Minibar Offers On-Demand Booze Delivery In 13 Cities

The snow is piled high and frozen on the New York city streets. Joshua and Amanda sit on their couch for the fifth night in a row, bored out of their minds but unwilling to bundle up, venture into the winter night and try to find warmth elsewhere.

“Christie and Caleb want to go out,” Amanda says unenthusiastically, without looking at Joshua. “You care?”

“Tell them to come here,” Josh says, staring into his smartphone screen.

“To do what? We have nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. Are we supposed to sit around listening to music and drinking coffee at 10:30 on a Friday night?”

Joshua opens up his phone and flashes an annoyingly overconfident smile at Amanda.

“I’ve got it covered,” he says, as he flips open the MiniBar app on his iPhone. He shops for Amanda’s favorite Gin, gets his favorite Rye, and finds a nice hoppy beer for Christie and Caleb, using the filters in the app, and simply checks out.

As Josh and Amanda wait for their friends to arrive out of the dark snowy night, an order is sent to one of MiniBar’s vendor partners, where inventory is confirmed, and the order is put through the vendor’s payment system. The vendor checks out the user, packages up the product, and sends out a delivery man.

Answering a knock at the door, Josh stands before a man bundled in black and dusted with snow. He wears a yellow reflective vest. His bike is probably downstairs. He asks for Josh’s drivers license, checks it out, and hands over a bag full of booze.

And it is finished.

The story of Josh and Amanda and whatever the others’ names were is true for users across thirteen cities. Minibar is available across the web and on mobile in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Jersey City, The Hamptons, Ithaca, Dallas, Hoboken, Westchester, Silicon Valley, Palm Beach and Miami. Vendors on the platform can list their products, name their prices, and set up shop on the internet to get new, more educated customers.

Even with heavy competition in the space, Minibar cofounders Lara Crystal and Lindsey Andrews say that Minibar is currently the biggest player in the space in terms of revenues. Minibar makes money by taking a transactions-based technology fee from vendor partners at the end of the month.

To check out Minibar, which has raised a total of $1.8 million in seed funding, head over to the website here.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/KU6zvTYyyzQ/

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