the
room and you maybe don't have a

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quick answer, your co founder does. So I think it's really nice having

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a partner to go through thoughts and
downs with because it can be definitely challenging.

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Um, we did get some advice. Some advice we got which we

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thought was interesting is you know a
lot of people celebrate raising money, but

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that's really just when the hard work
starts. It's really raising money is only

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half the battle. You then have
to do something with it and show success.

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So I think, you know,
in certain years when people are raising

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huge rounds and raising tons of money, people see just a big check as

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success, but it's really when you're
building a sustainable company for the long term,

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that is what success is. I
think we are very data driven.

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You know, we look very closely
at what our cost per customer is,

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what our lifetime value is, what
our payback period is, and making sure

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we're growing smartly and making sure that
the team is all working well together and

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all our goals are clearly communicated and
aligned. So I think we've really tried

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to make smart decisions. We've only
raised seven million dollars total, so we've

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tried to be scrappy, tried to
be responsible with the limited funding and kind

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of grow a sustainable company that where
we can work to offtability without raising tons

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of capital. We can always learn
something new when it comes to leadership.

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Lindsay tells us what she thinks it
takes to be a great leader. I

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really think, you know, persistence
especially, you know, I think it's

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very challenging to lead. It's interesting, it's you know, I think there's

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one is making smart decisions and building
a business, and the other is managing

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teams and people, and I think
those are two very different things. Something

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that surprised us is almost the growing
and building and managing people is where we've

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learned more and had more ups and
downs and challenges because I think, you

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know people, everyone's so complex and
has their own interests or goals or challenges

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and skill sets. So I think
that's been a big learning experience. Is

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really how to build a team culture
and how to build things that get people

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excited and really build programs where people
are excited to come to work every day

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and are proud to work in any
bar. I mean, I think during

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a startup it's much more of a
roller coaster. The highs are amazing,

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You're so excited and you're like,
we just to this, We're crushing it.

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This is awesome, and the lows
are like, oh my gosh,

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we missed this one thing. This
is the workst thing, whereas a job

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it's more steady. So I think
it's kind of the how to manage that

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emotional roller coaster. But you know, I think Larry and I try to

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have a positive attitude always about what
we're doing, but be honest about,

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you know, what we're learning from
and where our challenges are. We've certainly

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had various challenges. I think it
would be impossible not to. But I

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think, you know, if it
was always easy, you might not be

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learning as much. I don't know. One missed up where it was like

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a huge eying experience, but looking
like kind of with hindsight, we launched

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mobile first, which a lot of
startups were doing. But what we learned

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was it's a lot harder to get
a customer to go to the app store,

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download your app, open it and
shop. It's a lot easier to

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get someone to just go to a
website and check out your website. The

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bar is way lower. So when
we launched in February of twenty fourteen,

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we launched mobile only, and when
we launched our website that June, it

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definitely became a lot easier to get
traffic and eyeballs because the bar was a

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lot lower. More of our sales
still come from mobile, and the product

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is kind of on the go shopping
experience, people coming home from work ordering

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a bottle of wine for dinner tonight. But we do see, you know,

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a lot of our party orders,
our corporate orders, which are all

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very valuable, high average order size
orders, are all coming from the web.

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So I think that was just like
an interesting learning And you know,

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I don't think that really changed the
trajective of our company that much, since

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it was only three or four months
that we were mobile only, but it

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was an interesting learning for us that
we weren't expecting that it would be as

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challenging to get mobile customers without a
website. Alcohol due to the three tiered

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system, really didn't have much of
a digital presence because the large liquor brands

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they couldn't legally sell alcohol directly to
consumers, so they really didn't have e

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commerce expertise or e commerce people in
these giant organizations. But over the past

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five years, we've seen these giant
organizations build out teams dedicated to e commerce

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that work with us, work with
other players in this industry. So it's

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really been interesting to see these behemous
kind of grow new departments to cater to

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and work with companies that are kind
of growing new e commerce companies. Lindsay

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has taken us behind the scenes with
her business Mini Bar Delivery and provided great

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insight into entering a traditional market with
a fresh idea. Now I want to

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take a look at her personal product
activity habits and find out her views regarding

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success. While I'm trying a new
one out in twenty eighteen, it's actually

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one Lara practices. It is inbox
zero. I have not achieved it for

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my personal inbox because if there are
too many emails in there to even I

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don't even know how to even deal
with it or start doing that. But

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for twenty eighteen. I've been working
towards inbox zero for my work email and

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I always try to keep the number
of emails in my inbox, try to

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always blow twenty and if I can
get below ten, I'm great. Success

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inbox zero is absolutely ambitious. But
what are hard thoughts on the question of

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success? I mean, I think
it's always learning, it's getting to work

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with a great team, and you
know, building a company that actually you

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know, is helping people or is
making a meaningful impact. And hopefully we're

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you know, growing and building a
company that makes sense for there something we

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can be proud of. I'm Ayana
Angel and thank you for listening to Amelie

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produced by Mazie Media. If you
enjoy this episode, you can subscribe to

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00:16:11.399 --> 00:16:15.480
the podcast so you never miss an
episode because we have more amazing women lined

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00:16:15.559 --> 00:16:19.919
up to share. You can follow
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join me next week for another episode
of Amilli