Drinks delivered on demand is a dream for some incomes Many Bar Delivery. It's
a startup that offers the easiest way to lift your spirits. With a few
taps, customers can get wine, beer, and liquor delivered to their doorstep.
Co founders of Many Bar Delivery, Lindsay Andrews and Lara Crystal met at
Wharton Business School. They have over fifteen years of e commerce experience and a
proven track record of building and growing online businesses. Lara previously was a founding
member at Rent the Runway, an e commerce business that rents luxury clothing and
accessories to women, where she served as the vice president of Marketing. Lindsay
meanwhile spent her career in consumer products at fresh Direct and soap dot Com.
She most recently helped launch wag dot com and built it into a leading pet
e commerce business within two years. Today we'll hear from Lindsay, who walks
us through their journey to a millie. A million in sales, a million
in revenue, a million followers, or a million in funding. To amass
one million of anything is a major fee, and that's why we're highlighting women
who have done just that. You'll hear from women who have made their mark,
impacted lives, blaze trails, and amassed a millie. So many of
our delivery really came out of Lara and myself. We were getting take out
one Tuesday. We used to do takeout Tuesday at my apartment and brainstorm business
ideas. We had been out of business school for a couple of years,
which is where we met, and we really thought it'd be fun to start
something, but we hadn't had that spark of an idea, and then you
know, one Tuesday or seamless came and disaster ensued. We were out of
white wine, so we figured we must be able to place an order much
like we could our food and get it delivered. And when we started to
dive in, we saw that alcohol was really difficult to order online. Less
than two percent of sales of one hundred billion dollar industry was being done online
and there was no go to brand or destination. So we really wanted to
create that brand and destination that people could rely on to press the button and
get their wine, spirits and beer delivered to their home quickly easily. So
that is where many bars started from. I mean, I think we really,
once we started diving in and doing the research, we saw that it
was an industry that lagged all others for e commerce penetration. It was huge.
It was one hundred billion dollars just at home consumption, not even including
bars and restaurants in the US, which was way bigger than most other industries
like flowers or Taxis. Obviously verse huge now and is doing more than taxis,
But it was just a huge, huge industry, and it was very
complex because it's there's the three tier system in the US where they're suppliers who
make the products like Absolute or Tito's, and then the distributors that move products
from point A to point B, and then the retailers that sell the product
to the end consumer. So it's a complex industry, highly regulated, and
so I think those are many of the reasons that it was slow to getting
online. But some of the newer technologies, such as payment processing being more
accessible, like Brain treat Gateway, which allows you to send money to different
places based on who that is, has enabled alcohol to come online. So
I think really, once we started seeing all the facts come together, we
were really excited and thought there was no reason this industry shouldn't be online.
It's the commodity, it's heavy, it's bulky. Why wouldn't you want it
delivered? It just seemed like a natural fit. I think it was more
the fear of leaving a job and leaving security, and leaving all the things
that come with that, like health insurance in a four one K and a
steady paycheck. I think those were more the scary parts entering the unknown,
not knowing when you would make money, not knowing who would give you money
to run the business. So I think those were really scary. But I
think also what excited us that we could build something from scratch and our successes
would be our successes and we could really make something from nothing. So I
think it is obviously a scary leap, but we felt like if we didn't
take it now, we would never take it, So I think we really
wanted to give it the best shop we could. I don't know if I
have one super bower, but I mean I think to do a startup,
you just have to be scrappy and persevere and not take no for an answer.
You know no means just not right now, and just keep pushing and
keep finding a way to succeed or get the yes from the partner or the
investor the store that you need. So I think it's really in a startup,
you need to obviously a great team and fundraising and all that, but
I think you really just have to have be really optimistic, positive and persistent.
In the early days, we didn't have tons of money to spend on
marketing dollars, so it was really us being scrappy, like the entire team
going to giant buildings in New York and hanging door hangers on every single door,
so starting it, you know, the fortieth floor and just working your
way down, or you know, we would do a lot of like happy
hours at corporate offices. You know a lot of times other startups or media
companies people with kind of young consumers that are happy to order stuff on their
phone and get it delivered and are used to that. So really, you
know, doing happy hours, three of us would go set up a table
and you know, serve cocktails and tell people about Mini Bar. So we
really wanted to find ways to be scrappy and get the buzz out, and
I think it helped, you know, we when we launched, we were
just in New York, city, justin Manhattan and Brooklyn, so it wasn't
like we were across the whole US, so it would be a little bit
harder for people and spread tooth in. So we were all in New York.
You know. We emailed every single one of our friends. We were
shameless about asking them to promote it, posting on our own Instagrams and facebooks,
really doing everything we could to help give people a way to discover us
and ask our friends to really promote us and push it to their friends and
try it share on Facebook, etc. A personal knee led Lindsay and Lara
to recognize a void in the alcohol distribution market, and as a result,
they created a business. I love hearing about the grassroots approach that they took
to spread the word about Mini Bars Delivery. When asked what advice she would
give to those hesitant to ask for support and pushing their big idea forward,
Lindsay offered a few thoughts. I mean, I feel like the worst answer
you who get is no, and then you're just in the exact same positions.
There's really nothing to lose. I think it is, you know,
asking someone to post me on their Facebook or email ten friends it's a pretty
easy thing to give them, and you should make it as easy as possible.
If you want them to tweet, send them the actual tweets so they
can just copy and paste and they don't have to write it themselves. So
make it his turn key. And it is another thing asking people for,
like money. If you're doing your friends and family round, that's obviously a
little bit harder, it's a little bit more on the line. You feel
a little bit more responsible in the long term because that's a little bit different.
But we definitely, you know, Laara and I both have family members
that invested and took the leap of faith and you know, bet on us,
which is really nice of them, and you know, we really appreciate
when it from the early days that supporting us when it was obviously harder to
raise and we raised one point eight million. That was our first round.
Though it definitely started out smaller and started out more friends and family. We
did end up having a couple institutional investors in there, like Female Founders Fund
who's been really supportive since the beginning. I mean, fundraising is a slog
it is a lot of work, it's a lot of it's a lot of
meetings. You know, I think you really want to go into it being
prepared, so having a great deck, having easy to understand and rational numbers,
knowing the landscape backwards and forwards, knowing our competitors, knowing the key
players, and really being ready for all those questions and then being ready afterwards
if they have follow ups and are looking for specific data, and just being
really on top of all the different people you're meeting with and making sure to
some think you know, it's etc. We definitely met with tons and tons
and tons of people. You are also always fundraising, you know, people,
especially as you get to bigger and bigger rounds, people or investors want
to, you know, kind of get to know you over time. It's
not just like a split decision they're going to make in a two week period,
So it's helpful for them to get updates and feel good about your progress
and the team that you're building and leading. But fundraising is definitely a difficult
endeavor, and we've definitely, you know, had some successes and I definitely
met challenges. I'm really happy I have a partner to do it with.
Um. I think, you know, doing it alone could be hard and
definitely. You know, all the note if you get them, can be
you know, slightly demoralizing at times. What I feel like doing it with
someone traveling with someone, having someone you know, if someone's you know,
feeling a little defeated the other one, can you know, cheer them up.
Or if there's a question in the room and you maybe don't have a
quick answer, your co founder does. So I think it's really nice having
a partner to go through thoughts and downs with because it can be definitely challenging.
Um, we did get some advice. Some advice we got which we
thought was interesting is you know a lot of people celebrate raising money, but
that's really just when the hard work starts. It's really raising money is only
half the battle. You then have to do something with it and show success.
So I think, you know, in certain years when people are raising
huge rounds and raising tons of money, people see just a big check as
success, but it's really when you're building a sustainable company for the long term,
that is what success is. I think we are very data driven.
You know, we look very closely at what our cost per customer is,
what our lifetime value is, what our payback period is, and making sure
we're growing smartly and making sure that the team is all working well together and
all our goals are clearly communicated and aligned. So I think we've really tried
to make smart decisions. We've only raised seven million dollars total, so we've
tried to be scrappy, tried to be responsible with the limited funding and kind
of grow a sustainable company that where we can work to offtability without raising tons
of capital. We can always learn something new when it comes to leadership.
Lindsay tells us what she thinks it takes to be a great leader. I
really think, you know, persistence especially, you know, I think it's
very challenging to lead. It's interesting, it's you know, I think there's
one is making smart decisions and building a business, and the other is managing
teams and people, and I think those are two very different things. Something
that surprised us is almost the growing and building and managing people is where we've
learned more and had more ups and downs and challenges because I think, you
know people, everyone's so complex and has their own interests or goals or challenges
and skill sets. So I think that's been a big learning experience. Is
really how to build a team culture and how to build things that get people
excited and really build programs where people are excited to come to work every day
and are proud to work in any bar. I mean, I think during
a startup it's much more of a roller coaster. The highs are amazing,
You're so excited and you're like, we just to this, We're crushing it.
This is awesome, and the lows are like, oh my gosh,
we missed this one thing. This is the workst thing, whereas a job
it's more steady. So I think it's kind of the how to manage that
emotional roller coaster. But you know, I think Larry and I try to
have a positive attitude always about what we're doing, but be honest about,
you know, what we're learning from and where our challenges are. We've certainly
had various challenges. I think it would be impossible not to. But I
think, you know, if it was always easy, you might not be
learning as much. I don't know. One missed up where it was like
a huge eying experience, but looking like kind of with hindsight, we launched
mobile first, which a lot of startups were doing. But what we learned
was it's a lot harder to get a customer to go to the app store,
download your app, open it and shop. It's a lot easier to
get someone to just go to a website and check out your website. The
bar is way lower. So when we launched in February of twenty fourteen,
we launched mobile only, and when we launched our website that June, it
definitely became a lot easier to get traffic and eyeballs because the bar was a
lot lower. More of our sales still come from mobile, and the product
is kind of on the go shopping experience, people coming home from work ordering
a bottle of wine for dinner tonight. But we do see, you know,
a lot of our party orders, our corporate orders, which are all
very valuable, high average order size orders, are all coming from the web.
So I think that was just like an interesting learning And you know,
I don't think that really changed the trajective of our company that much, since
it was only three or four months that we were mobile only, but it
was an interesting learning for us that we weren't expecting that it would be as
challenging to get mobile customers without a website. Alcohol due to the three tiered
system, really didn't have much of a digital presence because the large liquor brands
they couldn't legally sell alcohol directly to consumers, so they really didn't have e
commerce expertise or e commerce people in these giant organizations. But over the past
five years, we've seen these giant organizations build out teams dedicated to e commerce
that work with us, work with other players in this industry. So it's
really been interesting to see these behemous kind of grow new departments to cater to
and work with companies that are kind of growing new e commerce companies. Lindsay
has taken us behind the scenes with her business Mini Bar Delivery and provided great
insight into entering a traditional market with a fresh idea. Now I want to
take a look at her personal product activity habits and find out her views regarding
success. While I'm trying a new one out in twenty eighteen, it's actually
one Lara practices. It is inbox zero. I have not achieved it for
my personal inbox because if there are too many emails in there to even I
don't even know how to even deal with it or start doing that. But
for twenty eighteen. I've been working towards inbox zero for my work email and
I always try to keep the number of emails in my inbox, try to
always blow twenty and if I can get below ten, I'm great. Success
inbox zero is absolutely ambitious. But what are hard thoughts on the question of
success? I mean, I think it's always learning, it's getting to work
with a great team, and you know, building a company that actually you
know, is helping people or is making a meaningful impact. And hopefully we're
you know, growing and building a company that makes sense for there something we
can be proud of. I'm Ayana Angel and thank you for listening to Amelie
produced by Mazie Media. If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe to
the podcast so you never miss an episode because we have more amazing women lined
up to share. You can follow Mazie Media on Instagram and be sure to
join me next week for another episode of Amilli