Seamless for booze: Minibar Delivery’s iOS app summons alcohol to your doorstep

A new delivery service helps you get tanked without stepping foot outside your apartment.

Capitalizing on New Yorkers’ love of alcohol and inherent laziness, Minibar Delivery is a new startup centered around the delivery of wine and spirits. The five-person company launched its iOS app late last year, bringing alcohol drop-offs to Manhattan (below 96th St.), and today the company expanded its list of participating vendors to bring most of Brooklyn into the fold.

Above: iOS app screenshot

“Basically we saw a huge market that has not been successfully brought online,” Minibar Delivery cofounder Lara Crystal told VentureBeat. “A lot of people have loyalty to spirits but not necessarily to brands.”

Founded last May, Minibar Delivery is jousting with a few competitors, including Drizly and Booze Carriage, to become that household brand — the Seamless of alcohol delivery.

With 14 stores on board, Minibar promises delivery on alcohol orders above $25 to Manhattan and Brooklyn in under an hour. To earn revenue, it charges vendors a “small percentage” of each order, though Crystal declined to disclose the precise amount.

The company plans to expand to the other boroughs “over the next few months” and eventually to other cities. It also intends to build a web portal and Android app to complement the iOS app soon.

“The plan is to go elsewhere in the country, but we definitely want to get New York right and build a great product,” said Crystal.

There’s another Minibar app on Apple’s App Store — a $3 app featuring 110 cocktail recipes — but Crystal isn’t worried about people confusing the two.

“We felt there was no brand there,” she said, “and we felt there was an opportunity to be Minibar Delivery, which gets across about what we’re all about.”

Minibar cofounders and co-CEOs Lara Crystal and Lindsey Andrews met while attending the Wharton Business School. Crystal previously served as vice president of marketing at Rent the Runway, an e-commerce business that rents luxury clothing and accessories to women. Andrews, meanwhile, served in various marketing roles at FreshDirect, Soap.com, and Wag.com.