Proof of purchase: Online alcohol delivery grew 32.7 percent in 2017

According to new data from Slice Intelligence, online alcohol delivery revenue grew 32.7 percent last year, increasing at an average rate of 3 percent month-over-month. December sits on the top shelf as the highest revenue-earning month in 2017, comprising 12.2 percent of annual sales.

The consistent growth of Drizly, an alcohol delivery service, played a large part in the growth of online alcohol delivery revenue. Drizly revenue grew by an impressive 61.8 percent in 2017. In comparison, Minibar, a direct competitor of Drizly, saw revenue growth of only 6.5 percent in 2017, much lower than the 23 percent growth shown by e-commerce overall.

Women purchase more alcohol than their male counterparts accounting for 55.7 percent of alcoholic beverages delivered online. Of this majority, 56.7 percent of the alcohol women are having delivered online is wine. In a somewhat surprising development, wine is also the most popular alcohol purchased online by men, making up 47 percent of their online alcohol purchases, with beer coming in at 27.3 percent, and spirits chasing the pack at 25.6 percent.

The most popular wine brand online is Veuve Cliquot, followed by Barefoot Cellars, and Bota Box. Tito’s is the most popular spirit brand online, and the most popular alcohol brand online accounting 3 percent of online alcohol delivery revenue. 

The rest of the top 10 online alcohol brands are: Bud Light, Bulleit, Veuve Clicquot, Bota Box, Barefoot Cellars, Corona, Oyster Bay, Stella Artois, and Miller Lite.

With a panel of over 5.5 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.

Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.

Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time, which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world. Slice Intelligence is the exclusive e-commerce data provider for NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.